Laura Wallner

Profile and significance

Laura Wallner is an Austrian freeski slopestyle and big air specialist who has quietly become one of the key reference points for women’s park skiing from the Tyrol region. Born in 1998 and representing Austria in international competition, she has spent almost a decade on the World Cup circuit, mixing technical rail lines with stylish jumps on the biggest stages in freeski. Her career includes appearances at the FIS Freestyle World Championships, a long list of World Cup starts and a full Olympic debut at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games in both slopestyle and big air. For many fans, she is the face they associate with Austrian women’s park freeski: always in the mix at contests, always pushing to represent her home mountains with progressive skiing.

Wallner is more than a contest name on a start list. She is a long-time team rider for the European core retailer Blue Tomato and skis for the independent ski brand Surface Skis, while also appearing in Ski Austria media pieces such as a dedicated freeski trailer. Her profile on Blue Tomato describes freeskiing as her way of expressing herself, as natural as writing or painting for someone else. That mix of competition, brand support and creative output places her firmly in the group of riders who define the everyday standard of modern women’s freeski: not yet a serial World Cup winner, but consistently good enough to shape the level at major events and inspire the next generation.

Competitive arc and key venues

Wallner’s FIS record traces a steady climb from promising teenager to established World Cup regular. She stepped onto the international stage around 2017, travelling as far as Cardrona in New Zealand for early-season slopestyle World Cups and earning experience against some of the strongest fields in the world. In the same period she started to find her feet in big air, taking a standout seventh place at the World Cup big air in Milan during the 2017–18 season. That top-10 finish marked her as a serious jumper at a time when women’s big air was exploding in difficulty and visibility.

Over the following seasons she became a fixture in women’s slopestyle and big air start lists at venues such as Cardrona, Mammoth Mountain, Aspen Snowmass, Silvaplana and the glacier parks above Stubai. She reached the slopestyle final at Stubai in 2021 and finished eighth, the best home-World-Cup result ever recorded by an Austrian woman in that discipline at the time. She also represented Austria at the 2021 World Championships in Aspen, making the big air final and placing inside the top ten against a field that included many Olympic and X Games medalists. By the time she arrived at Beijing 2022, she had already built a deep résumé of World Cup appearances and finals that prepared her for the Olympic spotlight.

At the Beijing Games she competed in both freeski big air in the city stadium and slopestyle at Genting Snow Park, adding the Olympic rings to a contest career that was already globally spread. More recently, Wallner has complemented her FIS schedule with high-profile urban and rail-focused events. She was invited to the Freeski Friday Jam Session at SnowFest Innsbruck, riding a two-storey scaffolding setup in front of the Tiroler Landestheater, and later took the freeski women’s win at the Rock A Rail Ski event during SnowFest Innsbruck, an achievement that underlines her strength in the rail- and street-skiing side of the sport.

How they ski: what to watch for

Wallner’s skiing is a textbook example of how modern all-round park freeski should look: balanced between rails and jumps, with a strong technical foundation rather than a single “signature” trick. On jumps, she tends to combine clean spin direction changes with well-held grabs, using rotations that build in difficulty throughout a run instead of throwing everything into one feature. You often see her approach takeoffs with calm body language, pop decisively and then let the rotation unfold without unnecessary flailing, relying on good timing and a strong sense of where she is in the air.

On rails and urban features, the qualities that stand out are precision and commitment. Events like SnowFest Innsbruck demand comfort on down rails, close-out rails and alley-oop approaches on scaffolding that feels very different from a comfortable glacier park. Wallner looks at home in this environment, willing to take speed into technical features and trusting her edge control on kinked or high-consequence setups. Her slopestyle runs typically open with solid rail sections that mix switch approaches, changes of direction and controlled spins off the feature, setting a technical tone before she moves into the jump line. For viewers trying to learn from her, it is worth watching how rarely she gets wildly off-balance; even when things are not perfect, she usually finds a way to land on her feet and keep the run moving.

Resilience, filming, and influence

Long careers in slopestyle and big air are as much about resilience as raw talent. Wallner has dealt with the usual challenges of any park skier at this level: injuries, qualification runs that do not go to plan, finals where conditions change between practice and showtime. Reports from the Stubai World Cup in 2021 describe her as the hometown favourite who unfortunately crashed in both final runs, a reminder that even the best-prepared riders can see their plans unravel on a single icy landing. Yet she has kept returning to the circuit, putting down cleaner runs at later events and maintaining her place among the women trusted to represent Austria at World Cups and major championships.

Her influence also flows through brand and federation projects. Blue Tomato’s team page and content pieces present her as someone who rides primarily for joy and friendships rather than pure medal hunting, which resonates with many freeski fans who see the sport as a creative outlet. Ski Austria’s dedicated trailer featuring Wallner helps introduce her to a broader national audience, placing her alongside the country’s other freestyle and park athletes in a storytelling format rather than only in result lists. Combined with her presence at high-visibility urban events in Innsbruck, these projects position her as a visible role model for young Austrian park skiers, especially girls who are just discovering slopestyle, big air and urban/street skiing.

Geography that built the toolkit

Geographically, Wallner is a product of the central Alps, and you can see that in how she skis. Her social and team profiles link her closely to Innsbruck and the Stubai Valley, a region that functions almost like a giant training campus for freeski. The glacier park at Stubai, often branded as Stubai Zoo, offers long pre-season sessions with big jumps and dense rail lines where riders can spend weeks refining tricks before the main contest calendar even begins. Growing up and training in this environment means constant exposure to both world-class features and visiting international crews, pushing the local level upwards year after year.

Her competition history has taken her well beyond Austria, adding important textures to her skiing. Trips to Cardrona in New Zealand bring high-wind spring conditions and firm landings; Mammoth and Aspen offer classic North American jump lines and changeable weather; Silvaplana in Switzerland is known for its combination of stunning location and demanding slopestyle course late in the season. Returning home to urban events in Innsbruck, she brings that experience back onto metal rails set in the city centre. The result is a skier who looks comfortable on everything from glacier tabletops to city handrails, because each of those environments is now a familiar part of her yearly rhythm.

Equipment and partners: practical takeaways

Wallner’s equipment choices reflect her all-round park and urban focus. As a team rider for Surface Skis, she uses true twin-tip skis designed to work equally well forwards and switch, with shapes and flex patterns that balance jump stability and rail feel. For spectators, watching how her skis behave on different features is a useful real-world demonstration of what a modern park ski is asked to do: maintain edge grip on hard, injected World Cup takeoffs; stay predictable under heavy rail use at street events; and still feel playful enough for creative lines in glacier parks.

Support from Blue Tomato keeps her closely connected to the European core retail scene, where trends in boots, bindings, helmets and outerwear often start long before they hit mainstream shops. Rather than promoting a single “must-have” piece, her career underlines the importance of building a kit that matches your actual terrain. If your local riding looks more like Stubai’s park and the SnowFest Innsbruck rail setup than like heli-accessed powder fields, a durable park twin tip, a dialled binding stance and protective gear that you are comfortable wearing all day will do more for your progression than chasing a signature pro-model graphic.

Why fans and progressing skiers care

Fans care about Laura Wallner because she represents a realistic, inspiring version of high-level freeski. She is an Olympian and a World Cup finalist, but she is also someone you can imagine lapping the park at Stubai on a regular Wednesday, trading tricks and encouragement with local crews. Her mix of contest experience, street and urban results, and long-term commitment to brands rooted in core ski culture makes her feel both aspirational and grounded. She shows that you can come from a small circle of Tyrolean parks and still end up taking your run in the Olympic stadium, without losing sight of why you started skiing in the first place.

For progressing skiers, her career offers a clear roadmap. Build strong fundamentals on rails and jumps in your local park. Travel to bigger venues when you can, from glacier parks to international contests, to test your tricks under pressure. Stay open to urban and street skiing opportunities, whether that means a city rail jam or a festival event like Rock A Rail. Work with brands that support your progression and align with your values. Watching Laura Wallner’s runs and edits through this lens turns her career into more than a results list; it becomes a practical guide to building a sustainable, creative life in slopestyle, big air and urban freeski.