Kelly
Sildaru
Estonia
·
Freeskiing
Date of birth | 17 February 2002 |
|---|---|
Place of birth | Tallinn, Estonia |
Age | 24 |
Nationality | Estonia |
Career start | 2015 |
Disciplines | Freeskiing Big Air / Freeskiing Halfpipe / Freeskiing Slopestyle |
Kelly Sildaru quickly made a name for herself as a rising freeski star. Her videos on YouTube – such as the short film, Wanted – amassed a large fan base and helped her to break out onto the international circuit.
Born and raised in Estonia, Kelly quickly became fixated on skiing. But not only is the ski season in Estonia extremely short but there also isn’t much of a scene for it there. Such things weren’t going to stop her from accomplishing her dreams, though. Her sheer love for the sport, combined with an astounding natural ability to effortlessly pull off tricks that some pros wouldn’t dare attempt, led her parents to travel the world looking for new and challenging experiences for their daughter.
One of Kelly’s greatest early accomplishments came when she was just 10 years old at the 2012 Mayrhofen Freeski Open in Austria, where she wowed judges and fellow athletes alike as she landed an astonishing switch 900 that led her to win the competition – a trick that she hadn’t attempted prior to that day.
In the 2016 Winter X Games, Kelly became the youngest-ever gold medallist when she landed the slopestyle title, and she was also the youngest to have won two X Games golds.
In 2017 Kelly became the first woman ever to land a Switch 1260° Mute and a 1440° during a competition at the Winter X Games in Norway, and it's fair to say she's continued to go from strength to strength ever since. She followed up with another Aspen slopestyle gold and Big Air silver that year before suffering an ACL knee tear at a New Zealand training camp that required surgery.
Kelly made her comeback from injury in 2018 where she won two FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup events and took first at Dew Tour. A year later Kelly put down the first switch 1080 ever in competition by a female rider and took gold at the 2019 FIS World Championships.
Going into the 2020 X Games Superpipe, Kelly already had seven X Games medals, including three golds in Slopestyle. Runs two and three, both clean and full of variation, were enough to move her back into first each time, but it was her hugely technical fourth run, which featured three different 900s, that sealed the deal.
In 2021, Kelly turned the tables in the women's Ski Streetstyle final at Copper Mountain to claim the top step of the podium. That's just one of five times she stood atop the podium in the 2021 ski season.
The year 2022 will be one to remember for Kelly Sildaru, as she became the first Estonian freestyle skier to win a Winter Games medal. She took home the bronze medal for women's freeski slopestyle in Beijing, making sporting history.