Zoe Atkin, GB Olympic skier set on a gold run

Illustration by Andy Bunday

Thirty minutes drive out of Salt Lake City lie the pristine slopes of Park City. Well known for winter sports, the city boasts the largest ski area in the entirety of the United States. It is where Sundance Film Festival takes place, while Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of The Killers, has a home here.

Among this combination of culture and sport is where freestyle skier Zoe Atkin, 23, grew up. She was born in Massachusetts but swapped the East Coast for Intermountain West at the age of 10, when her family moved across the country to support her older sister Isabel’s skiing career. Previously, her parents had been driving them out to Maine every weekend. Now she is one of Great Britain’s key medal hopes for the Winter Olympics, which begin this week.

Born to a British father and a Malaysian mother, who met when they worked together at the World Bank, Atkin grew up on a diet of Marmite and Ribena. She and Izzy are incredibly close, despite their four-year age gap, and Atkin’s first ski experiences, aged two, involved following her older sister around the mountain. Together they attended the Winter Sports School in Park City, which offers a flexible academic programme to allow students to focus on sports during the season. It was important to the girls’ parents that studying always came first. They needed little encouragement to focus on skiing; when they weren’t training, they tended to be out on the slopes as a family.

It was 2013 when Pat Sharples, the head coach for GB Snowsport, first met Zoe Atkin’s sister Izzy. Her father and Izzy went to visit him in St Anne’s, UK, as they weighed up what country she would compete for. As a shy personality, the family worried that the US team would be a bit overwhelming. The smaller scale of the GB team suited Izzy perfectly, while for Sharples, the opportunity of working with an athlete who had a home life that enabled her to ski all the time was ideal. “I always say that the more time you are on the snow, the better you can become,” says Sharples. “Being basked in a ski mountain town is incredibly helpful.”

As Izzy’s professional career took off, her sister was watching along with her parents. At 15, Zoe went to PyeongChang in 2018 and watched her sister make history. Izzy won bronze in the Slopestyle event, becoming Great Britain’s first medallist in skiing.

“Izzy’s success has really helped Zoe believe that she can do it too,” says Sharples. “Her being in that environment of seeing her sister do it has allowed Zoe to come along and push it one step further.”

It was only a year after that moment that Zoe won her first World Cup gold in the halfpipe, a semi-tubular jump, at 16. She made her Olympic debut in 2022, finishing ninth in the halfpipe. From there, her career took off. There was a gold medal at the X Games Aspen in superpipe, something that she repeated only last week. There was also a World Championship gold in the halfpipe.

Those who know Atkin say that what stands out is her dedication to all aspects of the sport. It is easy to see why, for winter athletes, spending time in the gym does not hold the same allure as being out on the slopes, but it has never been an issue for her. Her fascination with the psychological side of skiing – Atkin describes herself as “timid”, despite the extreme nature of the sport – has bled into her academic life. Never one to turn down a challenge, she combines her professional sports career with majoring in symbolic systems at Stanford University. The interdisciplinary course takes in elements of psychology, computer science and linguistics. The co-founder of Instagram, Mike Krieger, and the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, are just two of the course’s alumni.

“Zoe is somebody that anything she sets her mind on she can go and be exceptional,” says Sharples.

“What you see is what you get with Zoe, but the bit that people might not see is her work ethic. She’s incredibly intelligent.”

Away from skiing, Atkin uses her time spent travelling round the world documenting food. Her blog’s header quips that she is a “part-time professional skier, full-time eater” with visits to China and Australia among other places. It was to travel that she turned after her first Olympics, when she felt disappointed in her performance, spending time in Europe with her sister, who has retired from skiing.

If she is to get redemption she will have to fight off another American athlete who opted to represent a different nation. Eileen Gu won two gold medals and a silver for China in 2022. Gu’s popularity in her chosen country is astounding – Forbes estimated her to be the second highest earning women’s sports star in the world in 2023. A year younger than Zoe, Gu has been a dominant figure in the freestyle skiing world, making Atkin’s success on the slopes all the more impressive.

As she heads to Italy, Atkin will be looking to draw on all of the different experiences she has had to reach this point, in order to put together her perfect 30 seconds. From her psychology studies to her time spent travelling, and all the hours of training that has taken place over the years, everything will have to come together in one single moment.

Just as was the case in 2018, the hope is an Atkin sister will be watching as the other one picks up a medal for Great Britain. Zoe Atkin is clear what the celebrations will be if so – pizza, pasta and gelato.

Zoe Atkin

Born Massachusetts, US
Alma mater Studying at Stanford University
Work Freestyle skier