Plot twist: the Jakarta girl who now lives on a mountain in Switzerland went back to a TV studio in her hometown, and I wore indoor shoes.
On Monday, 25 May 2026, I visited the Antara Heritage Center (AHC) in Jakarta to sit down with Antara TV, Indonesia's national news agency. The Sports Desk (Redaksi Olahraga) called the segment "Zazi Finds Her Passion in Snowboarding." I'd call it "Zazi Tries Not to Say 'um' on National Television."
Why would an Indonesian girl pick snow?
It's the question I always get, and honestly, I get it from myself too. I grew up in Jakarta, a city where the only thing that freezes is the air conditioning. I told Antara how it started: I first stood on a snowboard at seven years old, and I haven't stopped since.
Indonesia has no winter, no Olympic snowboard history, and no halfpipes. I like to think of that as an "untapped market."
Since then I've trained in Andorra, Spain and France. Eventually that wasn't enough, so I packed up and moved to Switzerland. You can read how that went in Adios Barcelona, Hola Laax!
Why LAAX? Because it's the epicenter of freestyle
LAAX, in the Swiss canton of Graubünden, is the freestyle capital of Europe. It's been voted World's Best Freestyle Resort nine years in a row. Everyone in the village seems to own a snowboard, a skateboard, or both. It's my kind of place.
And then there's the superpipe, which deserves its own section.
The biggest superpipe on the planet
The LAAX superpipe is the largest halfpipe in the world, and the numbers sound made up:
- 220 metres long. That's more than two football fields.
- 22 metres wide.
- About 7 metres tall. That's roughly a two-storey house made of snow.
Dropping in feels like skating inside a frozen wave. From the top, the bottom looks very far away. From the bottom, the top looks even further, and that's the bit I'm supposed to fly over. I wrote about it in My All Round Training at the Laax Freestyle Academy.
Training with an Olympic champion
Here's the part I still find hard to believe. My coach is Iouri Podladtchikov, the 2014 Winter Olympic gold medallist in the halfpipe at Sochi. The man won Olympic gold on a snow wall. Now he tells me to "bend my knees more."
Iouri knows the pipe as well as anyone alive. His coaching is part technique and part patience, and he says it all without laughing at me. (I did catch him smiling once, after I landed something. I'm counting it.) You can see us cross-training in Skateboarding at Laax Freestyle Academy with Iouri.
Why this matters
I'm not doing this for the cameras (although I wouldn't say no to a ring light). I'm a Jakarta kid chasing a sport my country has never had on the Olympic stage, and I want to help change that. Each time someone at home hears "Indonesian snowboarder" and thinks "that's a thing?", the dream gets a little bit closer. Read more in Indonesia's Winter Olympic Dream Nears Reality.
Watch the full interview
You can also watch the segment on Antara News and see the photos on Antara Foto.
Thank you to the Antara team for making a nervous snowboarder feel at home. If you've got a "weird" dream, keep it. Weird dreams make the best stories.
See you in the pipe,
Zazi ❄️
PS. Follow the adventures of Zazi, Snowboard Girl & Indonesian Model, on Instagram: Click Here!
