With a mere 19 years on this planet, Steamboat Springs local Arielle Gold is the new shooting star in the female halfpipe snowboarding world.

Arielle competes since she was 8 (yep, eight). Gold first appeared on the snowboarding radar in 2010, when she won the Burton US Open Junior Jam halfpipe contest. In 2011 she got second at the USASA National Championships. Furthermore in the 2011/2012 season, she sacked silver medals in both slopestyle and halfpipe at the Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.

However, her big breakthrough came definitely in the 2012/2013 season. First she unexpectedly won the bronze medal at her first ever X Games in Aspen where she was originally cast as just an alternate and after that she even stepped it up and landed her first 6Star victory at the Burton Europen in Laax, Switzerland. Now, what’s a 16 year old girl doing when she already has X Games bronze and a 6Star win under her belt? Exactly. She finishes the season with another bronze medal at the X Games Tignes and a third place at the Burton US Open.

Classic, Mrs. Gold, classic.

Arielle Gold at the Burton European Open 2013 – Photo : Laemmerhirt