Discipline: Snowboard Big Air

Olympic Participation: PyeongChang 2018

Born in Manly, Jess grew up wanting to be a professional surfer but a week-long school trip to Perisher in 2005 sowed the seed for a career in snowboarding. She first competed internationally in 2013.

She made her World Cup debut in 2015 in Cardrona, where she placed 7^th.

Basing herself in Jindabyne is the domestic season, she set her sights on Olympic qualification for slopestyle and big air 2016 to 2018 where all World Cup events counted towards Olympic quota spots. During this time, Jess gained valuable Olympic quota allocation list points.

Supported by the OWIA, she still worked two jobs, organised her own travel arrangements and periods of having no coach. She competed in 8 World Cups during this time, learning many lessons along the way, valuable experience, and top 10 performances.

It was a turbulent 18 months leading into the Olympics, enduring both a broken back, broken collar bone and a ruptured ACL.

At 27 years of age, Jess was selected in the 2018 Team in Slopestyle and Big Air, subject to medical clearance.

Her Olympic dream was thrown into jeopardy leading into the Games when she ruptured her ACL during training in Colorado.

Having not received medical clearance to compete in the women's Snowboard Slopestyle, Jess spent every day after arriving in PyeongChang in the gym preparing for Big Air, which was making its debut.

After getting her clearance, she made her Olympic debut she said she got everything that she had hoped for in her, two clean runs.

Jess narrowly missed out on qualifying for the Snowboard Big Air women's finals after placing 13th in the qualification runs.

Speaking on her experience, she said "It was a surreal experience. Definitely wasn't what I planned and so having to deal with a lot of things in the lead up definitely made it challenging. I didn't know if I was actually going to make it so the fact that I was able to just drop into the jump today is a huge thing for me. I had to play with the cards I was dealt and I had to choose the tricks that work for me and my injury and the fact that I put them down is the one thing I wanted. I did better than I thought. To be up against all those women that are riding their best, to come 13th ... I'm stoked."

With only 12 progressing through to the finals, the 27-year-old missed out by just 2.00 points.