The Best Female Action Sports Athlete ESPY Award is an annual award honoring the achievements of a female athlete from the world of

action sports Action sports, adventure sports or extreme sports are activities perceived as involving a high degree of risk. These activities often involve speed, height, a high level of physical exertion and highly specialized gear. Extreme tourism overl ...

. It was first awarded as part of the

ESPY Award An ESPY Award (short for Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Award) is an accolade currently presented by the American broadcast television network ABC, and previously ESPN (as of the 2017 ESPY Awards the latter still airs them in the for ...

s in 2004 after the non-gender-specific Best Action Sports Athlete ESPY Award was presented the previous two years (with the American snowboarder

Kelly Clark Kelly Clark (born July 26, 1983) is an American snowboarder who won halfpipe gold at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Clark was born in Newport, Rhode Island. She started snowboarding when she was 7 years old, began competing in 1999, and became a me ...

receiving the 2002 award). It is given to the female, irrespective of nationality or sport contested, adjudged to be the best action sports athlete in a given calendar year. Balloting for the award is undertaken by fans over the Internet from between three and five choices selected by the ESPN Select Nominating Committee, which is composed of a panel of experts. It is conferred in July to reflect performance and achievement over the preceding twelve months. The inaugural winner of the award was the American

wakeboarder Wakeboarding is a water sport in which the rider, standing on a wakeboard (a board with foot bindings), is towed behind a motorboat across its wake and especially up off the crest in order to perform aerial maneuvers. A hallmark of wakeboardin ...

Dallas Friday. During 2003 and 2004, Friday won 12 of the available 14 professional women's titles, including national and world championships. She became the first wakeboarder to be nominated for, and hence to win, an ESPY Award. Athletes from the United States have won more times than any other nationality with ten (three times to snowboarders Jamie Anderson and Chloe Kim), followed by Australians with three, two of which went to the surfer Stephanie Gilmore. Snowboarders are most successful sportspeople, with eleven awards, followed by surfers with four. It was not awarded in

2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in t ...

due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. The most recent winner of the award was Chinese freestyle skier

Eileen Gu Eileen Feng Gu (born September 3, 2003), also known by her Chinese name Gu Ailing ( zh, s=谷爱凌), is an American-born freestyle skier. She has competed for China in halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air events since 2019. At age 18, Gu becam ...

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretariat; The global monkeypo ...

Winners

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, ! scope=row , , , Snowboarding (

slopestyle Slopestyle is a winter sport in which athletes ski or snowboard down a course including a variety of obstacles including rails, jumps and other terrain park features. Points are scored for amplitude, originality and quality of tricks. The disc ...

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Skiing Skiing is the use of skis to glide on snow. Variations of purpose include basic transport, a recreational activity, or a competitive winter sport. Many types of competitive skiing events are recognized by the International Olympic Committee ( ...

Carissa Moore Carissa Kainani Moore (born August 27, 1992) is a Hawaiian American Olympian, world champion surfer and activist. She was the first-ever winner of the Olympic Gold Medal in women's short board surfing in 2020. She was also the 2011, 2013, 20 ...

() – Surfing

Zoi Sadowski-Synnott Zoi Katherine Sadowski-Synnott (, born 6 March 2001) is a New Zealand snowboarder, specialising in slopestyle and big air competitions. She won the gold medal in the women's slopestyle and silver in the big air at the 2022 Winter Olympics, b ...

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Rayssa Leal Jhulia Rayssa Mendes Leal (born 4 January 2008) is a Brazilian skateboarder who won a silver medal in women’s street skateboarding at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Skateboarding career Leal was born and lives in Imperatriz, the second largest cit ...

() – Skateboarding

( – Snowboarding , , -

References

External links

* {{featured list ESPY Awards Awards established in 2004 Sports awards honoring women Women's sports in the United States

Winners

See also

References

External links