Cheltenham born snowboarder Maisie Hill competed in two events at the recent Winter Olympics in Italy, The Big Air and Slopestyle snowboarding. Hill was introduced to snowboarding by her Dad aged 8 as she snowboarded in and around Shurdington in Gloucestershire. “I hated it in the beginning, it sucked, I got really hot all the time.”
Hill moved to France aged ten, which made snowboarding a lot easier due to the difference in weather when compared to Cheltenham. “I was really keen on going snowboarding all the time, I would skip school a lot because my Dad never really cared so we would just go together. It was really fun, I loved it.”
She went on to add “it wasn’t until I was 15 years old that I got good at freestyle, like Slopestyle, my Dad will still claim that he could beat me down the mountain but that’s not true.”
In 2023, Hill won Bronze in The Big Air in the Europa Cup, she reflected on that moment by saying “I think it’s the only time I’ve ever actually been on a Europa Cup podium, I’ve not been on the podium as much as I would like in recent years so I think it’s nice to think about that moment.”
She followed this up by admitting she struggled with burnout in the run-up to the Olympics – “it’s horrible, you’re getting forced to do it and you end up not liking it so much. I think that’s got a lot to do with why I’ve not really podiumed.”
The 25-year-old added that she will be “taking a big break, I’m going to call it my mini retirement but I’m going to come back. I’m going to finish this season off and then next season I’ll focus on doing the contents that I want to do instead of doing all of them.
“I want to enjoy snowboarding again and do the things that I want to do, I felt a lot of pressure qualifying for the olympics and it’s been hard, I want to go and have fun.”
After qualifying for the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, Hill instantly told her Dad, stating that “I had to tell him first, then it was my Mum and then I let the rest of my family know…my Dad’s a big cryer so there were a lot of happy tears when I told him.”
Speaking on the atmosphere in and around the Olympic Village, Hill said “It was really cool, there were a lot of other sports there and people I’d never met before as well as all the people from my sport too. It was just a big mingling thing so we could get to know each other and a lot of people making TikToks.”
This was the most viewed games since Sochi 2014, Hill opened up on how it felt to be involved as one of just three women from Team GB to snowboard at these games, saying “Snowboarding’s not really been around for that long when you think about it, so it’s really cool.”
