Amina Nwosu

About

Amina Nwosu carves through the mountain air, her board slicing ice like butter. She's got a mouth full of colorful curses and a pocket full of lucky charms, each one a memento from a past victory.

Backstory

Three abandoned oil rigs jutted from the frozen Nigerian coast like metal tombstones, and that's where Amina Nwosu first learned to snowboard—on makeshift slopes built from industrial scrap and prayers. Her father Erik had turned their family's offshore drilling failure into the continent's most unlikely winter sports training ground, welding together a maze of pipes and platforms that mimicked mountain terrain. When her champion sister Lira shattered her spine attempting the rig's infamous "Pipeline Drop," the pendant she'd carved from a piece of the original drill bit became Amina's talisman. Nobody expected the girl who learned to carve turns on rusted steel and artificial snow to dominate the pristine slopes of international competition, but Amina's unconventional training had forged something unbreakable in her spirit.

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