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Highlights of Women’s Snowboarding 2018/2019

This is what women's snowboarding accomplished in the past year

Above: Elena Graglia flying high. Photo: Jeep Eddy, @jeepeddy. Source: Instagram.

8th of March – The day of the year when we women can celebrate our awesomeness a bit more than usual. The first acknowledgement of Women’s Day being celebrated (history lesson time) goes all the way back to February 28th 1909, New York, where it was organised by the Socialist Party of America. However, the reason why we are celebrating it on the 8th of March can be traced back to 1917 when female textile workers in the Soviet Union began a demonstration that covered the city now known as St Petersburg – marking the beginning of the February revolution. Together with the October Revolution later that year, these added up to make one Russian Revolution (which you might have heard of). Anyway, safe to say girls can be pretty damn revolutionary when we want to be.

“Today is about celebrating all the awesome women around the globe”

The International Women’s Day goes back more than one hundred years, and still gender equality isn’t quite there yet. Being a woman in such a male dominated industry has its ups and downs, but as today is about celebrating all the awesome women around the globe we’ll focus on the ups, and the very best that female snowboarding has to offer.

Female snowboarding is evolving at a lightning quick pace and it’s hard to narrow down the highlights of what all the lovely ladies within snowboarding have accomplished within the past year. We did however try our best to narrow it down, and have listed some of the highlights.

Chloe Kim on top of the Olympic podium. Photo: Sam Mellish

First up, Chloe Kim, the wonder-child of snowboarding. Last year, at age 17, she became the youngest woman to ever land two 1080-degree spins in a row at the Olympics. If that wasn’t impressive enough, she also became the youngest woman to win gold in Olympic Halfpipe history (back when we were 17 it was all about drinking cheap wine in our mate’s basement and getting low to Flo Rida). With Kelly Clark as her mentor, who herself did a great deal for taking women’s snowboarding to a whole new level, we can fully expect Chloe to push it even further in the year ahead.

“This Danish lady can stomp nearly anything to everything, whether it is riding switch or regular”

Second, we have Maria Thomsen, who is the first woman to ever be featured in the X Games Real Snow competition. Maria is part of the infamous Too Hard crew, who are known to send it all over Whistler and beyond. This Danish lady can stomp nearly anything and everything, whether it is riding switch or regular. Also she is a mum, and while there’s no doubt that we all love our own mothers very dearly – having a mum who rides rails in between your lunch and dinner must surely be the definition of badass.  Running off to breast feed your baby in between park laps is not something everyone does so count that up as another reason Maria has nothing but our upmost respect. Maria will continue playing a big part in pushing ladies around the world to keep trying new things, especially when it comes to street riding. We could all do with a bit more of that Danish “Hygge” spirit in our lives.

Thirdly, Maddie Mastro, the winner of this years women’s halfpipe in the 37th Burton US Open. It’s only been a week since Maddie made history by being the first woman ever to stomp a double crippler in competition. Maddie is just 19 years old, and is only now beginning to make her mark in professional snowboarding. Safe to say we will see much more of this girl moving forwards.

Fourth, The Uninvited – an all girls snowboard movie that’s 28 minutes and 26 seconds of pure radness. Seriously, every single soul on this planet should watch this – the level of snowboarding here is just on a whole other level. It’s produced, directed and funded by none other than Jess Kimura herself, who rips it up with her own part in the movie.

“The Uninvited makes you want to spend your summers riding rails in snowdomes, drink boxed wine and just just generally being high on life”

The Uninvited follows Maria Thomsen, Miyon Yamaguchi, Kennedi Deck, Taylor Elliott, Darrah Reid, Alexa McCarty, Ylfa Runars, Karin Onozaki, Ivika Jurgenson, Laura Munro, Melissa Riitano, Anniina Perhovaara, and Madison Blackley, riding the streets of various cities. It’s good to have rad ladies like these to remind the rest of us that nothing is impossible. The Uninvited makes you want to spend your summers riding rails in snowdomes, drinking boxed wine and just generally being high on life. We’re also stoked to hear that brands like Capita, Union and The North Face were on board for an all girls snowboard movie, and hope they’ll keep on supporting us ladies in future projects.

Maria Thomsen in The Uninvited. Photo: @browniephoto, @the__uninvited

Fifth, and a little closer to home, we’re pretty stoked on the fact that Whitelines now has not one but two women on the editorial team. This is a first in the history of the magazine, and we can’t wait to put some focus in 2019 on all the rad girls out there who are part of the snowboarding industry.

Last but definitely not least, goes without saying Anna Gasser deserves a spot here with being the first woman to ever stomp a cab triple cork, which is why she deserves a spot in our 10 most badass female snowboarders from past and present.

Snowboarding is awesome, and so are girls. Happy International Women’s Day Y’all!

If you want to get involved with International Women’s Day 2019, have a look at our essential guide to snowboard events for women!

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