O’Brien has some unfinished business
Canada’s slopestyle ace looks to make amends for last-place finish in Sochi
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— She was the distraught girl a country took to its bosom in Sochi.
The reigning slopestyle world champion who fell twice in her final run, finishing last. And then, between gulping sobs, apologized to Canada.
“I’m sorry I let Canada down,” said Spencer O’Brien, after being pulled back to face a horde of reporters.
We really don’t understand — as O’Brien didn’t understand until she got to her first Olympics — what a burden it can be, representing a nation.
“In that moment, I was heartbroken and devastated,” O’Brien told the Star on Tuesday, recalling her Sochi collapse, emotionally and competitively. “I didn’t expect to have a loss in an event feel like that. I’d never experienced that in my career before. I was pretty overwhelmed.
“So yeah, I did apologize to the country. But the outpouring of support I received afterwards was so incredible. It really showed me how amazing it is to be a Canadian athlete and how special it is to get support from this country. Of course I know now that I didn’t let anybody down, in fact. But it was really cool to get that kind of support from my country.”
What O’Brien didn’t tell anybody at the time, what she didn’t reveal publicly until last year, was that she’d been diagnosed with early onset rheumatoid arthritis just three months before the Games.
“After about seven months of going undiagnosed and having multiple injuries around it. So that was the toughest year of my career, going in to Sochi. I had to put the blinders on and just go to work.”
The pain, the stiffness in her joints, was so intense she had difficulties just getting out of bed. Then she had to come tearing down a mountain doing ultra-athletic tricks on knees that scarcely held her up and ankles that absorbed stabs of anguish with every twist and turn and flip.
During the struggle for diagnosis and treatment, O’Brien feared she would never be able to ride a snowboard again.
“Rheumatoid is one of the more severe types of the disease,” she explains. “It affects your body bilaterally. So if one hand hurts the other hand hurts. I know a lot of people who struggled just to be able to live their lives. I feel very lucky to have something that works for me.”
The medication which has been O’Brien’s godsend is taken once a month.
“It covers all my symptoms. I completely feel like I an compete at my best. I don’t feel my illness inhibits me in any way right now.”
The just-turned 30-year-old from Courtney, B.C., is part of a snowboarding slopestyle/big air squad that is expected to collect multiple medals in Pyeongchang, led by seven-time X Games champion Mark McMorris and Max Parrot, with four podium finishes this World Cup season. They are collectively a team scares the bejeezus out of opponents.
“Oh yeah, I think so,” laughs O’Bri- en. “The men’s team has proven again and again their dominance. There are a lot of other talented riders from a lot of different nations but I think, more so than even in Sochi, this team has the potential to bring home a lot of medals in these two events. It’s a really good mix of veterans and rookies.”
And they’re healthy, in a sport where injuries are an all-too-frequent plague.
Four years ago, McMorris, handsdown favourite for gold, arrived in Sochi a total physical mess, a back- country crash resulting in fractures to his jaw, left arm, pelvis and rib, with a ruptured spleen and collapsed left lung to be. And still he gutted out bronze. Other teammates had their own assortment of breaks and sprains and torn cartilage, including O’Brien’s bruised heel, suffered just before those Games.
“It was bad,” she says of the ordeal and the disappointment. “But looking back now I just feel so grateful that I was able to make it to those Games. There was a lot of times during that process where I didn’t think that I would even be able to snowboard again. To have gotten there and made the finals and gotten to ride, really grateful for that. To be here and healthy is such an amazing opportunity.”
Sochi taught O’Brien about perseverance. Time passing — and a second Olympic chance dawning — has taught her about perspective. And the Games taught her about the distinct Olympic experience, so unlike the X Games which nevertheless still loom large for these kamikaze athletes.
“For me, snowboarding is such an individual thing. It’s what I love to do more than anything else. When I’m at X Games, when I’m at U.S. Open, I’m really there competing for myself.” (Five X Games slopestyle medals, by the way.) “Whether I win or lose, it’s really just on me. At the Olympics, getting to wear your country’s flag, being part of this greater team, is just such a different atmosphere. And it’s a difference of pride. I wasn’t prepared for that last time. I wanted to uphold my flag.”
O’Brien is known for her signature smooth runs but also turning technical tricks, including a unique version of a frontside 720 that she spins off her toes instead of her heels. She’s more of a medal contender in slopestyle than big air, which is making its debut at these Games.
On Tuesday, rookie teammate Tyler Nicholson checked out the course and pronounced it “sick.” In snowboard lingo, that’s a good thing.
“The rails are huge and the first jumps are twisted. With the rails (the features they do before the jumps) so big and the course more difficult than normal, it’s going to be a real sick event.”