'I BELIEVE IN ACTION OVER TALK SO LET’S STOP TALKING AND GO OUT AND SHOW THE WORLD WHAT WE CAN DO.’ It seems bizarre these days, with women like Jess, last month’s cover girl Enni Rukajärvi, Anne-Flore Marxer, Kimmy Fasani, our own Aimee Fuller we could go on, that the issue of gender should still come up in snowboarding. But it does, and it’s getting quite dull. Jess is happy to wade in which is refreshing and may be a reason why people see her as ballsy and outspoken – she simply hasn’t got time to waste being something she’s not. ‘I can remember way back when I was young, thinking that something wasn’t right, that girls and boys shouldn’t be treated so differently and should be given the same chances to succeed in whatever they choose,’ she muses. ‘I think my participation in sports from early on helped with that. And my best friend was a boy and we grew up together exploring the outdoors, building forts, fishing and camping. He never treated me like I was any different and his mum acted as though it was normal so I guess I was lucky there. ‘The riding will always be my bottom line. Certain people will always look for something to talk shit on – it detracts from their own shortcomings. Now that I have a voice, I feel like my riding can speak for itself but it took me a long time to get there. Before I could scream and yell all I wanted but no one was listening.’ coolermag.com
Some of those screams and yells are inevitably part of her riding style, a style which sees her charging hard in exactly the direction people don’t expect. ‘For me, snowboarding is about what I want to do, not what someone else thinks I should do. If people expect me to go big, I’ll just do butter tricks on the ground until they send me home. I don’t want to do what everyone else does. I want to do something different.’ And the slams that she’s famous for? ‘The pain thing isn’t even an issue for me. When I fall and it’s physically painful … well I kind of expect that out of any day of riding. But the issue is when I get injured and snowboarding is taken away from me. It sounds cheesy but that’s what really hurts; not being able to do what I love. I believe I already have injuries I will feel the repercussions from later in life but I have a chance right now to do something most people will never get and I’m not going to waste it on being too careful because I’m scared I’ll fuck up my face.’ But getting injured did make her change her habits slightly. Now she trains. Pretty hard by all accounts in order to minimise the possibility of getting injured and to recover quicker if she does. ‘And I also started training because I wanted to take my riding to the next level and that shit takes physical power. I wanted to get as strong as a guy my size, or COOLER 57