Anna Gasser: Meet the woman who changed snowboarding

Meet the woman who changed snowboarding

“What I love about snowboarding is the feeling it gives me”

“I can forget everything when I stand on the board. I can express myself in a way I can’t perhaps with words”

“It’s a feeling that I haven’t found anywhere else”

Anna Gasser only picked up a snowboard for the first time in 2010, but the fearless Austrian has changed the sport for good. She’s won major titles and introduced bolder, more advanced moves to the sport, becoming the first woman to perform a Cab Double Cork 900 and Cab Triple Underflip. Her drive and star power has helped secure female snowboarders more respect and win more attention. Not one to sit back and relax, Gasser is still pushing boundaries and is now focusing on backcountry and powder snowboarding, and producing the kind of breath-taking films that will inspire the next generation. “What I love about snowboarding is the feeling it gives me. It’s an indescribable feeling,” she says. “It has a lot to do with freedom, but it’s also about the fact that I can forget everything when I stand on the board. I can express myself in a way I can’t perhaps with words and it’s a feeling that I haven’t found anywhere else.” This is the story of her snowboarding career:

Small print and captions

Writer: Ola Madden Photo Credit: Sam Strauss / Red Bull Content Pool

Writer: Ola Madden

Select a year

2017

Future

2011

2010

James Brown

Bruce Lee

Sugar Hill Gang

Blondie

Double Dutch

Flashdance

VHS Tapes

Freestyle Session

lords of the floor

Ronnie Abaldonado

BC One

It’s 2010. Gasser is 18, lives in the beautiful Austrian lakeside town of Millstatt and is about to start her final year of school. Her cousin introduces her to snowboarding and she’s hooked by the moves, the freedom and the lifestyle. “My cousin was a snowboarder and showed me videos of him doing Backflips in the deep snow. I thought it looked so cool and thought ‘I could do that too’, even though I’d never actually been on a snowboard. So, the first time it snowed I called my cousin and said ‘can we try it please?’ “It was so much harder than it looked, I have to admit, but I didn’t make a fool of myself. After one day I could get down the mountain, did my first Mini Airs over bumps on the piste, and had started to turn. I thought ‘this is the coolest thing ever’. From that day on, I knew I wanted to carry on doing this and get better. “I googled the competition scene on my first day of being on a snowboard to see what I needed to learn. I thought ‘okay, let’s see what the best women in the world are doing’. Three years later I was competing against them.”

2010: An obsession begins

“I was always happy to be in the air, even as a little child”

Gasser can’t get enough of snowboarding and learns fast. Other boarders are astonished to see her attempting moves and tricks that people with years of experience struggle with. She has some advantages, in particular her years of gymnastics training as a child and her sense of fearlessness. “I was always happy to be in the air, even as a little child, and I think that’s why I was so well suited to gymnastics and why I love snowboarding so much. In both sports I have that feeling of being in the air. “In gymnastics everything was very structured. You couldn’t make any decisions for yourself, the trainers decided. With snowboarding it was completely different – I could decide everything for myself. That also helped get me hooked.”

“I thought, ‘no – in a few years you’ll see”

After finishing school, Gasser ditches her plans to go to university and instead decides to spend a year in Mammoth, California, to develop her snowboarding. She spends two months baby-sitting to earn money for the trip, but friends and family are sceptical about her plans. “People thought that I’d gone a bit mad or was going through a rebellious phase. But I thought, ‘no – in a few years you’ll see’.” “It really is a bit crazy when you start something new so late. I ditched plans that I’d had for a long time and said I’m going to do something completely different. Inside, I just knew what I wanted to do.”

“I’m chaotic in many aspects of my life, but in snowboarding I’m very precise”

Gasser returns from the United States and starts competitive snowboarding. While enjoying the travel, lifestyle and hanging out with the other women boarders, she’s convinced she can do some of the big men’s tricks. In 2013, she becomes the first woman to complete a Cab Double Cork 900, wowing the public. “That started my career. That’s when suddenly, I got taken a bit more seriously.” Gasser’s friends and family joke that she can be a chaotic in everyday life, frequently losing passports, phones and wallets as she travels from one mountain range to another. Gasser agrees.

“Because of nerves I started too early, which ended in a huge mess...”

Gasser’s Cab Double Cork 900 makes her a media star and puts huge pressure on her ahead of Sochi. It’s the first time that women’s slopestyle snowboarding is included at the Games and Gasser qualifies for the final in first place. However, she’s hit by nerves in the final and finishes 10th after slipping as she tried to climb the starting slope and falling in both runs. “I think the Games came a bit too early for me, I wasn’t prepared at all. Quite simply, no one knew who I was before that year and then you go there, still pretty young and pretty inexperienced, and suddenly you get all this attention. With it, of course, comes a lot of pressure. I couldn’t cope with it at all back then. From one day to the next I suddenly became a favourite for a medal.

“She can’t snowboard for 12 weeks”

Gasser calculates her tricks and jumps with precision – the speed, height and conditions need to be right. She puts her fearlessness down to not thinking too much about everything that can go wrong. In 2015 she suffers a slipped disc and a small break in one of her vertebrae – not from snowboarding, but from landing headfirst into a soft pit at a trampoline and skate park in the United States. She can’t snowboard for 12 weeks. “Most injuries happen not with the hardest tricks, but actually on the easiest tricks and stupid things. My most serious injury, an injury to my neck, didn’t happen snowboarding, but rather in a foam pit – somewhere where you think you can’t hurt yourself.”

“The best season I ever had”

And what a season it was. In 2017, Gasser achieves seven wins, including gold at the Burton US Open, victory at the snowboarding World Championships with a score of 100 in Big Air, X Games gold in Hafjell, and the overall Big Air World Cup. She’s also awarded an ESPY for Best Female Action Sports Athlete.

“After the first two runs I was in second place – I felt tense“

It’s February 2018 and the Winter Games are taking place in South Korea. This time Big Air is included for the first time and after her stunning season the year before, Gasser is feeling confident. “My mindset was completely different. I really believed 100 percent that I deserved to win. I thought, ‘I’m so well prepared I’ve earned the medal’. But competition with long-term friend and rival Jamie Anderson of the United States is intense.”

“I had no time to think about the consequences of it all!”

In November 2018, Gasser enjoys another career highlight and sets a huge milestone in snowboarding when she becomes the first woman to land a Cab Triple Underflip on the Stubai Glacier in Austria. The conditions are perfect and she feels she has enough time in the air. “I thought to myself, ‘I could do a triple’ and then the butterflies started, and I knew: it was time to try it. I told Clemens, ‘I’m going to try it. Could you film it?’” “It happened really fast. I managed it on the first attempt and was so relived, and felt so much adrenalin. I had no time to think about the consequences of it all! I couldn’t snowboard for the rest of the day, I had to take in what had happened.”

“Believing in yourself and knowing that it’s never too late to do something new”

Gasser intends to defend her gold medal in Beijing in 2022, but is also dedicating more time to snowboarding outside of competitions and honing her skills in backcountry, where there are so many more variables than in park snowboarding. “There are so many sides to snowboarding and after the competitions are over there will still be so much for me to learn. You can never tire of it, because it has so many aspects." “I’ve won so much, achieved so many goals and now I’m just simply enjoying it. I want to show my best snowboarding.” Gasser also hopes she can inspire and motivate youngsters. “I hope I can be a role model in several ways. Following your own path, believing in yourself and knowing that it’s never too late to do something new.”

2012

2013

2014

2015

2018

Millstatt, Austria

“I thought ‘okay, let’s see what the best women in the world are doing’”

The Alps, Austria

2011: Airborne

Mammoth California, United States

2011-2012: Boarding USA

Stubai Glacier

2013: Austrian pioneer

Sochi, Russia

2014: Shock in Sochi

“I fell down the starting slope. You have to imagine that. At an Olympics, my biggest ever stage, live on television, and I fall down the starting slope.” Gasser picks up the pieces and resolves to show the world her potential at the next Games. “My career has had many ups and downs. It’s always a roller coaster ride with me, but I have really – and this is really remarkable – mostly had the best times in my snowboarding after my low points.”

Indiana, United States

2015: Freak injury

Burton US Open

2017: Triumphant

PyeongChang, South Korea

2018: Winter gold

Stubai Glacier, Austria

2018: The Triple

Future plans

An obsession begins

Airborne

Boarding USA

Austrian pioneer

Shock in Sochi

Freak injury

Triumphant

Winter gold The Triple

Future plans

I was thinking about what was the best strategy to get those points I was lacking. It was a gut decision.” True to form, Gasser performed the harder jump, which automatically secured her the gold, pushing Anderson into second place. “I hadn’t practiced the Cab Double 10, I hadn’t done it in three days. I knew I could do it, but it was a huge risk whether it would work.” It did. “It was the best feeling, simply one of the best feelings in my life. I was so happy and I had the most important people in my life there to share it with me.”

“In that pause [from snowboarding] I was able to think about things a lot, work things out in my head. Then in the next season I did my best jumps and achieved so many goals.

Watch Anna Gasser’s documentary The Spark Within here:

Watch documentary

Watch Anna Gasser’s documentary The Spark Within here:

Select a year

2017

2018

Future

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2010

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An obsession begins

Airborne

Boarding USA

Austrian pioneer

2012

Shock in Sochi

2013

Freak injury

2014

Triumphant

2015

Olympic gold The Triple

2017

Future plans

Credit: Sam Strauss / Red Bull Content Pool

Writer: Ola Madden

Credit: Matthias Heschl / Red Bull Content Pool

Credit: Sam Strauss / Red Bull Content Pool

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Credit: Jeff Brockmeyer / Red Bull Content Pool Mirja Geh / Red Bull Content Pool

Credit: GEPA pictures / Red Bull Content Pool

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Credit: Sam Strauss / Red Bull Content Pool

Credit: Matthias Heschl / Red Bull Content Pool

Credit: Sam Strauss / Red Bull Content Pool

Credit: Zach Hooper / Red Bull Content Pool

Credit: Jeff Brockmeyer / Red Bull Content Pool Mirja Geh / Red Bull Content Pool

Credit: GEPA pictures / Red Bull Content Pool

Credit: Dean Blotto Gray / Natural Selection Tour / Red Bull Content Pool

Credit: Pally Learmond / Red Bull Content Pool