Josie Baff is an Australian snowboarder that competes in the snowboard cross discipline. She was selected for her first Australian Olympic team for the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.
Josie made history when she became Australia’s first-ever Winter Youth Olympic Games Champion after winning gold in the Snowboard Cross event at the Lausanne 2020 Youth Games.
Born in Cooma in the Snowy Mountain region of New South Wales, Josie started skiing when she was just two and was snowboarding at five. Her father was a snowboard instructor, and she spent her childhood in Jindabyne, Saint Moritz, and Mammoth where he taught snowboarding camps.
In 2015, Josie began to take to snowboarding and had a breakout year in 2019, claiming silver at the Australian New Zealand Cup, bronze at the NorAm Cup, and then gold at the Canadian National Junior Championships.
In January 2020, Josie competed at the European Cup event in Puy St. Vincent where she won bronze. A week later she became Youth Olympic Winter Games snowboard cross champion – just a few days shy of her 17th birthday.
The young rider made her senior world cup debut at Bakuriani, Georgia in March 2021 where she placed an impressive 15th.
Josie recorded three top-ten finishes on the 2021-22 world cup circuit, with a ninth-place finish in Montafon, Austria, and a ninth and 10th placing in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
On debut at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, Josie achieved a top 20 finish as an Olympic Finalist – achieving 18th place overall in the women’s snowboard cross. Her achievements in the individual event saw her named to the second Australian mixed team for snowboard cross, competing alongside fellow Team NSWIS athlete, Adam Lambert. The pair did not finish (DNF), posting an equal 13th rank after a crash in the event.