British snowboarder Katie Ormerod is a Winter X Games medallist, a World Cup victor and No. 1, and a World Junior Championships medal-winner. Ormerod is a freestyle snowboarder, best known for her performances in the big air and the slopestyle. She is the first female snowboarder to have landed a double cork 1080, an achievement she completed when she was 16 years old.
Ormerod began snowboarding at the age of five, and quickly became a regular face at her local ski and snowboard centre. While growing up, she balanced her time on the board with gymnastics training, which she credits as helping her technique today. In 2013, aged just 15, Ormerod debuted at the World Cup, and shortly afterwards appeared at the World Championships where she finished in the Top 10 of the slopestyle event. The following year, she competed at the World Junior Championships in Chiesa in Valmalenco, where she claimed her first international silverware in the form of a Junior Worlds slopestyle bronze medal.
Ormerod has to date recorded 11 podiums at the World Cup, and took her first victory on the circuit at Moscow in 2017. She has ranked as high as No. 1 in the slopestyle, No. 2 in the big air, and No. 2 in the overall park & pipe, and is rarely far from the top of the tournament’s standings. Ormerod qualified for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, where she was widely regarded as a promising medal hopeful, but had to withdraw from the competition due to injury. With many high profile victories already under her belt, hopes are high that great things are in store in the years ahead.