From spending 320 days a year training in the mountains, to starring as a child actor in a Hong Kong-directed film, to making history with fellow mainland snow-based star Eileen Gu Ailing, here’s what you need to know about the teenager teammates call “Big Brother Ming” for his comparative expertise on the snow.
Biography
Su Yiming was born on February 18, 2004 in Jilin City, Jilin Province, to snowboarding-loving parents Su Qun and Li Lei. Su recalls them taking him to his first snowboarding class aged four – a “love at first sight” moment. Riding goofy, he began to show promise on the slopes within three years.
Constantly trying to hit technically difficult jumps and longer airtime, Su was identified by the national team at 14, soon joining the senior training set-up and whisked into international competition.
He decided to pursue a professional snowboarding career and began dreaming of an Olympic Games spot in the same year.
Su is coached by Japanese veteran rider Yasuhiro Sato, who also oversees 20-year-old World Cup gold medallist and X Games silver medallist prodigy Leila Iwabuchi. He can be seen speaking Japanese in Sato’s vlogs.
Joining such high-level company required serious physical and mental demands, which initially led to failed jumps and struggles with consistency in his opening events.
He eventually introduced himself as a legitimate domestic contender at the National Youth Games in Shaanxi and an international one at the FIS Phoenix Pyeongchang big air in South Korea in 2019, both of which he won.
Aside from his monumental World Cup win in Steamboat, US, he has finished top 10 at multiple FIS-sanctioned events.
Upon competing in four countries and five World Cups in 110 days, he returned home in January as a “taller, stronger and more confident” athlete.
According to his Olympics page, Su idolises 10-time X Games champion Mark McMorris, of Canada, who he is likely to face in Beijing, and slopestyle maverick Luke Winkelmann, of the US.
He is sponsored by Adidas, Oakley and Burton Snowboards, among others.
Snowboarding trailblazer
“The first person to complete a backslide 1980 Indy Crail in snowboarding [male] is Su Yiming (China) at the Prime Park Sessions, Stubai, Austria on 28 October 2021,” read the Guinness World Records certificate retroactively presented to Su in January.
Given that nobody had performed it before, it is impossible to fully grasp how technically tricky the move is, but mainland media described it as “ultra-difficult” and “insane”. Su is also the youngest snowboarder to enter the books since 1980.
But it was just the start of his record-breaking pursuits. After landing China’s first backside triple cork 1620 mute last year, this month he completed the country’s first Cab 1800, of which only a handful in the world have done – Su being the youngest.
In December, he became the first rider to land the 1800s two ways (1800 Indy grab and frontside 1800 tail grab) in an FIS competition at the Big Air World Cup in Colorado.
Leading up to the event, he filmed Chinese Olympic skiing hopeful Gu nailing the freeski double cork 1440 in training, the first woman to do so, also performing it on her way to winning her respective World Cup title.China pride and training
Su’s devotion to his craft is second to none, and is primarily fuelled by his desire to put China firmly on the snowboarding map.
Though he is not the most active on social media, his Weibo updates and state media interviews often include phrases such as “striving for glory for my country” and “letting our national anthem be played around the world through my utmost efforts”.
Su outlined his tiresome training routines in an interview with Cyrus Janssen, an American content creator specialising in Chinese culture, in January. He had called his World Cup win “a dream come true – I still can’t really believe I’m here right now”.
“I started training a lot, almost spent like 300, 320 days every year to focus on snowboarding,” he said.
“I met my coach and we started training and working hard together. I was almost the first up the mountains and trained until the sun went down and the [slopes] closed. It’s been a good two years for me – I learned a lot every day, and I try to learn new tricks. Once you focus on what you do and get the trick, the feeling is incredible. I’ve never felt that in other sports. I think that’s why I like snowboarding so much.
“I also spend a lot of time in the gym, because we are hitting big jumps and when you land, there’s a lot of pressure on your body so you have to be strong and have power. A clean landing is really important, so I want to have enough power to land clean and get points. That’s how I train: gym, airbags and mountains, back and forth.”
As for his imminent Olympics debut, Su wrote on his Weibo that he has “never been the kind of person who is willing to focus on one thing”, but because it is being held in Beijing, “I will devote myself to training and preparation”.
“I also hope to participate in more high-level international competitions and the next Winter Olympics in Italy, and continue to make movies. I want people to see more than one side of me – that I am not only a snowboarder, and I am not afraid of any challenge,” he added.
The Taking of Tiger Mountain
As if a potentially generation-defining snowboarding career were not enough, Su is also a former child actor. He has since put his big screen career on hold to focus on being an athlete.
Su’s most notable role was playing Little Shuan Zi in Hong Kong director Tsui Hark’s The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014), based on novelist Qu Bo’s renowned Tracks in the Snowy Forest.
He has also reportedly featured in Rock Kid (2018), and TV programmes A Splendid Life in Beijing (2017) and The Wolf (2020), as well as playing himself in multiple Chinese snow sports documentaries.
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