MILAN — While spending most of the year 2025 rehabbing multiple injuries, snowboarder Yu Seung-eun kept wondering why she even picked up the sport in the first place. After all, she was essentially forced into snowboard when her mother signed her up for a camp while she was in elementary school. Up until then, Yu had been playing table tennis, with an eye on developing into a more competitive junior player. Now in 2026, Yu has a much different perspective on her early career switch. On Feb. 9, Yu won the bronze medal in the women’s big air at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, reaching such dizzying heights in a sport that she didn’t think she was very good at. “Now that I am here, I am glad I made that switch to snowboarding,” Yu said at a press conference for South Korean journalists in Milan on Friday. The 18-year-old had spent her Olympics in Livigno, some 140 kilometers north of Milan, while competing in the big air and then the slopestyle event. “But throughout 2025, it was just a series of thoughts, like, ‘I shouldn’t have picked up snowboarding,'” Yu said. “I didn’t really have
