On Sunday 9 February 2014, JENNY JONES made history by claiming Britain’s first ever medal on snow in the Winter Olympics. She tells Kath Hudson how it felt
JENNY JONES
didn’t expect to be in this position when I was cleaning toilets as a chalet maid,” Jones told a press conference, after claiming her historic bronze medal in the women’s snowboarding slopestyle
fi nal at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. “Hopefully I’ll feature in a few pub quizzes now,” she quipped. Despite having a job which involves upside down, airborne daredevilry, hav- ing made history and previously being voted number 58 in Loaded maga- zine’s 100 hottest women feature, Jones has previously described her- self as “a pretty average person,” who loves nothing more than surfi ng, G&Ts and going out for a dance. The night before the Olympic fi nal she kicked back by watching Downton Abbey. Refreshingly guileless, with a sharp sense of humour, she is certainly down to earth, but is far from average. Even before getting an Olympic medal. Only an incredibly determined risk
taker could have followed the path Jones has taken. Her career has fea- tured successes and podiums, as well as career-threatening injuries and tough choices, such as whether to leave the snow to get a degree, or work in a doughnut shop to carry on snowboard- ing. Also, her job involves the potential of falling, headfi rst, from a great height. A love of snowboarding, rather than the desire to be a pro-rider, is what has driven her. “I’ve always loved the excite- ment of launching myself off a jump,”
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Jones returned to the Mendip
Snowsport Centre with her medal
she says. “I just love all aspects of snowboarding: free riding, hiking, riding powder through trees. Snowboarding is all about the lifestyle.”
While Jones has now blazed a trail for other riders to follow – as well as almost certainly unlocking further funding from UK Sport for them – she had to beat down the path on her own. “It’s tough in the beginning and you
have to work your butt off,” she says. “I just found my way round getting as much time on the snow as possible. It might be easier now, as the funding is going down through the stages, but I defi nitely had to work my way through; there was no avenue to follow.”
THE EARLY DAYS
Jones caught the bug at the age of 16, thanks to a free half hour lesson with her brothers at her local dry ski slope – the Mendip Snowsport Centre near Bristol. She was already competing at regional level in gymnastics, and these skills soon came in useful. She claims she wasn’t instantly fan- tastic at snowboarding: “It was a bit
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annoying because my brothers picked it up more quickly than I did, but I per- sisted, because I liked the challenge,” she says. “Then I went for a week to Italy, with college, and got hooked. I decided to take a year out, to do a season as a chalet maid. I still haven’t made it to university.” Her fi rst season, in 1999, was in
Tignes, in the French Alps. When she wasn’t chalet maiding, she was on the snow. By the end of the season she had caught the eye of Salomon, who invited her to the British Snowboard Championships in Laax, Switzerland, and became her fi rst sponsor. She won the championships and later went on to win them four more times. After this came a succession of sea-
sons, where she worked in whatever job she could fi nd that would pay her way and give her as much time as possible on the snow. By 2002, her successes had put her on the radar of Oakley and she secured her fi rst full sponsorship. Pentax, Oakley and Nixon followed later, and this sponsorship meant she could snowboard full time.
ISSUE 2 2014 © cybertrek 2014
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