‘The mental side of my injuries was so difficult – I felt frozen’
Halfpipe skier Rowan Cheshire aims to prove she is fully recovered from a horrific crash
The lasting image of Rowan Cheshire’s Olympic experience is one of pain. It is a picture of puffy eyes, bloodied lips and broken nose, taken from her hospital bed after a horrendous crash in Sochi had rendered her unconscious and unable to compete in the 2014 Games.
The halfpipe skier was only 18 when she went into Sochi with an outside chance of winning a medal. Just a month earlier, she had become the first British woman since 1992 to win gold at a World Cup event. The accident, in which her face smashed into the left-sided wall of a Russian halfpipe, was both devastating and deeply unfortunate. There was no suggestion at the time, though, that it would be just the start of two years of anguish and stagnation.
Within 18 months, Cheshire had suffered another two serious head injuries. They did not debilitate her physically, but the concussions wreaked havoc on her mind.
There were the repeated migraines that were triggered by even the briefest of glances at her phone, the overwhelming anxiety and, perhaps most worryingly, the doubts over whether she would ever compete again.
“I took a lot of time off when other people were progressing or training,” she says. “I was in rehab, seeing psychologists and dealing with all that, and every time I came back I would get another one [concussion]. So my progression was frozen at that point. I had to come back from scratch.
“I felt physically fine, but the mental side of it was difficult – the anxiety. I did not want to leave the house by myself, so my mum had to come to appointments with me. Even when that wore off I would get emotional at things I did not want to get emotional at because they were really little. That was a big thing to get over, and it did take quite a few months.”
The guidance of her psychologist, Dave Collins, helped Cheshire to rebuild her confidence both on and off the slopes. Now 22, she goes into this month’s Pyeongchang Games hoping primarily that she will be able to compete, to show that two years away from the sport has not robbed her of any of the natural ability she demonstrated as a 10-year-old on her local dry ski slope in Stoke.
‘I would get emotional at little things and I did not want to leave the house by myself ’
And yet concussions of this severity come at a cost, and Cheshire now takes as many precautions as she can to avoid another head injury.
“I change my helmet twice, if not more, every year,” she says. “Every time I have a relatively big crash and I hit my head, even if it does not really affect me, I will change my helmet.”
She is also taking part in a study with an American doctor who has Focused again: Rowan Cheshire has rebuilt her confidence on and off the slopes since the accident in Sochi designed what is known as a “concussion collar”, after the British team was approached with an offer to test the technology.
“I wear it every time I ski now,” she says. “It’s really small, you barely know it’s there. It presses on the main blood vessels in your neck and basically restricts blood from coming out of your skull. It acts as an airbag for your brain.”
Cheshire acknowledges that the recent coverage of the impact of
concussion in sports like rugby and American football have helped raise awareness and understanding of the seriousness of her injuries. She accepts that, at first, her coaches were “learning with her” about the impact these blows were having on her brain, and that she initially rushed back too soon. What was needed, she soon realised, was a slower approach.
“When I came back the most recent time, they did not want to push it too much. It was very much about taking it back to basics and slowly progressing back up. That was the best thing they could have done, really.
“Seeing a psychologist definitely helped, and he made me do gymnastics instead of going straight into skiing. I was trying to do tricks on a trampoline into a foam pit, where I was not going to hurt myself. Just getting that muscle memory back and throwing myself around a bit, knowing I was not going to get hurt and I was not going to hit my head, was a massive help.”
In halfpipe, Cheshire will be judged on the difficulty and variation of the tricks she attempts, as well as the height she soars into the South Korean air. It is, quite clearly, not a sport in which she can compete with even the tiniest of nagging doubts in her mind. It is thankful, then, that Cheshire believes she is a better athlete for her struggles, a more complete and refined skier than ever before.
“I got to the point where I was good, but I was progressing so quickly that an injury was probably bound to happen,” she says. “Going back to basics was probably the best thing I could have done in that time, as my technique and skiing are at new levels compared to back then.
“Because my technique is much better, my tricks are tidier and more stylish, and I can ‘go’ a lot bigger. I am definitely in a better place than I was four years ago.”