The Snowboarder's Journal • The Snowboarder's Journal 21.4 • FOOT ON THE GASSER

“Anna Gasser directing the build for a jib feature in Slovenia and covering some behind-the-scenes content with her beloved Leica.”
Photo: Sani Alibabic

“Did you book your flight yet?” Anna Gasser asks over the phone. It’s late September.

“Not yet, Anna,” I reply. “I can’t really justify spending the money to go ride park jumps on a glacier in Switzerland anymore.”

I don’t have much of a choice—it’s rare that Anna doesn’t get what she wants. She is a stubborn and singularly focused human who has accomplished more in her first decade of snowboarding than most athletes do in their entire careers. But she isn’t your typical “best in the world” athlete. Her craft isn’t honed in the gym alongside nutritionists and sports psychologists. Rather, her regime of bell-to-bell park days, year-round winters and schnitzel mit pommes has proved to be a winning combination. For her, every waking hour is dedicated to snowboarding.

Anna hails from Millstatt, Austria, a tiny lakeside village where she grew up with her younger sister, Eva, and their parents, Lisbeth and Peter. Anna didn’t start snowboarding until her late teens after she turned her back on competitive gymnastics. She was searching for something that could fill her need for adrenaline without strict rules, and snowboarding fit the bill. She pored over European snowboard movies wondering how she could find a way into this new world. She stole Eva’s board and forced her sister to wait hours for her while she threw herself at rails and hucked backflips. In 2012, a few years after those first backflips, she got a spot at the O’Neill Evolution in Davos where she landed on her first podium with a backside 5. From there, she landed first-ever trick after first-ever trick and went on to dominate the competitive snowboard scene. She has sat atop the perch for a decade now and, despite operating in a competitive arena dominated by youth, Anna still has her foot on the gas.

As I sit in the airport en route to Switzerland in early October (yeah, Anna got her way yet again), I think of the first time I saw the slightly sketchy, skinny blonde girl ride—the “who is that?” moment. We solidified our friendship after a six-hour day lapping the Whistler, BC, terrain park in 2014, running out of tricks to do. I remember the moment she surpassed me as a competitive rider, when I knew she would take the torch and carry it further than any of us thought possible.

We talk a lot about trailblazers in this sport, and Anna Gasser is someone who has earned that title. But at only 32 years old, she’s too young to receive it just yet. Anna was the first woman to land a double cork, the first woman to land a triple cork, is a two-time Olympic gold medalist (big air in 2018 and 2022), four-time X Games medalist (in both slopestyle and big air), and so much more.

After one of our park sessions in Saas-Fee, we sat down to talk with so much more on the horizon. Anna was icing her ankle with a bag of cream cheese. She’d hurt it riding that day. It didn’t seem to faze her, much.

Anna Gasser: Is it OK that I lay like this? With cheese on my leg? This is the closest the cheese comes to my mouth, ever.

The Snowboarder’s Journal: That’s all we’ll say about the food [laughing]. Can you tell me about your family? Do you have any siblings?

I have a sister. She is four years younger than me. I am the only one in my family into snowboarding. My sister and I used to do gymnastics together when we were kids. I always wanted to teach her to snowboard, but she was not having it. We still go for hikes or climb a ferrata together though.

She can snowboard, but she likes the après ski more. She actually started before me—my first snowboard I stole from my sister when I was 18. Later on, when I got my own snowboard, I gave hers back and took her with me, but I was so obsessed that I would go for like eight, nine hours straight and I kind of ruined it for her. She got sick of waiting for me to be done riding. I would borrow my mom’s car and drive us there, so she had no way home until I was done.

Every Austrian learns how to ski. I also learned how to ski when I was very young, but it was more something we did as a holiday, five to 10 times a year, which my parents still do. They never knew anything about snowboarding. When I asked them if I could do slopestyle, they were like, “Are there really competitions in that?”

I had the opposite of soccer parents. My mom was always worried about me and in the beginning, when the contests weren’t going good and I started doubting myself, my mom always told me, “Anna, you don’t need to do this. We support you if you want to stop and do something else.”

I wanted it, for myself. They supported me, so I wanted to give it back to them for believing in me. When I went to the U.S. to snowboard when I was 19, I worked and saved my own money to go. I started to run out way too fast and I had to ask my parents to give me money so I could finish the trip. I felt very guilty because my parents both have normal jobs—my mom is a teacher and my dad works in insurance. I told them on the phone, “If I ever do good in comps, you get 50 percent of all my winnings.”

Thank god, they didn’t take me up on that [laughs]. But once I had contracts and I won my first Pleasure Jam, I gave them the check and told them it was for the support they gave me when I went to the U.S.

I did gymnastics until I was about 12 years old. After that, I was missing an athletic challenge, a passion. Then my cousin showed me some snowboard videos—I think it was Isenseven—and it looked so fun and wild and unconventional, and as soon as it snowed that year, I borrowed the board from my sister. Straight away, I loved it. I was not good at it, but I thought you could learn so fast. I always love a challenge, and I love that butterfly feeling of excitement. Because of gymnastics, I loved airtime. I would try all these different things. Snowboarding was all the things I liked combined. I didn’t like the structure and perfectionism of gymnastics. Snowboarding was not about perfectionism. You were your own person in snowboarding. You could decide when to do it, how to do it, and people weren’t telling you what to do and telling you that you couldn’t do the next thing until it was perfect.

There are different axes in all the tricks; you can put your personality in a trick. I can see a video of a person from far away and it’s so cool if you know who the person is. It’s maybe changing now with the new generation. They’re trying to maybe pursue the perfectionism. When I started, it was a lot about how you like to do it. For example, I always knew your style, and Jamie’s [Anderson], or Enni’s [Rukajärvi].

Everything was very loose, and I liked the lifestyle too—meeting people from around the world, traveling with friends. I don’t know if I would start snowboarding now. Competitive snowboarding feels more like gymnastics, like what I wanted to get away from.

You learn body awareness in gymnastics, but I had a very hard time learning to snowboard like a snowboarder and not be straight-legged. This is funny, because I became known for doing the first doubles and triples [by a woman], but for a very long time I didn’t flip in my snowboarding because I didn’t want that connection with gymnastics. I tried to get good 540s, the basics. I really care about style.

I met you at O’Neill Evolution in 2012 and you did a super-nice back five and got third.

That was my first international podium and the start of everything. Even when I did the cab double for the first time, I wanted to learn the cab 9 flat to just have it. I didn’t use the cab double [in a contest] for probably three or four years after I did it. I wanted to go step by step.

In a sense, you were a contest winner before you were a snowboarder. How important has it been for you to be accepted by the core community?

It was very important to become better at snowboarding. I wanted to look good riding; I didn’t want to just be good in the air. I committed every bad weather day to going up to the mountain and just snowboarding, or riding switch. I was crazy obsessed, and it took a long time, but now I think I’m a strong snowboarder, not just in the air. My first years snowboarding I was a rail rider. I only rode rails because it was easier. Rails and maybe baby jumps where I would just go backflip…

What element of competition took the longest for you to learn if it wasn’t the actual tricks?

The consistency and adapting to different jumps, different speeds, different features. My first year competing in local comps, I would never land, but I knew I could do those tricks on perfect days. I started questioning myself. I was like, “Maybe I thought it was too easy.”

Starting a sport so late, my parents were supporting me, but they wanted me to go to school and get a good education. I told them, “I think I can be a snowboarder. I think I can do this,” but I had nothing to prove it to them. The O’Neill Evolution gave me the motivation to keep trying. It made me believe in myself.

The following year you landed a cab double nine at Stubai. That was such a massive moment for snowboarding and no one even knew who you were yet. How quickly did your world change?

Suddenly, I got my first contracts. It was good timing because it was just before the Olympics in Sochi.

Then you got invited to Dew Tour in Breckenridge. You had just been signed onto Nike. The first day I saw you riding in practice, and I was like, “Oh, she’s riding really good.” Later that night when you got to the Nike house you couldn’t walk. I asked if you got hurt in practice and you said, “No, it was a few weeks ago. It’s not so bad—I just have to land switch.” I thought you were a little crazy as you hobbled around, but you’re just so stubborn and strong-willed. Can you talk a bit about that mindset and how that changed as your career has gone on?

I’m a little smarter now. Two days after doing the cab double 9, I injured my ankle. There was no way in the world I would miss my first big opportunity to compete in the U.S. So I taped it up and pushed through the pain. It wasn’t very smart and I didn’t ride very well, but just to be there with all of my heroes, to compete against all the best girls in the world, it was a dream. I had to base every run around my ankle that season, even the Olympics, so the whole year I would land switch. I would do back five to cab seven, all the landings that I knew my ankle was good at.

Your ankles have probably been your biggest injuries throughout your career…

I’ve had my fair share of injuries, but over the years I’ve learned that it’s important to give your body rest and chill. Because I started so late and I wanted to prove myself so bad, I would just keep going. When the season was over in North America, I would go to Dachstein Glacier in Austria and I would never stop or take a break; I would not give my body the rest it needed. So the annoying little injuries, they just kept on coming. Every year there would be something. Now I’ve gotten better at taking care of my body and eating better than I did in the beginning.

Your biggest injury was your neck [a herniated disc and hairline fracture of the C6] in 2015…

My ankle sucked because I lost so much time on snow, but my biggest injury was probably the neck because it’s such a scary place to be injured. The doctors were like, “Maybe it’s not smart that you snowboard anymore.” When you hear that, the whole world breaks down. I was in shock even though other doctors said, “No, you’re fine.” I’m so happy I could work around it and I didn’t need surgery. It was the first time I took a long break from snowboarding, about five months. That break changed my perspective on snowboarding because I had to find other things to do, and that took a lot of pressure off. When I came back, and I wasn’t scared and hadn’t gotten worse, that was probably the best year I have ever snowboarded. I wasn’t as stubborn. I was more chill and then suddenly all the tricks worked, and I landed in every contest.

Yeah, and that was when the big air World Cups happened. I finally did the cab double at the U.S. Open and the X Games. When people say there is something good in an injury, it’s true—you have to see something good, and it taught me something that I wouldn’t have learned without the long break.

How was your first Olympics in Sochi? You were a rookie coming in, you’d only done a handful of the bigger contests, and now you’re in front of the entire world as a legitimate threat to podium.

It was a very hard experience because I had to put my run together around an ankle injury. I also felt other people had higher expectations for me than I had for myself. The media and sponsors thought there was a higher chance [for me to win] than there actually was. I think I qualified first, and suddenly the whole media went on me. I’d never had experience with media before. I crumbled under the pressure. In the finals, I slipped down the start ramp in front of the world and had to climb back up, then didn’t land my run. It was so hard at the time. But looking back on my whole career, I’m also happy because I needed the time to grow.

I was so tired from all the expectations that, when the Olympics were over, it fired me up to ride more. It made me a better snowboarder at the end of the day. I’m happy I didn’t medal there. I’m happy for the girls that medaled there. Enni, Jenny [Jones] and Jamie, they were on the podium all the time and I feel like they deserved it more than me. I wish you had medaled, you deserved it…

I was a veteran at that point and had done a lot of the big events for many years and I couldn’t handle the pressure of the media at that Olympics.

It feels like you have the weight of the whole country on your shoulders and you’re not used to it. Especially in Austria—they didn’t even know slopestyle before the Olympics. It’s all about ski racing. Suddenly, they were all watching. They all loved me on the day of qualification. They put me up to the sky, but the day I fell in finals they didn’t even remember my name. I realized that it’s not real and that this experience isn’t lasting.

The world loves to see triumphant moments in sport where we hold the athletes up so high, but it can be hard how quickly it turns. If you aren’t anchored in yourself and don’t understand that it’s not real, that it’s just a circus, it can really affect you if you’re not prepared for it. But you were the first woman to land cab double 9, then cab triple 12 and cab 12 flat after that... Can you tell me about your process for learning new tricks, especially ones that no woman has ever done?

The cab double 9 came natural to me because I could flip. I actually caught my edge pretty bad on my first try. But I remember the butterflies and this crazy adrenaline—it’s different trying a new trick. It is for sure different than nowadays, with the progression coming from jumping into airbags a lot. So I just tried [a cab 9 triple]. It worked out and I was stoked, but I didn’t think about if I was the first woman and I didn’t even think about any consequences of uploading that video. I had maybe 200 followers on Instagram, and I woke up with a couple thousand and so many reposts. I always did new tricks for myself. I never thought that this is something where I could say I was the first. The other stuff came with it. Also with the triple, I had been thinking about it for a while, but I didn’t put pressure on it. I did the double, it felt good, so I felt like I could try the triple.

What’s your mental process going into something that you’ve never done before?

It’s a lot about feeling. I need to feel good. I need to be able to imagine it in my head. If I’m at that point I can imagine it, I feel good, the jump is perfect and the day is perfect, then I like to try it. A lot of things have to line up. You shouldn’t force yourself to try something if you don’t feel it. That’s how injuries happen, so it has to come from yourself, especially for younger athletes. I don’t think you should listen to your coach at that point. I never did. I always decided myself when I wanted to try something. Of course, a coach can support you with your goals, but it still has to come from within yourself.

I had a lot of battles, but the only trick I ever did first try was cab triple. If I didn’t land it first try, I wouldn’t have been able to do it again that day. I had so much adrenaline after that trick, I was shaking, so I don’t think I could have even tried it again. All the other tricks, they were such a battle for me. I would say especially back 10 and front 10. There are so many different ways to do front 10, and I tried it flat and bruised my ankles because I landed too toe-heavy. I once broke an ankle trying it double because I did too much flipping, and I was like, “How the fuck do I do a front 10!” I almost gave up. When I finally did it on snow—that was one of the best feelings. It’s still a scary trick for me.

You won two Olympic golds in big air. Watching you and Jamie go toe-to-toe in Korea is one of my favorite memories of watching you compete. Waiting for you to drop for that last hit I was so nervous, but already so proud. You dropped, you stomped the cab double 10 and won. All the girls rushed to you, everyone was hugging you. You had a similar one in China in 2022 when you landed cab 12 to take the win. Does one have more weight for you than the other?

Korea was really, really special to me because slopestyle was a shit show with the wind, and I felt like a lot of girls got robbed of a fair chance to show their best. At that time, I knew I had tricks that other girls didn’t have yet. Now it’s different. Now there’s so many contenders for the medals. So, in Beijing I had to be like, “Anything can happen today; I’m gonna try my best.” Any of the eight girls in finals could have medaled. It came down to who had the best day. In Korea I felt a bit more like it was mine to lose because I had the back 10 and cab double 9, which other girls didn’t do at that time.

But you never can count Jamie out. She’s somehow coming out and putting down a trick she’s never done before. It’s so impressive and I’m so proud of her because she did the perfect front 10 exactly when she needed to do it. She is one of the best athletes I’ve ever seen compete under pressure. I was in second after my first jump and it was super close, so I was unsure what trick to do because there were two options: I could either go bigger on a back 10 because only 3/10 of a point separated us, or do the cab 10, which would win easy enough. I got to the drop-in, and I waited for like five minutes because I was unsure of what to do.

The wind was kind of uphill. I asked [my boyfriend] Clemens [Millauer], I asked my coach, and they both said to do whatever felt right. I decided on the cab 10 and I’m so happy it worked out. Having all the girls down there jumping on me when I landed—it’s one of my favorite moments in my career.

A great Austrian team house party after that, with everyone coming. It’s not normal in sports in Austria for everyone to be friends with different nations. They asked me how many people wanted to come to the Austrian house and I told them 50—all the snowboarders wanted to come—they were like, “50 people from where?” And I was like, “from everywhere!” It’s special in snowboarding that you celebrate together and that you have such a community.

At the Olympics, every other sport sits with their country in the dining hall, but then for the snowboarders it’s this big mix of nations all sitting together.

It’s still like that, but it’s changing now with how snowboarding goes more with nationalities and FIS. I hope we can keep it up.

It used to be that FIS was just a vessel for halfpipe riders to go to the Olympics every four years. Our entire year was comprised of 10-plus major events that were all driven by snowboarders. Now it’s the opposite, there’s maybe two or three independent events and the rest is FIS.

And those three events are invite-only events. X Games and Dew Tour are sick, but young kids need to do FIS because there’s no other way [to compete regularly]. It’s a fully different approach now. I’m one of the last people on tour that came up without a coach. Up until my first Olympics, I did everything by myself. It’s a big change and it’s not all bad, but it also has a lot of potential to get better. On the one hand, the [national] federations are paying for these kids to get the chance to live the snowboarding life that maybe they wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. But on the other hand, FIS doesn’t always care about the riders. I’m happy I experienced both and I know how it was before.

It’s for sure more sport and less about the lifestyle. Also, I feel like FIS is not as marketable. A lot of the kids that are on such a high level don’t even have sponsor support. Now there’s so many at such a high level competing, it’s become more of a serious sport in the last couple years.

Do you think it’s driving a wedge between competitive snowboarding and the core of snowboarding?

Yes. When I started snowboarding it was so cool. It was cool to see video parts from your favorite snowboarders and then see them in competition as well. There was so much personality in it, you knew the riders better, they became your heroes. When you only do FIS, you lose that special touch.

I don’t know yet. I’ve gone to three Olympics now. I honestly thought I was going to retire from competition after Korea, but then I thought I could still progress and get better. That has always been one of my biggest motivators. I have so much fun progressing and thinking about dream runs or dream tricks that I want to do. A reason I’m drawn to 2026 is the location—Milan is only a four-hour drive from my home. All my friends and family could come watch. I also love Italian food, pasta with tomato sauce.

I’m not stressing either. I’m in a phase now where I’m going with the flow and seeing how my body is, how my tricks are. If I see that I’m struggling and I can’t keep up, I’m not going to go. But if I’m healthy, I’m having fun and I can do the tricks, well there is a chance.

Slopestyle at the Olympics. It would be nice, but it’s not easy. I don’t feel the pressure to get more medals. I’m enjoying the competitions way more now than I ever did, if the conditions are good. I don’t care that much about the outcome; I care more about my own riding. It’s fun to see the progression and to be part of it and maybe now I’m in a different role than when I started. Now I’m actually one of the older—or the oldest—that’s still competing, and I enjoy that. I like giving advice and taking the younger riders under my wing because you and the other girls did that for me.

That’s a really special thing that has been passed on through women in snowboarding. It was passed to me through Leanne [Pelosi] and Janna [Meyen] and Kimmy [Fasani] and all these women that were so supportive when I was young. It’s special that you’re doing it as well because it’s going to carry on into the next generation of girls. It’s more important now that it has become more team-focused and sport-like.

That’s also the thing with the Future Queens Session that I’m doing [in Flachauwinkl, Austria]—it’s so cool to get young girls together from different nations with no coaches around to have fun together. Those friendships hold through their snowboard careers. It makes me so happy to watch them supporting each other after spending a week together just shredding.

Building on Future Queens, you’ve had two young girls, Noelle Jamnig and Hanna Karrer, with you at the Hintertux opening. Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with them?

For a long time in Austria, we didn’t have young girls coming up. Even before me, there were never Austrian contest riders. I want to help them, and I know they are looking up to me. They actually have a picture with me from when they were 8 or 9 years old. It’s an honor for me to help them.

This is a little away, but Grilo [Marko Grilc, who died in a 2021 snowboarding accident], he always stayed relevant because he helped the younger generation. He’s my role model because even though he was already mid-30s, he would shred with the young kids and hype them up. He helped me and Clemens when we were younger and if I can pass on some passion or advice to the younger generation, I want to do that.

Speaking of people helping you, Clemens has been by your side for a very long time. Tell me about your relationship with him and how big of a role he plays for you—not just in your snowboarding, but in your personal life as well.

I’ve known him since I started snowboarding—at first as really good friends that pushed each other and supported each other and later on a personal level with starting to date him. We’ve been through a lot together, through my entire career. It’s always him filming it—put the sound up on my triple, there’s someone screaming in the background, that’s Clemens doing so from his heart, so excited and proud of me. That video is pretty much our relationship. We care and support each other as much as we can. A lot of my success comes with him because I probably wouldn’t have had all these accomplishments in contests or new tricks if I didn’t have people behind me that I trust and that I love.

You guys recently had the world premiere for Schnitzel Time: An Austrian Dream, which Clemens directed, filmed, edited and rode in. How was it filming for that project?

It was very fun. We had this weird idea that we have a lot of good snowboarders in Austria, so why wouldn’t we do a movie together? It was Werni Stock, Gigi Ruf, Sani Alibabic—who I work with closely—Clemens, Adi [Adrian Krainer] and Tom [Tramnitz]. It was an honor to film with them. I was nervous. I didn’t plan on filming a street part—I don’t know how that happened. The Austrian winter was tough. I wanted to film powder, but we didn’t get a lot of snow. Clemens was the mastermind behind the movie and put so much work and love into it, so really was a project from his heart. We didn’t have sponsors in the beginning, so we just wanted to try and see what happens. I’m pretty happy with the outcome. I think the biggest thing with the movie is that other people get excited for snowboarding, and I hope we reached that.

Remember when I said we all love the Isenseven movies? There’re no more movies like that anymore with funny intros, so we wanted to bring that back. It’s kind of a throwback.

Beyond Medals does that too, and I appreciate the new age projects that pay homage to what was once so big in snowboarding. With filming you don’t get the same instant gratification that you do with contest riding and the big rush of winning and standing on the podium. Do you feel the same level of motivation or is it different than how you approach contest riding?

That’s a hard question because I would need to have a full season of just filming. Now I’m very rushed when I film. I have these two, three-week windows in between comps where I go filming instead of taking a break or training. It’s so hard nowadays with the schedule and how high the level of contests is. To take one winter to not compete and just film is still on my list. I think I would enjoy the filming part more because I wouldn’t feel so rushed.

The only thing that I don’t enjoy, and it’s not just walking, Spencer, it’s not just hiking and working and building. It’s that I don’t snowboard as much. I love snowboarding so much and I’m so impatient. I can’t even wait for a cameraman to turn on his camera sometimes because I just want to ride, ride, ride, ride, ride. If you know me, you know I’m obsessed. With filming it’s crazy to me how little you get to ride. If you build a backcountry jump, you build it for one day and then you have five tries. When I have a park day, I hit the jump like 30 times in one day. When you compare 60 jumps in the park to 5 jumps in the backcountry where I probably fall four of the five times realistically [laughs]…. So filming is very hard but I’m so happy I tried it. I’m excited for the challenge too. I don’t know about my street career continuing, but we’ll see, never say never. I’m more excited to get more experience in the backcountry.

I think so. With my progression in the park, I’m getting older, and the tricks are getting crazier, but in the backcountry, I feel like there’s so much to learn and explore and do. It is a very humbling experience to be in the backcountry.

I would take better care of my body. I got away with it, but I was lucky; there were moments that could have ruined my career. I really didn’t care at all. I rode through so many injuries.

When we give people titles like “most progressive,” “first ever” or “best of the world,” I wonder how these people define themselves. When you look back on your career years from now, how do you hope to be remembered?

I don’t think it’s much about what I won. It’s more about being an inspiration and opening the path for the next generation. I hope to be remembered in that way, as someone who could inspire a lot of young girls. Titles are just titles.

The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 21.4

FOOT ON THE GASSER

“Did you book your flight yet?” Anna Gasser asks over the phone. It’s late September.

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