Jenny Jones - A Star in Sochi

So the Winter Olympics have returned. Normally they come, then they go and we’re just grateful to take home any sort of medal. Last time out in Vancouver we had to wait eight days for Amy Williams to surge home with a gold medal in the skeleton. Our only medal as it turned out. This time though, something is different.

This time we’ve travelled to a Winter Olympics with a number of genuine title contenders. Ranging from curling to speed skating to the skeleton, we have a number of competitors at the top of their sport. Yet, prior to the games, few could have predicted that Jenny Jones would win a bronze medal in the Women’s Snowboard Slopestyle.

After watching her male compatriots Jamie Nicholls and Billy Morgan both make it to the final of the men’s competition, finishing 6^th and 10^th in the process, it was time for Jones to make her own mark. She took the lead after a second run of 87.25 but then had to wait anxiously as ten athletes aimed to topple her.

She slipped down to second, Finland’s Enni Rukajarvi scoring 92.50. Then she was beaten again, American Jamie Anderson scoring 95.25 to push her into bronze. With two competitors still to race it was out of her hands. The first competitor came and crashed out. One left. It was nail-biting stuff and probably wise that Jenny kept her gloves on. Anna Gasser, the last competitor, then also crashed out. It was a long and tense wait, but Jones had done it! She had won Britain’s first medal in Sochi and the first British medal ever won on snow at the Winter Olympics.

But who is Jenny Jones? Well Jenny was born and raised in Bristol, and didn’t get into snow sports until she was 17 when she undertook lessons at the dry ski slope in Churchill, Somerset. Her passion for snowboarding stemmed from a job working as a chalet maid in France the following year. Throughout her childhood she had actively engaged in both Athletics and Gymnastics so was naturally fit. This natural fitness combined with her raw talent meant that at just 19 she stormed to victory in her first British Snowboard Championship.

After this victory Jones’ knew she wanted to form a permanent career in snowboarding but struggled with funding due to the lack of support for winter sports in Britain. To fund her career Jones has held many part-time jobs including as a fencing instructor and cardboard inspector.  Yet hours of arduously examining cardboard paid dividends as Jones ended 2006 second in the World Snowboard Tour Rankings.

From here she was determined to cement her legacy, regularly competing in the Winter X Games, one of the most prestigious annual events in winter sport. She claimed the gold medal in both 2009 and 2010 and was unlucky not to complete the hat-trick in 2011 where she narrowly lost out to Enni Rukajarvi. A victory close to her heart occurred at the European Winter X Games in 2010 where she claimed a gold medal in Tignes, the town she had worked in as a chalet maid when she was younger.

And now here we are. The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and a bronze medal wrapped gleefully around her neck. A feat made more impressive by the discovery that she considered retiring from the sport a few years ago before it was announced that Slopestyle would make its Olympic debut in Sochi and also that just three months ago she suffered heavy concussion after a huge fall in training.

She may not have won a Gold medal, but she is currently our Golden Girl. So rare is it that we can celebrate and enjoy Winter Olympic success and yet Jenny has delivered it after just two days. It is probably the first and last time we will see her at an Olympic games but she has left a lasting legacy. She will go down in the history books and perhaps more importantly, as Jenny herself said, she’ll be the answer to a few pub quiz questions from now on.