Swiss Olympic snowboarder Sophie Hediger, 26, died in an avalanche at the Arosa mountain resort in Switzerland on Monday, according to the country’s skiing federation.
Hediger, a rising star in the snowboard cross discipline, had recently achieved her first two World Cup podium finishes in the 2023–24 season. Her career-best result was a second-place finish in St. Moritz in January, according to Swiss-Ski.
“We are shocked and our thoughts are with Sophie’s family, to whom we offer our deepest condolences,” Swiss-Ski CEO Walter Reusser said in a statement to the Associated Press. “[She lost her life] tragically, brutally and far too early.”
The young athlete had represented Switzerland at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, competing in both the women’s snowboard cross and the mixed team event. According to her website, Hediger was born on Dec. 14, 1998, and lived in Horgen, Zurich. She had recently joined the national team for the 2024/2025 season.
Hediger expressed her passion for her sport on social media. In a Dec. 15 Instagram post, she shared her excitement about her performance in the season’s first World Cup event at Cervino Ski Paradise.
“Happy about my riding and my best qualification I’ve ever had with p3,” Hediger wrote, referring to her third-place finish in the qualification round. She crashed in the quarter-finals and finished ninth overall.
Hediger’s ambitions were high, as outlined on her website. She had set her sights on medal finishes in upcoming major events, including the Freestyle World Cup in St. Moritz in 2025 and the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics.
Snowboard cross, Hediger’s specialty, is a high-speed, high-risk event. It involves four to six athletes simultaneously racing down a narrow, curvy course filled with slopes, jumps, and dips. Races typically last between 60 to 90 seconds, according to information on the snowboarder’s website.
The tragedy hit during the busy holiday ski season, which has seen its share of challenges, including in the United States. Just days earlier, on Dec. 21, over 170 skiers and snowboarders were evacuated from a gondola lift at Winter Park Resort in Colorado after a crack was detected in the lift’s structure. No injuries were reported in that incident.
Resort spokesperson Jen Miller told the Associated Press all 174 people riding in the gondolas were lowered to safety with a rope equipped with a seat over the course of five hours, with the help of ski patrollers, who first lowered down each rider’s gear.
The resort still had 21 other lifts open, with workers beginning to replace sections of the lift that cracked by Sunday as an investigation into the matter continues by state regulators and resort officials.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.