The cold at Buttermilk had thinned the crowd's patience, but Anna Gasser answered it with a single jump. On Thursday, 23 January, in the opening night of X Games Aspen 2025, the Austrian rode into the women's snowboard big air final and landed a switch triple cork 1260 — three inversions and three and a half rotations, flown across more than seventy feet in single-digit temperatures. It scored 93.66. It was enough for gold, and for history: her record big air gold and her fifth X Games gold overall, the most by any woman in the discipline.
The final was decided at the top. Gasser opened conservatively, laying down a switch truckdriver cab 900 to secure her place, then reached for the harder trick when it mattered. Reira Iwabuchi of Japan pressed her hardest, stomping a frontside double tail-grab 1440 for 93.00 and silver. New Zealand's Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, back from a broken ankle, took bronze with a backside triple cork 1440 at 92.66. The margins were slim. Each woman on the podium spun at least three and a half times. Gasser's landing, clean and quiet, held the difference.
She did not treat the win as inevitable. "I wasn't sure if I had it in me anymore to get another gold medal at X Games, just because I'm one of the older competitors now," she told reporters afterward, at thirty-three the eldest rider in the field. She spoke of a younger generation pushing the sport forward, and of her disbelief at still standing on the top step.
A career built on firsts
The result sits inside a decade of them. Gasser was among the first women to bring double corks into contest riding, and the first to land a cab double cork 1260, and the first to land a triple. She won the inaugural Olympic women's big air title at PyeongChang 2018, then defended it at Beijing 2022 to become the only woman with two Olympic big air golds. Earlier this month she claimed her tenth big air World Cup at home in Kreischberg, landing the first triple cork by a woman in competition and becoming the oldest winner in FIS Park & Pipe World Cup history.
Aspen returned her to the top of a big air podium for the first time since 2020. The trick that carried her there had been landed only a handful of times before the contest began. By the end of the night she had it under control, and the record was hers alone.
She has spent her career teaching the sport what women can do. On a freezing night in Aspen, she reminded it once more.
