The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games will be the fourth Winter Olympics for Cai, one of China's leading snowboard halfpipe athletes.

Cai was born in Harbin, in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, in 1993. She began snowboarding at 10. "Snowboarding allows me to see more of the world's snowcapped mountains, and to see more possibilities in myself," she says, adding she enjoys the feeling of "flying over the snow."

In 2009, Cai claimed the gold medal during the FIS (International Ski Federation) Snowboard Junior World Championships, in Nagano, Japan. It was the first gold medal for a Chinese snowboarder at the championships.

The next year, she competed in her first Winter Olympics, in Vancouver, Canada, and she ranked 23rd. In 2014, she ranked sixth during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Four years later, during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Cai missed out on a medal due to a failure during her performance. She finished fifth. "That was the time when I felt like everything was at its best, and I had high expectations of myself," she says. That failure was a hard blow for her, but she never gave up her faith in snowboarding.

Cai made a strong return during the 2019-2020 sports season. She won the women's snowboard halfpipe crown at the 2020 US Open, at the Vail Ski Resort, in Colorado, on February 29, 2020. She made history by becoming the first Chinese to win gold in the 38-year history of the snowboarding competition.

With two world championships (in 2015 and 2017) and 12 World Cup titles already in her cabinet, Cai finally added the coveted US Open women's superpipe trophy to her collection, during her sixth appearance at the high-profile event.

With the Beijing Winter Olympics just around the corner, Cai says, "I feel confident, and I will go all out and have no regrets … I have a more peaceful mind than before. I just want to show the best of myself during the Beijing Winter Olympics."

Photos Supplied by VCG

(Women of China English Monthly December 2021 issue)