Usually baseballs fly through the air at Boston’s Fenway Park. But last February, it was skiers and snowboarders taking to the skies during the Polartec Big Air at Fenway competition. For the event, engineers built a 140-foot-tall ramp. Male and female athletes used it to launch high into the air and perform complicated tricks before landing. “The amount of adrenaline pumping through you is so invigorating,” says snowboarder Jenna Blasman, who won silver for the women’s event
This competition was a welcome chance for female snowboarders and skiers to get more practice in big air competitions. Although the Winter X Games had big air snowboarding for both men and women in 1997, big air turned male-only after 2002. That left female snowboarders out in the cold. But women’s big air competitions returned to the X Games Oslo in Norway last winter.
Boarders like Blasman are hopeful there will be even more women’s big air events this year. That will give them opportunities to hone their skills—just in time for the debut of men’s and women’s big air events in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.