Jamie Anderson, the icon of slopestyle snowboarding, had no inspiration to return to competition after having her first daughter, Misty, in March 2023.
But after having her second daughter, Nova, this past April, Anderson felt the itch again.
So you find her now in New Zealand, training on snow for the first time since becoming a mom of two, in order to see if she can make it to the 2026 Milan Cortina Games.
“We, collectively as a family, felt if not now, when?” she said. “And I’m not getting any younger. I still feel healthy and strong, and I have a good chance of making the Olympic team, and also doing very well.”
Anderson, a 34-year-old native of South Lake Tahoe, took gold in the first two Olympics to include slopestyle in 2014 and 2018, plus earned silver in the debut of big air in 2018.
Her most recent competition in either discipline was the 2022 Olympics, where she placed ninth and 15th.
“Number one is being a good mother and trying to be with my kids as much as possible,” she said of her comeback. “In doing this, it’s kind of just spreading the love and the stoke of passion and persevering because it is going to be some challenges. It’s going to be hard for me to get my fitness back, get time on snow, balance it with nursing or pumping or just nurturing the kids. So it’s going to be a fun couple months ahead. The timeline is a little sooner than I would have liked, but what can you do? You’ve got to kind of do what you can with what’s in front of you.”
If all goes well in New Zealand, and at a fall training camp in Europe, then Anderson eyes two Olympic slopestyle qualifiers in January, and possibly an Olympic big air qualifier in December.
Up to three U.S. women can qualify for the Milan Cortina Games through their best top-10 result from any of those three events. It’s possible that a fourth spot is decided via discretionary selection.
Anderson said she doesn’t have a lot of expectations for the season. She is taking the rest of her competitive career on a year-by-year basis.
“My first daughter is 2 1/2, almost, and she is so fun,” Anderson said. “I want to see her watching mom go do what I love and lead by example of following your heart. When you feel inspired, go with it.”
Moms have made U.S. Winter Olympic teams before, and won medals, such as bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor, cross-country skier Kikkan Randall, skeleton slider Noelle Pikus-Pace and hockey player Jenny Potter in the last four Games.
Anderson, the fifth of eight children herself, is grateful for the support of her family.
Partner Tyler Nicholson, a 2018 Olympic snowboarder for Canada, also serves as her coach. Corrie, her oldest sibling, is helping nanny for the September stay in the Southern Hemisphere.
“New Zealand is kind of like the first testing the waters,” Anderson said. “If it’s just not feeling good in my heart, I’m happy to play it out. I’m not, like, dead on (that) this has to happen. I’m very like how I’ve always been. I go with the flow. I trust my intuition and kind of just play it by ear.”
Anderson, a rider on the sport’s highest level since age 13, kept an eye on the world’s best since the last Olympics.
Such as New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott (reigning Olympic, World and X Games slopestyle champion), Britain’s Mia Brookes (2023 World slopestyle champion at age 16), Japan’s Kokomo Murase (2025 World champion in big air) and Austrian Anna Gasser, a two-time Olympic big air gold medalist who plans to make Milan Cortina her fourth and final Games.
This past January, Sadowski-Synnott became the first woman to land a triple cork 1440 in slopestyle competition, according to X Games commentators.
“I’m not really expecting to go learn that,” Anderson said, “but I’m feeling inspired to go try to get my flow and style and some of the tricks I was doing pre-motherhood back on the table.”
