“When Anna returned home from the 2022 Olympic Games in China, the first thing she told me was that she would love to hit a powder jump since she had only been riding man-made snow for almost a month. That’s what we did in Arlberg, Austria, the very next day. She nailed this frontside 360 first try.” Photo: Sani Alibabic 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 [laugh-ing]. 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 1 together though. She didn’t want to learn to snowboard? 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. Were your parents not into skiing? 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 competi-tions 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. 1 Via ferrata is Italian for “iron path” and refers to a climbing route that includes steel fixtures like cables, rungs and railings, often found in the Alps. Why were you so obsessed with snowboarding from the start? 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 perfec-tionism of gymnastics. Snowboarding was not about perfection-ism. 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 isn’t really a right way to do anything in snowboarding. 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. Did gymnastics help your snowboarding? 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. ANNA GASSER 071
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 21.4: Page 71
