INTERVIEW
Laura Klonowski | 06/04/2026
27-year-old Jake Pates has already had a taste of success, winning two gold medals at the 2016 Youth Olympic Games, competing in the Halfpipe at the 2018 Olympics, and his iconic return to the pipe in the 2026 Winter Olympics, putting retirement well and truly where it belongs: on the back burner. Having quickly risen to global fame thanks to his Snowboarding success, Jake’s charmed both the Olympic village and audiences further afield as he navigates confidence, passion and joy on and off the snow.
For Jake, the experience of competing in Milan, Italy, for the 2026 Winter Olympics has been especially exciting as he shares his love for the city, Italian culture and food. “It’s been so fun. We’ve been doing tons of media stuff and running around meeting people. I love this place. Milan is beautiful. The food is insane. It’s quite incredible. It’s definitely different from America”.
As our conversation deepens, it’s easy to see that Jake has sacrificed and worked tirelessly to get to where he is right now in his profession. Having begun training at a young age, it’s glaringly obvious that the sacrifices he has made along the way to ensure he is always putting snowboarding at the forefront. With his passion for board sports evidently starting at a young age, he explains how his parents' love for winter sports helped ignite his own. “My dad and mum had both snowboarded and skied for a while before I came into the picture. They met in Colorado, in college at CU Boulder, and they have the coolest pictures of themselves, back in the day, with all this old snowboard gear. They were actually into snowboarding and skiing, but I started skateboarding when I think I was four. My dad’s buddy is like this master carpenter and architect, and we’d always work with him to make different skateboards and ramps”
Jake has some amazing early memories of those skateboarding days with his elder brother, Cole, and the mini ramp built in their garage. “We’d wake up in the morning and skate for like 30 minutes before we went to school. I think having that as a young kid, as an outlet and something new and exciting, was something I could do and watch myself progress in and get better at. It kind of sparked this flame in me and this love for board sports”
But his love for skating before school was only the beginning, as he recalls his first taste of snowboarding, which further fanned the flame inside of him, “My mum took me snowboarding one day. It was a learn-to-ski day at school, and all the kids would go with instructors, but I told my mum I wanted to snowboard. She ended up saying, “All right, well, I’m just going to take you, and we’re going to do our own thing, because you don’t have school today”. So she took me snowboarding and taught me how. And really, from then on, it was the only thing I wanted to do.”
For Jake, it’s the support and encouragement from his parents that is evident in supporting his success and love of the sport, with Jake recalling, “My dad would drive us around during the summer, and we’d go to all types of different skate parks. And then, during school time, he would come knock on the classroom door on Friday, take me out snowboarding. I would snowboard on Saturday and Sunday, and then go back to school on Monday. We did that for a few years, probably until I was, like, 12. I remember at that point, I was doing small competitions, kids' competitions. So I ended up doing online school, before I went to this ski and snowboard Academy in Vail. Shout out, Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy. We would go with the coaches of the club in the morning in a van to the mountain during the school year, and we would snowboard from 9am to like 11am, and then we would have lunch, and start school from like 1pm until about 6pm, and I did that for a few years. I ended up doing well in events, and I got on the pro circuit, got some sponsors, and then just kind of continued to snowboard and chase this dream of going to the Olympics one day, and then, back in 2018, ended up qualifying”.
Full look, Dolce&Gabbana, Shoes, Corneliani.
Total look, Dsquared2.
Now, a highly decorated professional snowboarder, Jake, is open about the challenges and often fear that come with competing and how pushing to do better than before can itself pose challenges for both your mental and physical health. “You’re having to do new things, better things, go higher, go faster every time, at every event and during training, because everyone is pushing so hard. So, it’s constant fear, and it’s a constant challenge to manage the fear, to allow yourself to progress in the sport”
It’s clear that Jake realises that this can take a toll and the part it played in him stepping away from the sport for a while, with him explaining, “I think for a while, I was able to manage it, but it also created a lot of turmoil in my life. As a young kid, too, I feel like my upbringing was such that I had to really work for everything. It didn’t come easy. There were some things that did, but when I compare myself to everyone else around and competing at a young age, it didn’t come easily. So, I had to push myself through the fear, and it ended up creating a ton of turmoil in my life from a mental and mindset standpoint. It didn’t really get much easier. I think I just became a little bit better at, like, shutting it out. And it was a massive reason I stepped away from the sport when I did, but it was also a really big piece of me being able to come back and get to the point where I made the Olympic team. I owe it to being able to manage that stress and that fear, and I’ve been working with a mental performance coach, by the name of Brandon Epstein, for the last seven months. We work on all types of stuff, but a lot of it is feeling the emotions of that fear prior to doing the trick and processing it. It’s about surrendering to it and becoming okay with that fear, pushing through it and then flipping it on its head and trying to feel the emotions of doing that with as much fun and enjoyment as possible. So, accepting the risks, accepting the fear, the doubts that you have in your mind that are brought on because of the fear feeling, and then switching it on its head”.
After picking up an injury, it’s his mental strength that shines through when making the decision to return to the sport. He loves having been forced to take 5 years away from the sport. “Essentially, I was off doing other things, trying to figure out life without snowboarding. And it was really tough because it was my identity. But with that being said, I probably had trained for about a year, I spent all my money trying to do it, borrowing money from my family, my friends, to go to these camps and train before I got that injury. But to be completely honest, nothing good comes easy in life, and I’m really grateful for all of those times. To put a bunch of time and effort into that, make this massive shift in my psychological paradigm, so to speak, jump back into sport, and then get shut down was this other life lesson in and of itself. I’ve had a lot of those times, a lot of injuries in my career, and those are the moments that make all of the successes and the wins and the ups to the downs beautiful”.
It was these challenging times that pushed Jake to set up his Happy Healthy Brain Foundation. “When I look back now, I wasn’t anywhere near a position that would make sense for someone to start a nonprofit. It’s no longer in existence, but I would love to bring it back. It was tough. It was a grind, but I learned so much, and I’m really grateful and thankful to everyone who was a part of it and believed in the mission and was trying to help. The concept of trying to improve concussion protocols in sports with a new, super disruptive and quite incredible technology is a lot harder than you would think it is. Essentially, it’s like a mini battle against big medicine. I spent probably three years, close to $100,000, which was all my savings at the time, trying to make this work and give back, because I noticed this issue of subjectivity and data. That was essentially the only measure being used for the evaluation of concussion recovery. And so here was this technology that I was able to use, and you know, it had really helped in the process of recovery from the concussions I’ve had. I saw this solution to this massive problem, right? But it was too big an undertaking for me to take at the time, and I didn’t get as far as I would have liked to”.
It’s clear from our conversation that Jake is grounded and grateful for everything he’s achieved and for all it’s taught him over the years. Being so deeply rooted in his family back home, and as he ages, he is confident in the man he’s becoming and open to new avenues. “I have just a gratefulness for being alive. I think at a later date, I’ll have to write a book or something, because I’ve done so much crazy shit and have had the most insane experiences. Travelling the world, snowboarding and sharing these experiences with the community is just the craziest contrast of life experience. The shift is my why. When I was competing, before I was really focused on external validation from results, from sponsors and getting paid, and focusing on the medals, I thought I needed the medal no matter what. And now I’m focusing on all these external things to make me happy and justify my effort and justify my reason for snowboarding, but the shift came with all the craziness and time off to just restructure my why. I know now I love it and enjoy it more than anything else, because the opportunity is so incredible to be doing this”.
Photographer Pietro Groff @pietro.groff
Styling Jessica Iorio represented by W ARTISTS @iorio_jessica @w_artist_mgmt
Grooming Danilo Ferrigno represented by W-M Management @daniloferrigno_ @wmmanagement
Agent Ilana Taub @ilanared
Fashion Assistant Giorgia Grasso @giooiggr
Words Laura Klonowski
Total look, Corneliani.
Look, Dsquared2. Belt, Missoni. Shoes, Trussardi.
