On board for the Olympics
By the time he got to see an Olympic gold medal up close and personal, the seed had already been sown somewhere in Darren Gardner’s mind.
Becky Kellar had just returned from Salt Lake 2002 and was at Burlington’s Rolling Meadows Public School to show off her gold medal. The Spectator snapped a photo of Tara McNeil, Meredith Megarry and Gardner, a promising 11-year-old snowboarder, admiring the gold medal — Canada’s first in women’s hockey — that Kellar had won a few weeks earlier.
“Really, I had no idea at the time, but the idea was already planted when snowboarding, my passion, was introduced to the Olympics in 1998,” says the Burlington native who’s now 27 and heading to his first Games with Canada’s alpine snowboarding team.
Gardner’s parents, Donna and Bruce, had him and his older sister, Brianne, on skis at an early age on the slopes of Ellicottville’s Holimont Ski Area. When his son was four, Bruce Gardner rigged him up with ski boots — soft snowboarding boots didn’t come that small at the time — and the shortest board possible. By the time he was seven, he was competing at the American age-class Nationals where he finished fourth.
“My dad was one of the first snowboarders in our club in Ellicottville, starting in 1992 or ’93, and you want to be like your dad,” he says of his earliest boarding memories. “I just remember loving it.
“When I started racing, my dad would travel with me and he’d race in old dogs’ category, whatever it was, then I’d race my races. My sister was big into ski racing, so while my dad and I were doing that my mom and sister would be at another place ski racing.”
In 2008, his graduating year at M.M. Robinson High School, Gardner made Canada Snowboard’s development team, and two years later he was promoted to the National Team after finishing fourth in the parallel slalom at the world junior championship. In 2016 was the overall Nor-Am championship.
Gardner has also competed in about 50 World Cup parallel slalom and grand slalom World Cup races but is forthright about this year’s Cup tour, in which his only top-30 result was a 26th in the GS a few days ago in Bulgaria. “This year’s World Cup season hasn’t been going that well for me,” he says honestly. “The past couple of months have been stressful: I think it’s something around the
Olympic cycle. You see it all over the World Cup. The Olympic year changes your mentality toward the sport.
“That was an eye opener for me: I’m certainly riding like one of the best in world in training but it’s whether I can bring my training runs to race runs which will certainly decide where I end up in the Olympics.
“It’s just kind of sinking in. Now that I’m back here and thinking about it, it’s definitely exciting and I’m definitely proud to be part of Team Canada.”
His parallel GS qualifying runs and head-to-head competitions are not until Feb 22 and 24, so when the Opening Ceremonies are held Feb. 9, Gardner will still be in Canmore preparing.
“I think it’s a good thing for me that we’re skipping the Opening Ceremonies, it will be such an overwhelming experience,” he says. “I can go to the Closing Ceremonies and be relaxed and take everything in.
“But certainly I’m already thinking about the day itself, preparing myself from what I’ve heard from coaches and the COC (Canadian Olympic Committee) meetings we’ve had. But the nerves haven’t started yet. I’m doing my best to prepare for what I think it’s going to feel like and how to deal with those emotions, come the day.”
Although it’s his full-time job, boarding is still Gardner’s love. “On the road I always travel with my powder (freestyle) board, and when you’re not training, you’re shredding powder. Sometimes when things get tough in training or you’re working through something, I just kind of go back to why I started in the first place: It’s fun. It’s fun with friends, it’s fun with family.”
Just like it was when he was four.