More Pipe, Please: Slopestyle slain, Anderson eyes SuperPipe
What’s next when you’ve done it all, won it all? Where do you go from the top?
Such is the case with Jamie Anderson, a 19-year-old ripper from South Lake Tahoe who has already racked up dozens of victories and two overall championships in her young snowboarding career. She’s a two-time Winter X Games Slopestyle gold medalist (2007, 2008), the 2007/08 TTR overall winner and the 2009 Burton Global Open Series winner. She was 2009’s Female Rider of the Year for Transworld and Snowboarder Mags, and she opened the 2009/10 season with wins at the Billabong BroDown, Burton New Zealand Open and Breckenridge Winter Dew Tour slopestyle events.
But Anderson isn’t just about being on her board: She’s also working on her second outerwear line with Billabong, due out fall 2010, after the successful first iteration called “Peace, Love and Bling.”
So what else is left? “I’m trying to ride a lot more pipe,” says Anderson, who is always down to compete. And she isn’t necessarily riding pipe for the glory, either “It’s a lot of fun. I’m mostly trying to learn how to ride better. I really like it, but it’s hard. I really want to go to the Olympics, but it’s not the end of the world for me if I don’t.”
Anderson grew up riding a bit of everything with several of her six siblings. Older sis Joanie Anderson is a two-time Winter X Snowboarder X medalist, and the pair each scored WX gold in 2007-on the same day. They’re the only sisters to have each captured Winter X gold and the only siblings to do so at the same Winter X Games.
Like Joanie, Jamie has competed in top-level boardercross-she even notched three top-10 Winter X Snowboarder X finishes from 2004 to 2006. In addition, Jamie has appeared in a pair of WX SuperPipe events. She placed eighth in halfpipe at the November 2009 Burton New Zealand Open, proving she still has pipe chops. Despite the all-around skill, slopestyle became her focus, however subconsciously, and that’s going to change.
“The last few years I really liked slopestyle and only did pipe every once in a while,” Anderson says. “Last winter I did well in the New Zealand Open and thought maybe I could get good at it if I really try.”
Anderson spent weeks in late November and early December ’09 riding pipe almost exclusively; she’s been a fixture in the Breckenridge and Copper Mountain halfpipes. Anderson says she’s relearned something she’s always known about pipe riding: It helps her on the kickers and rails.
“There’s going to be a little bit of multitasking this season, but it’s good for me,” she says. “The more I ride pipe, the more I notice the little things that translate when I go over to slopestyle. It’s awesome.”
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