Tess Coady

Junior snowboarder Tess Coady has had her breakthrough season in the 2016-17 winter.

Having only started snowboarding at the age of nine, Coady’s background has certainly helped her impressive progress.

She was training as a high performance gymnast and also competed at state level in long jump before her family spent a week in Mt Buller where she instantly fell in love with snowboarding.

She competed in Interschools in her first year, igniting her competitive spirit by placing fourth in the Snowboard Cross event and continuing to train with Mt Buller’s Transition Snowboarding Camp.

It was a family trip to Breckenridge in USA when she was 12 that opened her eyes to the possibilities of the sport, and she hasn’t looked back.

Four years later, at the age of 16, she took the scene by storm.

With only one World Cup start under her belt, she was invited to represent her home country at the world championships in Sierra Nevada where she placed 11th and 21st in the slopestyle and big air event, respectively - a competition which saw the best in the world participating.

Only a few weeks later, the St. Kilda resident locked in her career's first slopestyle World Cup final in Spindleruv Mlyn placing sixth, just before stepping up her game at the Czech venue a few days later by claiming slopestyle and big air Gold at her first ever junior world championships.

She therefore became the first Australian snowboarder ever to win a junior world championship in any ski or snowboard discipline and the fifth Australian snowsports athlete to be crowned a world champion in her class.