Shannon Dunn-Downing

Shannon Dunn-Downing is an American snowboarder born on November 26, 1972, who started snowboarding in 1988 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where she grew up, and began competing in the early 1990s. She received a bronze medal in the halfpipe at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, becoming the first American woman to win a medal in snowboarding, and finished fifth at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. She won a gold medal at the first Winter X Games in California in 1997 and again in 2001, and is a two-time ISF World Halfpipe Champion. She was the first woman to land several difficult halfpipe tricks in competition, including a McTwist in 1994, and she retired from professional snowboarding in the mid-2000s.