Gasser Becomes First Woman to Defend Big Air Gold

On a cold February evening at Big Air Shougang, Anna Gasser stood at the top of the ramp with the gold already slipping away. She had one jump left. She answered it with a cab double cork 1260, three-and-a-half rotations landed clean, and reclaimed the title she had won four years earlier.

The result made her the only woman to win Olympic big air gold twice, back-to-back champion across PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022.

How the final turned

The pressure did not sit with Gasser through the early rounds. Zoi Sadowski Synnott of New Zealand, who had taken slopestyle gold days earlier, stomped a frontside double cork 1080 for 93.25 points on her first run, then added a backside double cork 1080 to lead the rankings after two rounds. The scoring format counted an athlete's two best jumps, and the Austrian needed her final run to count for everything.

She had prepared this trick for exactly such a moment. The cab double cork 1260 was the jump she had spent years chasing, and she released it when the medal depended on it. The landing held. Gasser of Austria defended her women's snowboard Big Air title with a 1260 performance in the final run at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games at Big Air Shougang.

The podium settled behind her. Zoi Sadowski Synnott of New Zealand and Kokomo Murase of Japan took the silver and bronze, respectively, while China's Rong Ge placed fifth, the best ever finish for a Chinese athlete in the event. It was Gasser's third Winter Olympics, and the one where she had most to defend.

A career measured in firsts

The Beijing jump belonged to a longer line of them. Gasser had won the inaugural women's big air title at PyeongChang 2018, landing her signature cab double cork 1080 on the final jump to become the first Olympic women's big air champion. Before that came a world title at Sierra Nevada in 2017, scored a perfect 100. Behind both sat 2013, when she became the first woman to land a cab double cork 900 on a kicker and opened the era of women's double-cork progression.

The 1260 itself had its own history. In 2019, at Obergurgl in Austria, Gasser became the first woman to land a cab double cork 1260 in a shoot, stomping it on her first try after returning from injury. In Beijing she brought that trick into the one arena where it counted most, and it carried her.

What followed only deepened the record. A second world title arrived in Bakuriani in 2023. In January 2025 she landed the first triple cork by a woman in competition at Kreischberg, then took her record big air gold at X Games Aspen, the most decorated woman in the discipline's history.

Two Games, two golds, one jump that refused to fall. Anna Gasser had said her piece from the top of the ramp.