Golden run pipe dream for Canadian Sharpe
Halfpipe champion hopes rise inspires more female athletes to give risky sport a shot
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— Cassie Sharpe had three chances to win a gold medal. She only needed one. She soared into the lead in women’s ski halfpipe on the first of her three runs and never looked back.
It was her big tricks — including a triple spin — and the fearless way she rode high above the pipe’s 22-foot-high walls that she will be remembered for as much as the medal itself. And that’s just the way she wanted it “I want someone to look and say: ‘Wow, I want to ski like that,’ ” the 22-year-old from Comox, B.C., said here before her event. “Winning is always a bonus.” Sharpe always likes to land her first run. It’s a confidence builder, for one. But when the score is as high as hers tend to be — 94.40 in the first run of the final — it also gives her freedom to add more progressive and riskier moves to her subsequent runs. Those are the ones she loves to perform.
So, hand on her heart in gratitude on seeing the winning score after each run, she simply went back up to better it. Her second run netted 95.80 points, her top score.
France’s Marie Martinod won the silver medal and American Brita Sigourney the bronze.
Sharpe first announced herself in 2015 as one of the most technical skiers to ever drop into a women’s halfpipe competition and she came here as the favourite for gold.
She showed that Olympic pressure hadn’t changed that during qualifying the day before, when she soared high over the field, setting the tone for the entire competition.
Where some skiers had looked hesitant on their first runs, Sharpe dropped in with the hardest tricks in the field and made them all look easy.
Sharpe’s competition resume is full of examples of times she had gone for more, even after she had secured the win. That’s at the very core of her personality as a freestyle skier, said Canada’s head coach, Trennon Payner.
“It shows why she’s doing it. It’s not just about the result, it’s about the performance and testing herself, challenging herself and proving to herself as much as everyone else what she’s capable of,” he said.
“She’s got the interest of the women’s side of sport at heart, too. She realizes that if she does something like that, it doesn’t just make her look good, it makes women’s pipe skiing look good. I know she’s passionate about that.”
When Sharpe faced an international mix of journalists after her qualifying runs, she handled that with the same ease as skiing the pipe.
“Helloooo,” she said with a big grin, leaning and sweeping across all the tape recorders in front of her.
She happily explained how she works through her tricks in advance, the music she listens to as she drops into the pipe — it’s always M.O.P.’s rap classic “Ante Up” — and joked about being the “old one” at 25.
Nothing fazes her. Not broken bones — Sharpe has competed successfully with a stress fracture in her back, and with her ski pole taped to her hand after re-breaking a thumb — and, clearly, not Olympic pressure.
Just before she drops into the pipe, she arms herself with her go-to song, fist-bumps with her coach and repeats her motto: “Just do what you’ve already done.”
Her teammate Rosalind Groenewoud, who finished 10th in the final, needed the one thing she couldn’t have, more time.
The 28-year-old from Calgary broke her arm in the shoulder joint just nine weeks ago and it has not healed fully.
“Those are the first comp runs I’ve put down all season and, to be able to do that at the Olympics, I feel really proud of that,” said Groenewoud, who finished seventh at the 2014 Sochi Games.
Sharpe is deeply competitive in a way that can only be honed from a young age, growing up with and trying to outdo two brothers. She loves to win, but always with style.
“So much about (our sport) is re-
“She’s got the interest of the women’s side of sport at heart, too . . . she’s passionate about that.” COACH TRENNON PAYNER ON HALFPIPE GOLD MEDALIST CASSIE SHARPE
spect and the culture of where we came from and what people think is cool . . . and winning with something that I’m proud of is really important to me,” she said.
A big part of this sport’s growth came from the late Sarah Burke, who spent years increasing the difficulty of her own tricks while pushing just as hard for women’s halfpipe skiing to get the recognition it deserved. She was the force behind the inclusion of halfpipe skiing and slopestyle in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Tragically she died before then, in 2012, after injuries from a fall in training.
Mike Riddle — the Sochi silver medallist in men’s halfpipe who dropped in for his finals not long after Sharpe won gold — had always expected great things from her here.
“She’s going to make everyone proud,” he said before the 2018 Olympics started. “She’s definitely carrying on Sarah’s legacy and pushing the girls.”