Winters is coming: Colorado snowboarder earns 1st career World Cup podium

Miha Matavz/FIS
Cody Winters has built a name for himself in the snowboarding world with his signature straight-line approach down the slalom course — a method that brings high risk.
The 24-year-old from Steamboat Springs opened the 2024-25 World Cup season with high expectations of himself. His skill was there, but minor mistakes on the slalom course were keeping him from the results he knew were attainable.
“A common problem for me in slalom is putting down a super fast first run and then falling in my second run,” Winters explained.
These struggles especially became a theme early in the season, missing the finals in three straight events — two in China and one in Davos, Switzerland.
“That Davos slalom really hurt … ” Winters said. “Because of that, I went home and really focused on not necessarily speed, but just consistency. In the end that really paid off for me.”
Winters began adding pressure-training to his practice schedule, buying food for his coaches any time he made a mistake down a run. He focused on taking different lines and approaches down the course to see what fit best.
Maybe most important of all, Winters began sports psychology meetings to work on his mental preparation for big events.
In no time, Winters was back in Europe after the holiday break and hungry to compete. On Tuesday, he achieved his single greatest performance on snow and something that had otherwise eluded him over the course of his career — a World Cup podium.

Last season, Winters saw an abundance of success and placed fourth in three World Cup events, narrowly missing the coveted medal. His season came to an abrupt halt at the end of March when he suffered a grade 1 MCL tear in his knee while training for a World Cup event in Canada.
“For a knee injury, that is pretty much the one you want because it requires no surgery and it likes to heal,” Winters explained. “I was pretty patient with that, and now it’s not bothering me.”
Winters spent the end of the spring rehabbing in Park City, Utah, slowly gaining his full mobility back over the course of about three months. Since he missed the first big block of the offseason, he was more dedicated than ever to get back in the gym before work — a trick he learned during last offseason.
Winters juggled a busy summer of training while simultaneously running his Steamboat Springs-based business, Winters Window Washing. He uses the money earned from washing windows to supplement his snowboarding career with heavy travel expenses and equipment costs.
He spent time thinking about washing windows this week while standing atop the course in Bad Gastein, Austria, for his fourth parallel slalom race of the season.
“There’s no chance I can fund this without that company…” Winters thought to himself.
Chasing medals
Putting his training efforts to good use, Winters had the quickest opening run in the World Cup qualifier, relieving some pressure for run two. He was 28th fastest on that second run, giving him the No. 8 seed for finals.
Winters said No. 8 is right where he wanted to be, and gave him the confidence to “lay down some heaters” on the course later that night for the finals, which took place under the lights.
“The energy was definitely pumping,” Winters said. “It’s pretty interesting, at the top of the course it is pretty dark and everywhere you look is dark. The only thing lit up is the crowd and the race slope, which is pretty sick.”
In the first round of finals, Winters was pinned against the No. 9 seed, giving him the advantage of lane choice as the better-seeded rider. Winters elected to slide down the green lane which he said was running faster than the neighboring yellow lane.
Winters’ strategy in each run was to rip as fast as possible past the first five or six gates to take a lead, then pull up and more strategically carve his way down the remainder of the course for victory.
The strategy worked in both his 1/8 Final and Quarterfinal matchups where he managed to race down the green lane, but in the semifinals he was finally a lower seed and forced to take on the yellow course for the first time.
In parallel slalom events, the goal is to get both lanes of a course to ride evenly, but it is nearly impossible to keep it that way.
As Winters describes it, “hulls develop as more and more people ride the course.”
“These hulls force you to change your line or you have to avoid the hulls, go inside or outside of them, and sometimes ride right through them,” he said. “When you get moved to a course, you have to get all-new intel.”
Winters has a coach who stands mid-course to keep an eye on which gates he might have to take a more rounded route on and which gates he needs to prepare for a hull. With the semifinal run being his first on yellow, he was less prepared for what to expect.
Still, Winters put down a quick race but came up just short of No. 5 seeded Aaron March, losing by 0.12 seconds. The Italian, March, ultimately earned the gold medal in the Big Final.
Remaining in medal contention, Winters took the information he gathered from his first run down the yellow course and was prepared to battle for third in the Small Final.
Out of the gate, Winters was focused on speed.
“I went crazy straight on the first six or seven gates and had about a half-gate lead,” Winters said of the race. “My competitor had to throw it to full gas and [take] a ton of risk. He ended up blowing out of the course which led me to cruise through the rest of it and finish.”
For the first time in his career, Winters podiumed at a World Cup event. A huge weight on his shoulders was lifted.
“I was doubling over with excitement, it was uncontrollable I would say,” Winters said. “It was a pretty magical feeling. I had to take a knee, take a moment for myself and take a breath of relief because I had been so close to a podium so many times. It has been such a big goal of mine and it felt relieving to finally do it. To become a World Cup podium athlete, it is definitely one of the biggest goals and something I will never forget doing.”
Winters capped off the night with an Aprés-ski celebration and would fall asleep as one of the top three parallel slalom riders in the world.

The world’s busiest snowboarder
Winters may have the hardest and most jam-packed schedule of any snowboarder on the planet.
He is the first rider to compete in World Cup events across parallel and snowboard cross since 2009, and is extremely competitive in both. Due to his interest in multiple disciplines, he has limited training time for each sport and if he is not training or competing, he is likely traveling to his next World Cup event.
When the World Cup schedule was released in early September, Winters sat down and overlapped the parallel and boardercross calendars to see which events he can make and which he would have to miss in favor of others.
“One priority was to make sure I’m hitting all the boardercross starts, to give myself the best chance and opportunity to qualify for the World (Championships),” Winters said.
That does not mean he would disregard parallel events, however. Winters made the decision to emphasize giant slalom more this year as well. He managed to reach his first career GS finals at a World Cup in China at the start of this season.
He finished 15th overall.
“Out of the three events, that is my weakest link right now,” Winters said.
Looking ahead, Winters has GS World Cups in Bulgaria and Slovenia before racing snowboard cross in China over the next few weeks. The end of his season-schedule is dependent on his overall performance through February which determines what discipline he needs to lean toward for World Championship qualification.
Winters currently sits at 85 days on snow this year, on pace for his most days riding in a single season. All of this extra work has revolved around competing in St. Moritz, Switzerland at the end of March to vie for a podium on one of the sport’s biggest stages.
“A lot of this season now is pointing toward World Champs,” Winters said, excitedly. “I want to qualify and do well in all three events. I also want to stay healthy, that is a big thing for me, and keep having fun.”

This story is from SteamboatPilot.com

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