Maddie Bowman

Olympic gold medalist Maddison Michelle "Maddie" Bowman was born in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., on Jan. 10, 1994, to parents who were both skiers - her father was on the professional racing circuit, and her mother was a coach. As a result, her parents put her on skis on her second birthday, taking her to a small slope behind the lodge at the Sierra-at-Tahoe resort. After going through every ski racing program the facility had to offer, Bowman decided to forego that discipline after falling in love with freeskiing and focusing on it. That proved to be a good decision because she went on to excel in that aspect of the sport. She entered her first national competition in the women's halfpipe at the 2009 national championships at Squaw Valley in her home state, finishing in sixth place. She made it onto the podium a year later, finishing third at the 2010 event. Her breakout season happened in 2012, and she finished in the top three at nearly every major event, including earning a victory at the Dew Tour stop in Killington, Vt. She won her first X Games medal in 2012, finishing second in the superpipe competition and followed that up with a gold in the event the following year. After earning podium finishes at four of five Olympic qualifying events - including two wins - Bowman punched her ticket to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, where she won the first Olympic gold in women's halfpipe skiing. Suffering a torn ACL and microfracture to her right knee in February 2015 didn't deter Bowman, who rehabbed the injuries and came back strong in 2016. She won her fourth-consecutive X Games gold that year when she performed the first switch 900 ever thrown by a female skier in competition. She also won the Park City, Utah, stop of the U.S. Grand Prix and finished atop the AFP halfpipe rankings that year. Bowman won a silver medal at the 2017 World Cup and took home a superpipe bronze at that year's X Games. She earned another spot on the Olympic team for 2018, competing in PyeongChang, South Korea.