Grace Henderson

Durham, New Hampshire, USA | Active: FIS status active | Discipline: freeski big air and slopestyle | Verified: X Games Aspen 2025 Big Air silver, Stubai 2022 World Cup slopestyle bronze, 2026 Olympian | Current: 2026 U.S. Olympic Freeski Team, Völkl / Jiberish athlete profile

Buttermilk After The Alternate Call

Buttermilk was black above the takeoff, the big-air jump glowing under Aspen floodlights as cold snow drifted from the lip. Grace Henderson dropped in hours after learning she had a start, then sent a double 1080 into the night.

X Games Aspen 2025 became the clearest public turn of Henderson’s career. She had entered women’s ski big air from the alternate list after Megan Oldham withdrew on the morning of the contest. By the end of the night, Flora Tabanelli had won, Tess Ledeux had taken bronze, and Henderson stood between them with silver. U.S. Ski & Snowboard described the trick as a double 1080 with a capped blunt grab, while X Games listed the medal as sealed by a double cork 1080 true tail. Either wording points to the same fact: Henderson’s first X Games podium came from a clean double under late-notice pressure.

New Hampshire Snow Before Waterville

Henderson’s official U.S. Ski & Snowboard profile lists Durham, New Hampshire as her hometown, Waterville Valley BBTS as her club, and April 28, 2001 as her birthdate. X Games also places her birth in Durham, while local New Hampshire coverage has connected her Olympic path to the Madbury and Durham area.

She started skiing at age two, with her parents teaching her at small New Hampshire mountains. The early route did not begin as a full freestyle plan. She raced for several seasons, then moved toward park skiing when her parents entered her in her brother Hunter Henderson’s freestyle competitions. The next season, she switched to freestyle full time and began attending Waterville Valley Academy. That family detail matters because her pathway was not isolated. Hunter also became a professional skier, and the Henderson household turned New England laps into a two-sibling freeski environment.

Aspen Snowmass And The Nor-Am Foundation

Before the World Cup podiums and X Games lights, Henderson built a results base in Nor-Am competition. U.S. Ski & Snowboard lists Nor-Am Cup wins in Big Air at Aspen Snowmass in 2017, and in both Big Air and Slopestyle at Calgary in 2020. Those results gave her the necessary ranking weight before the senior circuit became her regular frame.

The 2019 Junior World Championships at Kläppen also gave a useful early marker. Her U.S. profile records a top-five Big Air finish there. Kläppen, in Sweden, is a technical park venue where Scandinavian winter light, firm snow, and long jump lines test young riders before they reach the full World Cup. Henderson was not yet a main American headline, but the record shows she had already moved from New Hampshire development into international junior fields.

Stubai When The First World Cup Podium Landed

The first World Cup podium came on November 19, 2022, at Stubai, Austria. FIS official results list Johanne Killi first with 81.24, Kelly Sildaru second with 78.22, and Henderson third with 76.58 in women’s freeski slopestyle. Megan Oldham, Sandra Eie, Sarah Höfflin, Muriel Mohr, and Brynn Johnston finished behind her.

University of Utah coverage later described the key move as a switch right 900 tail grab, explaining the backward takeoff, right rotation, and tail grab that helped earn the podium. Stubai is a high glacier venue where weather and light can make speed difficult. A slopestyle podium there means rails, jumps, and landings all had to hold together in the same run. For Henderson, it was the score that moved her out of pipeline language and into the senior World Cup record.

The Beijing Injury Year

The next phase did not move cleanly upward. X Games records that in December 2023 Henderson broke both heels after knuckling the Big Air jump in Beijing and spent six weeks in a wheelchair. U.S. Ski & Snowboard also framed her 2025 X Games silver as a comeback after missing the 2024 X Games because of injury.

That timeline gives the Aspen silver more weight. Big Air is brutal on confidence after foot and heel injuries. A skier has to trust impact again: takeoff pressure, rotation speed, landing angle, and the moment when both boots meet snow with full force. Henderson’s return was not only symbolic. It required bringing a double cork back into competition after a period where the body had been forced out of the event entirely.

Why Henderson Already Stands Out

Henderson’s skiing is built around compact power rather than a loud visual brand. Her current contest vocabulary includes double cork 1080s, tail grabs, capped blunt grabs, switch right 900s, rail entries, 270s, switch takeoffs, slopestyle speed checks, and big-air landing control. The double is the headline, but her best results also depend on whether the rail section lets the jumps arrive clean.

Compared with Rell Harwood, Henderson’s profile is less street-style and more classic slopestyle/big-air competition. Compared with Avery Krumme, she is older and more injury-tested, with a World Cup podium already on record. Compared with Marin Hamill, she carries more current X Games Big Air visibility. Inside the U.S. women’s slopestyle group, her value is the ability to combine a technical jump ceiling with enough course experience to survive difficult qualifiers.

University Of Utah Between Starts

Henderson’s profile also includes a university path. U.S. Ski & Snowboard lists the University of Utah as her school, and X Games notes that she earned a psychology degree there in December 2024. That timeline overlaps with elite competition, injury recovery, travel, and Olympic qualification pressure.

The Utah base also puts her close to a dense American freeski network. Park City, the U.S. Ski & Snowboard system, and Utah training venues bring together slopestyle and big-air athletes from several generations. X Games says Henderson lives in Park City with her brother Hunter. That setting changes the rhythm from New Hampshire development to daily access around skiers chasing the same circuits, including U.S. teammates competing for World Cup spots, X Games starts, and Olympic selection.

Oakley, Völkl, Marker, Dalbello, And Jiberish

U.S. Ski & Snowboard lists Henderson’s equipment sponsors as Oakley, Völkl, Marker, Dalbello, and Jiberish, with Waterville Valley also appearing on her sponsor list. That support picture matches her current identity: competition-focused, but still tied to New England roots and park-ski style culture.

Völkl, Marker, and Dalbello form the ski-binding-boot system needed for double-cork landings, rail impact, and switch takeoffs. Oakley covers eyewear and competition visibility, while Jiberish fits the freestyle clothing side of her public profile. The list should not be inflated beyond those verified names. Henderson is still building her main body of results, so accuracy matters more than sponsor decoration.

Livigno And The First Olympic Contact

Henderson made her Olympic debut at Milano Cortina 2026 after being named to the U.S. women’s slopestyle and big-air team. NBC Olympics reported that Rell Harwood, Henderson, and Avery Krumme were all first-time Olympians on that roster, joining Marin Hamill in women’s slopestyle and big air.

The Livigno results were not finals. FIS results list Henderson fifteenth in women’s freeski slopestyle qualification with 49.78, outside the top twelve. In big air qualification, Olympic results show 139.25 points, and she did not advance. Those numbers should be written plainly, not hidden. For an athlete whose biggest career moment had come one year earlier at X Games, the Olympics became a first contact with the scale of the event rather than a medal breakthrough.

Tignes After The Games

Henderson’s post-Olympic FIS record shows that the season did not end at Livigno. In March 2026 at Tignes, she placed fourth in a women’s freeski slopestyle World Cup, behind Kirsty Muir, Lara Wolf, and Madeleine Disbrowe. One day later, she finished sixteenth in the Tignes Big Air World Cup.

That split gives the current reading of her career. Slopestyle remains the steadier scoring path, while Big Air holds the most visible highlight because of Aspen 2025. The next short-term target is not a vague “future.” It is clear from the record: return to World Cup finals, turn top-five slopestyle finishes into podiums again, and prove that the double-cork confidence from Aspen can survive across more than one big-air season.

The Watch Path From Waterville To Aspen

Henderson’s profile should be framed as active and still developing, not as a finished résumé. The strongest watch order begins with Waterville Valley and New Hampshire park roots, then moves to Nor-Am wins at Aspen Snowmass and Calgary. Stubai 2022 gives the first World Cup podium, while Beijing 2023 explains the injury context behind the comeback.

The current public core is X Games Aspen 2025: alternate call-up, Big Air silver, fifth in Slopestyle, and the first X Games podium. Livigno 2026 adds Olympic scale without a final, and Tignes 2026 keeps the active World Cup thread alive. For skipowd.tv, Grace Henderson is a 4/5 profile because the verified result base is already strong: X Games medalist, World Cup podium skier, Olympian, and one of the American women whose next major step depends on turning comeback clips into repeat podium weekends.