USA snowboarder exits event after ugly fall: What it means for Olympics

ASPEN, CO — United States women’s slopestyle snowboarder Jamie Anderson exited the Aspen Grand Prix after a brutal-looking spill on the first rail during Saturday’s finals.Anderson landed on her back and did not take her second run. The 35-year-old’s chances of qualifying for the 2026 Milan Olympics are not necessarily endangered — the team will hold a spot open for her.But Anderson must now recover quickly and compete in Laax, Switzerland next week to earn enough qualifying points. It helps that Anderson had a discretionary world ranking due to injury, which came as a result of her two pregnancies since the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Her eighth-place finish in Aspen, since she made the finals, is another benefit to her situation.Anderson is a two-time gold-medal winner in slopestyle (2014, 2018) and briefly retired following the last Winter Games. She gave birth to two children in the years since and announced in the fall she was coming back in an effort to compete in Italy.This is certainly not the first setback for Anderson during that training process. During her first training camp in New Zealand, she suffered a broken wrist.In an Instagram post from Aspen on Thursday, Anderson also revealed that her bag was lost and that she began experiencing mastitis following a clogged duct.“It’s been a rough week,” she wrote. “But (I’m) so thankful I somehow managed to put a run together (Thursday) for qualifiers.”