Red Bull.com

Grete Eliassen loves to ski. At 24, she’s one of the best all-around skiers; she’s raced for the Norwegian ski team, earned back-to-back X Games SuperPipe gold medals, designed several signature pro-model skis and travelled the world.

The Minnesota-born Norwegian was skiing practically from birth so when the family moved to Norway, then 13-year-old Eliassen found her calling and was quickly selected for the national ski team a year later. By the time she was 15, she had moved away from home to attend a sport-specific high school and was travelling to FIS and Europa Cup races throughout Italy, France, Austria, and Switzerland. Not one to be relegated to racing gates, she’d head back out to the slopes to ride moguls, drop down cliffs or hit the park every day after practice.

She quit the team at 16 and less than a year later entered her first freeride contest, the Rip Curl Freeski Open in Switzerland, where she pulled off second-place finishes in Big Air, Halfpipe and Slopestyle. This all-terrain experience continued to serve her well. In 2004, she earned her first of three US Open Slopestyle wins along with another win in 2007’s SuperPipe. At the Winter X Games in 2005, she walked in a first-time competitor and away as “Female Innovator of the Game,” repeating X Games gold the next year.

While studying for a management degree this ambitious go-getter has kept her contest skills sharp and also found time to support worthy causes off the slopes. Eliassen worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, making a good will trip to Afghanistan with other snow athletes and donated her $25,000 Ullr Girl prize to favourite charities, including the Women’s Sports Foundation and Stand Strong Again.