Go ahead and call it a comeback.
Iouri "I-Pod" Podladtchikov, the 2014 Olympic gold medalist who beat out Shaun White in halfpipe, will return to competitive snowboarding in an effort to make the 2026 Olympic Games in Italy.
I-Pod will make his return to competition this weekend at the Laax Open in Switzerland. It will be his first time competing at Laax since January 2020.
“I’ve been playing with the idea for a long time,” Podladtchikov said to Luzerner Zuitung. “At the beginning it was just a small idea. Slowly it rolled up like a snowball, getting bigger and bigger.”
Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
Affectionately known as I-Pod, the Swiss-Russian competed for Russia at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, where he finished in 37th. He just missed the podium with a fourth place finish at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and then won gold in 2014. He landed a cab double cork 1440, also known as the YOLO flip, to take gold and beat out the rest of the field, including White.
He is the first rider to execute the trick in a halfpipe competition. It was a win that shocked the competitive snowboarding world, and won the crowd over, after he told the crowd he invented it to impress a girl. “Beating Shaun here doesn’t mean I’m going to dominate for the next two years,” he said after his gold medal.
Podladtchikov has three FIS podium finishes in his life, two in World Cup events, and a first place finish at the Saas Fee Europa Cup in 2007. He also had four podium finishes at Swatch TTR World Snowboard Tour events in five years, and a fourth place finish at the Burton European Open.
a little bruised 😅 pic.twitter.com/4PHbz28N8f
— Iouri Podladtchikov (@iouriamazing) January 30, 2018
I-Pod returns to the competitive circuit after injuries cut his career short.
When he was 31, he hung up his boots after suffering from a traumatic brain injury, then another concussion and a broken nose, and then a ruptured Achilles tendon.
He Tweeted a photo of himself in a hospital gown the night of the 2018 X Games crash that broke his nose, showing that he was “a little bruised” but otherwise OK.
Since then, he has been coaching other riders, including Indonesian snowboarder Zazi Landman. He has studied art history, trained in ballet, and began a photography career after his first departure from competitive snowboarding.
He began studying at the International Center of Photography in New York in 2019, and the enrolled in a BFA program at Zurich University of the Arts.
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