Zoe Atkin trying something new as she targets second Winter Olympics

With one year to go until Milano Cortina 2026, freestyle skier Atkin has changed her perspective to try and secure qualification. Halfpipe skier Zoe Atkin is reinventing her perspective as she bids for a second successive Winter Olympics at Milano Cortina 2026. The 22-year-old, whose family hail from Birmingham, is currently enjoying a hugely impressive 2025 season on the freestyle skiing circuit after storming to X Games silver in 2024, adding to her gold from 2023 and two World Championship medals. Just last weekend, Atkin won the US Grand Prix in Colorado as she continues to prove she belongs among the world’s elite.

However, there is a lot more at stake in this year's campaign which sees the World Championships and World Cup take centre stage as athletes work hard to qualify for the Olympics that will start exactly one year from today in northern Italy. Atkin is keeping the process as simple as possible, hoping that her overarching ambitions of trying something new to upscale her run will be the key to a relaxed and enjoyable Olympic qualification.

“I've been working on new things for this year,” she explained. “I'm trying to come into it with a different perspective. “The last few seasons, I've been sticking with my same run and just building but this year I want to incorporate some new tricks as well. I'm excited to do that and see where it puts me. “I've proven myself in the sport a little bit more now and am more established as a top competitor. That's something which can build my confidence going into the next Olympics and I really want to enjoy this experience.”.

Atkin made her Olympic debut at Beijing 2022 as a 19 year old, finishing ninth in the women's freeski halfpipe final. It came four years after her older sister Izzy claimed Team GB’s first-ever Olympic medal on skis at PyeongChang 2018. Izzy had to bow out of Beijing due to a pelvis injury, but her younger sister flew the flag for the family in style, even if her own experience of the event was tainted by pressure she put on herself.

“I was really excited to be going into the Olympics for the first time but there was a lot of internal pressure on myself, being so young and seeing my sister's success at the previous Olympics,” she said. "That season was suddenly no longer as fun because I was so stressed about it. I felt like I was putting a lot of expectations on myself on what I was supposed to do and accomplish there. “While it was an amazing experience, I didn't ski to the level I wanted to, and it was really disappointing for me.”.

The mental side of performing and the pressure that comes with representing your country has become something that Atkin works on a lot outside of sport. The Stanford University student suffered from burnout at the end of 2024 which set her back and admitted that it's now a case of building from the ground up rather than jumping straight back on the adrenaline junkie trend. And with a flurry of halfpipe final appearances on her CV from this season, Atkin's momentum is slowly and surely building up once more.

“I definitely struggle with the mental side of things in my sport,” she said. “A big thing for me is about building momentum and after you lull for a while it's hard to get back into doing your hardest tricks and the scary stuff that I do in competition. “I start really small and then build my confidence so I can do bigger tricks so it's like a snowball effect. There's such a misconception about our sport and extreme sport athletes that we're just crazy adrenaline junkies.