It's not a piece of cake on the slopes

Snowboarder inspires many as he seeks to come in from the cold and become a champion, Wang Qian reports.

Life is not a fairy tale and dreams, sometimes, do not come true. But that's no reason not to pursue them, and for snowboarder Zhang Jiahao, who used to be a baker, what matters most is the courage to try to achieve them.

The 27-year-old's Olympic dream ended on Nov 19 in Landgraaf, the Netherlands, when he failed to complete his last jump－a frontside 720 and a backside 900. It sounds complicated and it is. Frontside means spinning on your axis twice, a full 360 twice. Backside is the reverse.

Since early 2020, Zhang had been on his own frozen odyssey with no coach or support team, competing across the world to win an Olympic berth, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is a snowboarder who wants to come in from the cold.

The International Olympic Committee stipulates a qualification standard for each freestyle skier and snowboarder taking part in the slopestyle (negotiating obstacles), halfpipe (like a half cross section of a large pipe) or big air (launching off a large ski jump) disciplines－they must have placed in the top 30 at a World Cup event during the qualification period and also scored a minimum of 50 points during the World Cup series or world championships on at least one run. It meant that Zhang needed 50 points to land an Olympic spot.

"The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics being 'on my doorstep' motivated me to keep going and to see how far I could go. Although I failed, I was very proud of myself going all out for it," the Beijing native says.

During the past two years, he competed in Canada, Sweden, Chile, Switzerland and the Netherlands, he adds, meeting hundreds of snowboarders and skiers from home and abroad, whose love for skiing has been both impressive and inspiring.

Zhang's story has gone viral on social media after his passion for skiing made national headlines. On Monday night, he shared his journey in China Daily's latest episode of Youth Power with the theme of keeping the Olympic spirit alive. Youth Power aims to build a global platform for communication and exchange, focusing on the interests and ideas of Generation Z, those born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s.