Athlete Profile

X Games Champ Megan Oldham Builds The Impossible

By Nicole Dreon

Long before Megan Oldham made history...

...at X Games Aspen 2023, she was just a kid from the cold flatlands of Ontario. A very motivated kid.

The Oldhams’ garage roof didn’t just protect cars through harsh winters, it also served as a literal launchpad. The snowy yard below became her training ground, where she and her older brother, Bruce, crafted a makeshift terrain park with whatever they could find. It wasn’t elaborate, but it was theirs. A scrappy setup where every jump was a leap of faith.

Her dad wasn’t always amused. “He’d come home, see two little ski tracks going off the roof and be like, ‘What are you doing?’” Megan says, laughing at the memory. But she didn’t have much choice. The nearest terrain park might as well have been on another planet, and the precocious kid wasn’t the type to wait around. If the world didn’t hand her a slope, she would build one.

A Late Start

Image ©Mark Kohlman/X Games

Most athletes start early in the world of freestyle skiing, sometimes before they can even walk. Megan’s path was different. She didn’t start seriously in the discipline until age 15, late by most standards.

Bruce nudged her into it. More than just her brother, Bruce is a hyper instigator-in-chief -- a skier, MMA fighter, ultramarathoner and occasional social media personality who thrived on challenges. Megan had been a gymnast and figure skater and was familiar with the aerial awareness required in skiing. But freestyle was a whole new language she had to learn from scratch.

She trained at Mount St. Louis Moonstone, a ski hill with just 550 vertical feet. Megan made it work, and her humble backyard beginnings fueled an ability to visualize what’s possible. When she earned the Sarah Burke Scholarship to Momentum Ski Camps in Whistler, BC, she began to dream bigger. That summer, she scribbled a note in her journal, “Be the first woman to land a triple cork.”

At the time, it seemed far-fetched. Women in freestyle skiing were still mastering doubles, and triples were uncharted territory. But Megan wasn’t interested in the possible. She was drawn to the impossible.

X Games Aspen 2023: A World’s First

Images ©Joshua Duplechian/X Games

Under the lights at X Games Aspen 2023, Megan stood at the top of the Big Air course, the lightest skier in the lineup at just 115 pounds. On her third attempt, Oldham stomped a triple cork. It was the first triple in women’s skiing history and the first triple ever landed by a woman in a contest, ski or snowboard. And it was perfect. The crowd erupted and a 50, the max score, lit up the scoreboard.

“I was definitely scared, especially attempting the first one,” Oldham, now 23, admits. “I was like, Oh gosh, I don’t know how this is gonna go. I was nervous -- mostly about getting hurt in front of everyone. I always feel bad when people watch you get hurt.”

They didn’t watch her get hurt, they watched her make history. She backed up that Big Air gold by dominating Slopestyle the next day, scoring her third X Games gold and 7th medal overall (earned consecutively in her last 7 starts).

A Secret Kept

Megan hadn’t attempted the triple cork to snow before that day. In the months leading up to Aspen, she had traveled to Australia with her coach, JF Cusson, and Bruce to train into an airbag. She landed several in practice but told no one -- not her competitors, not her friends, not even the rest of her family.

“You’re more focused in the atmosphere of competition, and I thought I’d feel less scared to try it then because it would be more in the moment,” Oldham says, explaining why she waited until X Games to attempt it on snow. “If I did one in training and landed weird, I might have been freaked out and not wanted to do it again.”

The risk paid off. The moment she landed, Bruce was sprinting toward her. “When someone grabbed me from behind, I knew it was him,” Megan says. “Having him and my mom there made it all feel even more special.”

An Abrupt Halt

In October 2023, Megan’s ascension came to an abrupt halt. She tore her left meniscus during a competition in Europe, an injury that required surgery and months of rehabilitation. For a life about movement, the stillness was a shock.

“It was hard,” she says. “I had all these goals for the season, and suddenly I couldn’t do anything. You go from this high-energy, fast-paced life to sitting at home, just going to the gym every day. It’s tough to adjust.”

But Megan found a silver lining. During her recovery, she produced “Counting to Three,” a short film documentary tracing her journey from backyard jumps to X Games history. The film wasn’t just about her -- it was about her family and the women pushing the boundaries of freestyle skiing. “I wanted to show how much progression we’ve seen in women’s skiing, especially this last decade,” she says.

What’s Next

As Megan prepares for a return to X Games at Aspen 2025, she’s not aiming for another triple cork, at least not yet. Instead, she floats different ideas, like maybe becoming the first woman to land three double corks during a slopestyle run, and perhaps in three different directions. It’s a technical and creative goal that requires a different kind of focus.

“I’ve been telling myself I need to spend more time progressing,” she says. “The competition schedule doesn’t leave much room for that, so I'm going to take some more time in the season to do some training camps and work on new stuff.”

Megan Oldham Bio Blast

DOB: May 12, 2001, age 23
Medals from 7 straight XG starts, including Big Air and Slopestyle gold at Aspen 2023. Total: 3 gold (also Norway 2020 Big Air), 2 silver, 2 bronze.
Only woman skier to land a triple, doing it in Aspen 2023 Big Air. First woman to land a triple in a ski or snowboard comp. (Women snowboarders began landing contest triples the night after Oldham at XG Aspen 2023, and Kokomo Murase landed the first true triple cork in a women’s snowboard comp in Dec. 2023.)
Megan had studied XG champ Bobby Brown’s triple cork 1440, and her version of it was so similar that multiple XG vets weighed in comparing her to Brown. Even Bobby himself was watching, commenting on Instagram: “I was losing it watching this live! That couldn’t have been better. Wow, that whole contest was unreal.”
At the forefront of women’s progression for years: At XG Aspen 2022, Megan became the first woman to land back-to-back double corks in a ski contest.
Released “Counting to Three,” a ski doc chronicling her journey to the triple, in Dec. 2024.
Check out a young Megan’s video application for the Sarah Burke scholarship at Momentum Ski Camps back in 2016. The adorable 15-year-old edited it herself.
Surgery for a torn left meniscus in Nov. 2023. Didn’t start skiing again until Feb. 2024 and missed the entire contest season.
Splits time between her parents in Parry Sound, Ontario (parents are divorced), and an apartment in Whistler. Also rented an apartment in Innsbruck over the summer to practice on an airbag there.
Instagram: @megan.oldhamm