JOSSI WELLS INVITATIONAL | 2024

Profile and significance

Jackson “Wacko” Wells is a New Zealand freeski original whose imprint sits at the junction of contest progression and film-first creativity. The youngest of the Wells brothers, he emerged from Wānaka with a style-forward approach to slopestyle and big air, and a knack for doing famous tricks in unfamiliar ways. His headline breakthrough arrived in 2016 at Cardrona Alpine Resort, where he used a net landing to safely push airtime and execute what was widely recognized at the time as the first quad cork landed on skis. Two years later he represented New Zealand in slopestyle at the Olympic Winter Games, underlining that the athlete who could light up a private session could also perform on the sport’s biggest stage. While injuries and selective scheduling have kept him from stacking the volume of World Cup podiums earned by some peers, his cultural impact is disproportionate to his medal count, thanks to distinctive edits, the annual scene around the Jossi Wells Invitational, and a personality that treats freeskiing as both sport and art.

Wells’s portfolio spans youth-game credentials, an Olympic start, southern hemisphere wins, and a sustained presence in high-visibility sessions. His post-2020 return to more targeted appearances—often at Cardrona and during the spring filming window—has helped preserve quality and novelty. The result is a skier who matters not only for what he lands, but for how he frames modern freeskiing to fans and up-and-coming riders.

Competitive arc and key venues

Wells moved through the New Zealand pathway quickly, first flashing potential at the Winter Youth Olympic Games before stepping into senior World Cups and major invites. He started in slopestyle at PyeongChang 2018, experience that sharpened his ability to build runs under pressure and read judging trends. In the southern hemisphere, he has logged wins and podiums on Australia New Zealand Cup stops, including big air success during the Perisher swing, which has long served as a proving ground for Kiwi and Aussie park skiers. Perisher’s engineered jump lines and consistent winter schedule reward riders with precise speed control and confident switch takeoffs, an environment that suits Wells’s approach and timing. When spring turns to the invitational season at the Jossi Wells Invitational, he often shifts from score-chasing to moment-making, prioritizing peer-judged sessions that celebrate style and invention.

Cardrona remains the spiritual center of his skiing. The resort’s progressive park program, long jump lanes, and supportive event ecosystem have allowed Wells to iterate on trick families safely across years. The Wānaka basin more broadly has provided an ideal mix of consistent park builds, film crews, and a creative roster of visiting pros, keeping Wells at the middle of a tight feedback loop between new ideas and polished execution.

How they ski: what to watch for

Wells skis with a relaxed upper body, a tall approach, and late commitment to axis—hallmarks that make his big spins read clean rather than hectic. He often separates the impulse to spin from the impulse to grab, waiting a fraction longer than most before locking in a seatbelt safety or tweaking a safety into a different silhouette mid-flight. On rails he favors linkable lines with understated but technical step-ups, spinning both on and off without telegraphing, and riding landings deep to preserve speed. Switch entries are a specialty: he regulates approach speed with tiny feathered edge sets, then releases into rotation without visible rush. The net effect is control—he looks like he has extra time in the air, even when the rotation count says otherwise.

Run assembly is deliberate. Wells likes to balance trick families, mirroring spin direction, and building difficulty across a run so the final jump lands both technically and dramatically. In big air sessions, where everyone is chasing similar rotation counts, his differentiation comes from axis nuance and grab integrity, not just degrees of spin. If you’re watching closely, look for the clean takeoff posture, the minimal flap of arms mid-spin, and grabs held long enough to alter the trick’s silhouette for judges and cameras.

Resilience, filming, and influence

The 2016 Cardrona quad-cork moment gave Wells enduring name recognition, but his influence relies just as much on how he’s shown up since. He has leaned into projects that foreground style and location—short films from Wānaka’s parks and spring sessions that value feeling over formula. In peer-judged formats, he tends to prioritize unique trick construction over one-off difficulty spikes, contributing to a culture that rewards originality as much as raw spin.

Injury management and selective scheduling have become part of the story. By choosing windows that matter—southern winter contests that feed directly into content weeks at Cardrona and Treble Cone, or targeted appearances with a tight film crew—Wells has kept freshness in his output. That approach resonates with skiers who measure success by influence and permanence, not just hardware.

Geography that built the toolkit

Wānaka’s terrain and community shaped Wells’s skiing. The town’s proximity to Cardrona and Treble Cone means plentiful days on consistent park builds in winter and playful natural features in spring. Those ingredients—repetition and variety—produce the calm timing and edge control visible in his jumping. Trips across the Tasman to Perisher added a different flavor: longer seasonal lift hours, big standardized jumps, and a scene that encourages high-volume sessioning. The combination explains Wells’s ability to make very large tricks look unforced; he has read and re-read similar features across dozens of cycles. When he returns from the northern winter, the Cardrona ecosystem is waiting, complete with visiting pros, the invitational week, and a camera culture that captures progression cleanly.

Equipment and partners: practical takeaways

Wells rides with support from Monster Energy, a partnership visible at invitational weeks and park sessions alike. On-snow, his setups trend toward symmetrical mounts and medium-stiff flex profiles that balance rail precision with jump stability. For progressing skiers, the lesson isn’t a single model so much as a philosophy: pick a park ski with predictable pop and durable edges, mount near center if you value switch takeoffs and mirrored spins, and pair it with a binding philosophy that tolerates cross-loaded landings. Keep outerwear light and unrestricted, and treat boots as the true steering component—fit beats any spec sheet.

Venue choice is also a piece of the equipment puzzle. Cardrona’s lengthy in-runs and Perisher’s standardized big-air builds let Wells refine speed control and axis timing; finding your local equivalents—features that repeat week after week—will accelerate your own progression.

Why fans and progressing skiers care

Jackson Wells embodies a branch of freeskiing where invention and execution share top billing. He is an Olympian, a southern hemisphere winner, and the rider behind one of the sport’s most-watched progression clips. More importantly, he continues to model a sustainable, creative career: make the trick feel inevitable, value style as much as spin, and choose sessions that sharpen both. For fans, that means you’re likely to see something memorable when he drops at Cardrona or lines up a Perisher big-air session. For skiers, it’s a template—build timing on reliable features, commit to clean grabs, mirror your spin directions, and let your style choices turn difficulty into distinctiveness.

Profile and significance

Jossi Wells is the benchmark New Zealand freeskier whose career spans X Games gold, Olympic finals, and a long-running role as a cultural organizer through his namesake invitational. Born in 1990 and raised in Wānaka, he established himself early as an all-terrain modernist who could win on the biggest contest stages and still shape the sport’s style language through films and projects. His defining competitive moment came at Aspen 2016, where he won men’s ski slopestyle at the Winter X Games, becoming New Zealand’s first X Games gold medalist. He is also a rare triple-threat across disciplines, with X Games hardware in slopestyle, superpipe, and big air, and he represented New Zealand at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games—finishing fourth in halfpipe and eleventh in slopestyle. Those results, combined with his influence off-hill, place Wells among freeskiing’s most complete and enduring figures.

What elevates Wells beyond the medals is the way he continually balances execution, variety, and creative identity. He competes with the clarity judges reward—mirrored spins, grab integrity, and clean axes—but he also curates spaces for progression, most notably the Monster Energy Jossi Wells Invitational at Cardrona Alpine Resort, which gathers elite skiers and snowboarders for a week of formats that prize style as much as difficulty. That dual footprint—winner and tastemaker—explains why his name is a reference point for both fans and riders.

Competitive arc and key venues

Wells moved from New Zealand national pathways into the highest tiers of international competition as a teenager, first stacking AFP and World Cup podiums and then converting at the invitationals that define freeskiing prestige. His X Games résumé stretches across more than a decade and multiple disciplines, including superpipe silver (2010), big air bronze (2012), and the career-defining slopestyle gold at Aspen 2016. The Aspen win arrived on the meticulously shaped lanes of Buttermilk Mountain, where consistent speed and consequential finals-day decisions separate podiums from also-rans. Earlier hardware in Aspen’s big air showcased his ability to translate style to single-hit theaters, while the superpipe medals underlined genuine cross-discipline fluency.

His Olympic chapter at Sochi 2014 demonstrated range under unique pressure: fourth in halfpipe—just off the podium—and eleventh in slopestyle on an inaugural Olympic course. Across the northern circuit he has been effective on glacial venues and altitude venues alike, but two geographies loom largest. The first is Aspen, where he spent years refining contest craft and ultimately secured gold. The second is home soil at Cardrona Alpine Resort and Treble Cone, where he built the timing and edge control that make his skiing look unhurried at speed and where his invitational now stages elite sessions each September.

How they ski: what to watch for

Wells skis with tall posture into takeoffs, late rotation initiation, and an insistence on long, clean grab holds. The tall approach delays spin until the last beat, keeping tips quiet and shoulders level; the late initiation compresses rotation into a tighter window without looking frantic. On jumps, he often sells tricks through silhouette management—holding safety, tail, or blunt variations long enough to change how the spin reads to judges and cameras. On rails, his line design conserves speed: precise feet on long pads, both-way spin entries and exits, and subtle redirections that keep momentum for the closer. The net effect is elegant difficulty—runs that look inevitable when they work.

Variety is deliberate. Expect mirrored directions across the jump line, switch both ways, and grab catalog depth used to differentiate tricks with similar rotation counts. Even when he escalates to higher-degree spins, he protects axis integrity so landings arrive bolts rather than scrappy. The style cue for viewers is simple: minimal arm noise, quiet skis at takeoff, and grabs that stay pinned long enough to be unmistakable from the chair and on broadcast replays.

Resilience, filming, and influence

Wells’ influence extends beyond the bib. He has been a fixture in major film projects and brand storytelling, where his contest-polished technique translates to natural features and backcountry step-downs without losing identity. The curated environment of the Jossi Wells Invitational has become a southern-hemisphere anchor for the sport, encouraging riders to prioritize form, creativity, and peer-judged impact alongside degree-chasing. That platform matters as much as any medal, because it sustains a progression culture that values execution and originality.

His durability is another throughline. Across injuries, judging evolutions, and equipment shifts, he has repeatedly rebuilt trick families rather than leaning on dated habits. The Aspen 2016 gold arrived late in a long pursuit—proof that patient iteration pays off. In later seasons he has pivoted fluidly between selective contests, filming blocks, and hosting duties, modeling a sustainable pro template that younger athletes can emulate.

Geography that built the toolkit

Place is inseparable from Wells’ skiing. The Wānaka basin—anchored by Cardrona—provided repeatable park builds, a national-team ecosystem, and a community of high-level riders cycling through each winter. Repetition on consistent features yields the calm timing visible in his takeoffs and the confidence to switch directions without second-guessing speed. North American seasons layered in the altitude, cold smoke, and media spotlight of Aspen’s Buttermilk, where he ultimately seized gold. European glacier laps added long in-runs and different light, expanding the contexts in which his form-first approach could thrive.

That geography also underwrites his invitational. By staging the event across Cardrona and Treble Cone, Wells leverages New Zealand’s terrain variety—standardized park lines, wind-read tactics, and natural transitions—so invited riders can display complete toolkits. The venues he knows best are the ones he uses to elevate others.

Equipment and partners: practical takeaways

Wells’ long-time ski partnership with Atomic centers on predictable pop and edge durability that hold up to high-volume rail sessions and finals-day jump repetition. Energy backing from Monster Energy and optics from Oakley have been visible through the arc of his career, aligning him with brands that anchor both competition and filming calendars. For skiers translating lessons to their own setups, the message is to choose a lively, balanced park ski, mount close to true center to preserve mirrored-spin confidence and switch takeoffs, and pair it with a binding package that keeps natural flex underfoot so landings stay composed when cross-loaded.

Venue choice functions like equipment. If you can access repeatable jump lanes—Aspen-style standardized features or Cardrona-style winter builds—you can rehearse the micro-beats that define Wells’ look: quiet approach, delayed spin, and grabs held to the bolts. Tuning consistency matters as much as model choice; identical speed reads from training to finals are a hidden edge.

Why fans and progressing skiers care

Jossi Wells matters because he proves that the sport’s highest competitive achievements and its most enduring cultural contributions are not mutually exclusive. The X Games slopestyle gold at Aspen validates his contest ceiling; the hardware across three X Games disciplines confirms breadth; the Sochi 2014 fourth place in halfpipe shows Olympic-level poise; and the invitational he built demonstrates stewardship of freeskiing’s creative core. Watch him for tall, quiet approaches, long-held grabs that reshape a trick’s silhouette, and run construction that reads beautifully to judges and audiences. Study him if you’re progressing: mirror spin directions, treat grab standards as non-negotiable, and build a trick library that can live on a scorecard and on film. Wells remains a north star for how to be both a champion and a custodian of freeski style.