Born and raised in Newport Beach, Calif., Chanelle Sladics naturally grew up skateboarding and surfing. She spent her early years skiing as a weekend warrior at Bear Mountain and Mammoth and didn’t pick up a snowboard until a broken arm kept her off skis.
Sladics was already a sponsored skateboarder through an all-girls board shop when the shop took her up to the mountains for snowboard lessons. After only three days on the board she skipped a lesson to enter a slopestyle pro/am contest and walked away with a second-place-finish.
From there, Sladics dominated the junior tour and entered the professional ranks soon after. Contending with a long history of injuries – from a broken toe to a broken collarbone – Sladics has worked through the pain for some solid contest results. In 2007 Sladics suffered a back injury after a hard bail during X Games practice, but she battled back and landed on the podium with a bronze medal.
Despite a slew of other top-three finishes, including the Burton US Open in 2009 and the Roxy Chicken Jam in 2008, the yoga-loving Sladics still considers her X Games bronze as the pinnacle of her career.
