The Teen Snowboarder Hoping to Break Out in Beijing

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A version of this piece appears in the February 2021 issue of SI.

Two days before his 18th birthday, Dusty Henricksen provided himself with an additional reason for celebration. On Jan. 31, 2021, he won the men’s snowboard slopestyle final at the X Games, becoming the first U.S. rider to win the event since Shaun White in 2009. “I was super shocked,” says Henricksen, whose performance reinforces his status as a medal threat at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing. “It was weird because the contest went so fast, and no one really got to watch each other’s runs until afterward. And so when I was handed the medal I was just so surprised. It was crazy.”

The Mammoth Lakes, Calif., native has been snowboarding since he was two. (His father, Marko, was a snowboard supervisor at Mammoth Mountain.) Dusty Henricksen is one of the sport’s budding stars, but he hasn’t always focused on the competitive aspect: “At the beginning, I was just always having a blast, messing around with all my friends on the mountain. It’s such a fun thing to do with your homies, instead of sitting inside.”

Henricksen spends a lot of time on the mountain, so it’s a good thing he’s comfortable in those environs. “It’s just nice up there,” he says. “It just feels like heaven.”

For Henricksen, nothing compares to “when you’re riding away at the bottom of your run, just having the feeling of accomplishment that you did something exactly how you wanted. It’s just a cool, perfect feeling when it all works out.”

I would definitely love to make it to the Olympics,” says Henricksen, the silver medalist in slopestyle at the 2020 U.S. Open. “That’s goal No. 1—just to try and make it there would be amazing. But who knows what’s going to happen? It’d be a super cool personal accomplishment to make it there.”

Henricksen, who turns 19 on Feb. 2, accomplished that top goal as he was named to the U.S. Olympic team this month. For more coverage of the 2022 Beijing Games, visit SI.com/olympics and sign up for our free daily Olympics newsletter at SI.com/newsletters.