One of the best women in contest snowboarding history is almost ready to call it quits.
Anna Gasser will retire after the completion of the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Games. Olympics.com writer Ockert de Villiers broke the news on Sunday, March 23, 2026.
"Part of my motivation is that the Olympics are so close to my home. I live in the south of Austria, only half an hour from the Italian border," she said. “I just know it's going to be so nice to celebrate my career there, because I think Milano Cortina 2026 is going to be the last competition I do, and it would be such a perfect ending for me in competitions to celebrate that with my friends and family.”
Gasser said that she's been deciding whether or not she'd be able to make it to the Olympics for the past four years, and said that her age - especially for athletes competing in big air and slopestyle, played a key factor.
The Austrian rider made her debut at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. She finished in tenth place after falling on both of her finals runs. Then at the 2018 Games in PyeongChang, she rode her way to a big air gold. She defended the title and won at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. She'll try to go for the three-peat in Italy next year.
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Gasser also won the 2017 big air gold medal at the World Championships, and a slopestyle gold at the X Games that same year.
Most recently, Gasser found the big air podium in December at China's Secret Garden with a third place finish. She won the big air contest at Kreischberg in her native Austria, and finished in fourth place at the Laax Open a week later. Last week, Gasser finished in fifth place in slopestyle at World Championships in Switzerland.
She rode a switch triple cork cab 1260 to X Games gold in Aspen back on January 23, 2025. It was her first return to a big air podium at X Games since the 2020 Norway contest.
"I just want to show a little bit more of my style and creativity in my tricks and be proud of the snowboarder I am," she told Olympics.com. “Before I was super focussed on results and super focussed on progressing and doing the hardest tricks. Now, I try to get a little more style in my riding and be proud of what I'm doing on my snowboard.”
