Tess Coady

Speaking with Tess Coady after returning from her longest and most successful season to date. “It was a massive season, but it was so much fun. I couldn’t have been more stoked, it was pretty crazy season for sure.” A season with many great results including winning bronze at the Olympics and getting invited to compete at the X Games, her hard work has been paying off.

It all started for Tess on a family holiday to Mt Buller when she was nine and the whole family tried boarding for the first time. “We were up there for about a week and just fell in love with it. A lot of kids at school had really been raving about it and they helped us out with some gear. We went up and tried it out and fell in love pretty quick and started doing the inter school events, it slowly took off from there.”

Not that slowly though, at 17 Tess was representing Australia at the PyeongChang Olympics in 2018 when she tore her ACL on a practice run in difficult conditions. Having a whole year off snow, rehabbing whilst completing year 12, “I felt like I needed redemption in a lot of different aspects. I definitely wasn’t satisfied with where my snowboarding was at and it gave me a massive opportunity to rethink how I was doing things and start from scratch in a lot of aspects, so it was massively motivating.“

“The Games were amazing”, she tells me from her home in Melbourne about her second Olympic games, but first Olympics competing, “it was massive. Honestly that part for me was a massive achievement in itself. A lot of people wouldn’t really understand what that means to be able to get over something like that and get that kind of redemption. But yeah, it was massive. It was super sweet to finally be able to compete.”

And she certainly has redeemed herself with a number of podiums this year including bronze in slopestyle at Beijing. “It’s still so crazy, it was so cool though. The whole experience of the games was incredible. Just the whole three weeks for me was so much fun. I just had such a good time. I thought the energy was so great, everyone was just having a really great time and I think that showed in a lot of the results. It was just an absolute blast for me and I just feel so lucky to have walked away with a podium.”

“There’s a lot of pressure around the Olympics and it’s pretty incredible how many people tune in to watch it and then how quickly it drops away afterwards. It’s a massive weight off the shoulders for everyone and at the end part of the season everyone was really just relaxing. It was really fun to hit a few really fun chill events afterwards, have a good time and do some fun tricks and some different riding that’s not contest riding.

Getting an invite to the X Games this year “was really cool but it was definitely stressful. There was a lot of covid going around at that point in the slopestyle scene and the Games were right after it, but it was a really, really cool experience. I was so so lucky to go and get to do that. X Games is a massive Pinnacle event for us.”

Looking forward to a good break before winter, Tess loves surfing, camping and is planning on getting a bunch of downtime and after 8 months on the road, catching up on life admin. “I’ll be doing plenty of boarding this season. I’m really looking forward to getting back into it and riding a bunch this season.  With the new air bag facility in Jindabyne, life on the road won’t be as long next season. Previously the team would go overseas to train on an air bag. “It’s going to be pretty game changing, we’re super lucky that they built it for us for sure. I’ll probably ride it a little bit during the season, but try and make the most of being on snow because it’s always a lot nicer just to be riding snow.”

“It was a really great season and I feel, super, super lucky and incredibly fortunate still being able to travel the past the past few years because it was a pretty crazy time. I just had an absolute blast.”­­­­