"I've asked for my exams to be postponed because I'm going to be an Olympian."

BarcelonaSnowboard, skateboard And surfing. Three spectacular sports, ideal for brave people who enjoy adventure. Three sports that involve taking risks and traveling many kilometers in search of snow or the perfect wave. Three sports that appear in the social media biography of Nora Cornell (Girona, 2005), a young snowboarder who is making her Olympic debut. She has practiced all three, but excels at one.

When she was little, Nora used to skateboardThen came surfing. But his destiny has become intertwined with it.snowboardSnowboarding, a sport her father had practiced when he was an instructor in Andorra, was initially little more than a way to enjoy himself when he traveled from Girona to the Pyrenees with his family. A way to have a good time, nothing more. But Nora wasn't like the other kids riding snowboards. "I need to have a table under my feet, whether it's on the snow or in the water. I like the feeling of competing. And with what I do, sometimes I feel like I get very close to the sensation of flying," she explains. At 20, she's making her Olympic debut and is still amazed. "It's hard to believe it's real," she says. She'll debut this Sunday in the events of big air, one of the two disciplines for which he has qualified.

Thesnowboard It's already a sport with a certain tradition, but it's still unknown to many people, who get lost with so many English words. What does it consist of? "In thesnowboard (skiing on a table) there are three disciplines: the halfpipe, he big air and theslopestyleI dedicate myself to big airwhich involves taking a big jump with a trick. And I also do slopestyle"It's a platform where you descend and have a kind of railing that allows you to perform jumps and tricks. The entire routine is evaluated. It's a sport that depends on the judges' scores and evaluations; it's very spectacular," he explains. And one of the keys is, basically, not to fall. "I joke that my goal at the Games is to land on my feet. It's about landing perfectly, nailing the jumps," he says.

Nora is young. At 20, she's aware that she'll likely be able to put up a bigger fight in the future: "I aspire to a medal at the 2030 Games," she says. And that's despite the fact that many participants in her sport are minors. She moves on tosnow and moves on toskateboardas she herself admits. "I was very young when I was already competing in skateboard“I was very young, only 9 years old, but I was competing against women in their 30s. It was difficult being a little girl who was good and competing like that. I struggled to keep up; I couldn't process it all. Besides, falling on concrete hurts. So I switched to snow,” she explains. In between, however, she also surfed when her family lived for periods of time in Hawaii, in the United States.

At 12, Nora decided to compete in snowPartly because she saw a triumphant Catalan woman on television: Queralt Castellet. "I remember sitting on the sofa watching Queralt shine and feeling motivated. That's when I knew I wanted to go to the Games and give it my all. As a child, I couldn't even imagine that someone from here could go so far, but Queralt proved me wrong. I admire her a lot; she's mentally very strong. It's incredible that she's been competing for so many years." At 38, she'll be experiencing her sixth Games in Italy.

Cornell lives for sports. When summer arrives in Catalonia, she goes to compete in New Zealand or Argentina. It's hard for her to see her family. But she continues her studies remotely and is currently pursuing a double degree in law and business administration. "I've asked for some exams to be postponed because I'm going to be an Olympian," explains the young athlete, who is confident that her performances will help snow sports grow. "We don't even have facilities in the Pyrenees. Nothing at all. We have an Olympic medalist, but nothing has changed. Not a single place to train... Perhaps we should have one by now, shouldn't we? It would be nice if there were investment in thesnowboard"," she concludes. Catalan sport will have two Catalan women competing in the three different disciplines of snowboardHowever, in our country, it's impossible to compete due to a lack of facilities. This is a problem that neither Queralt Castellet nor Nora Cornell has been able to stop.