GOLD’S COMEBACK MEDAL WORTHY
Sochi injury to Pyeongchang bronze is “best turnaround I’ve ever seen”
Arielle Gold almost quit snowboarding, but the 21-yearold from Steamboat Springs gave the sport another try and won a bronze medal.
In Sochi, she never got her shot. BONGPYEONG, SOUTH KOREA» But the shoulder injury Arielle Gold suffered during practice in Russia’s dismal halfpipe in 2014 did more than end her first Olympics.
“It really all started to fall apart right after the last Olympics in Sochi,” said the 21-year-old from Steamboat Springs, whose bronze medal Feb. 13 in the Pyeongchang Olympic halfpipe capped a fairy-tale comeback to the top of a sport she was ready to quit not even a year ago.
It was more than that injury — which lingers today, including dislocating her shoulder during practice a day before her bronze-medal performance — that almost pushed her off her board for good.
Snowboarding was in a downhill slide in 2015, part of a decline since peaking in 2010 after more than a decade of spectacular growth. Participation numbers were dropping, down more than half-a-million participants between 2010 and 2015, according to Snowsports Industries America. Equipment sales were withering, with sales of snowboards declining $60 million a year since 2007. Snowboarders were aging and riding less. Warmer winters were pinching powder days.
And snowboard makers started tightening their budgets.
The days of pro snowboarders making bank were over. Even for Olympians.
Gold was rehabbing her shoulder in 2014 when she found out she would not be re-signing with her sponsor, Red Bull. Burton, the snowboard mak-
er who had supported her rapid ascent through the ranks and once heralded her as the heir apparent of snowboarding pioneer Kelly Clark’s crown, also pulled away.
“It was a tough pill to swallow, losing all the support I had growing up. That made me less inclined to keep snowboarding,” Gold said. “I felt like I had lost faith in myself and the entire industry had lost faith in me.”
She appeared to be the next big thing in snowboarding in 2012, when at age 15 she won a gold medal in the junior world championships. A year later, she was the secondyoungest rider to ever win a world championship. She followed that with bronze at her first Winter X Games in 2013, joining the show as a last-minute alternate. Then she became the youngest athlete on U.S. Snowboarding’s 2014 Olympic halfpipe team. She was 17 and relishing the dream.
Riding in Kim’s shadow
Out of nowhere, a spry 14-year-old girl arrived on the scene and suddenly Gold was not so golden. Chloe Kim took the snowboarding world by storm, spinning the biggest, most technical tricks ever seen in women’s halfpipe. In a matter of months, if there were athlete sponsor dollars flowing into snowboarding, they were going to the happy California teenager who was too young to compete in the Sochi Olympics. But she was more than ready for Pyeongchang, where she cruised to a gold medal in a stellar display of athleticism that is unrivaled in women’s riding.
As the Kim phenomenon unfolded, Gold was caught between two groups of snowboarders. The old guard — like Kelly Clark, Gretchen Bleiler, Hannah Teter and Elana Hight — had thrived for years without having to win every contest, riding the wave of snowboarding’s soaring ascent. Today, if you aren’t Shaun White or Chloe Kim — the best halfpipe snowboarders in history — you aren’t getting rich as a competitive pipe snowboarder.
Even if you win a medal in the Olympics. “She’s like a sneeze in the wind between two tornadoes. That’s been the story for a while,” said Ken Gold, Arielle’s father, making sure to point out that his daughter has never once complained about her career arc in the shadow of giants.
Gold and Kim are close. Without Kim pushing, it’s not likely Gold would have bat- tled to learn new tricks — like the daunting 1080 — that earned her bronze here.
Ken anguished as he saw his daughter struggle after Sochi. As sponsors left, he watched her flounder in the pipe. Her riding didn’t have that spark that once impressed everyone.
“It was a tough four years for her. Physically, emotionally, mentally. And not much out there to encourage her,” Ken said.
Gold started to question her career choices. She started school full-time at the University of Colorado, studying to become a veterinarian. She spent more time with her horses. She fostered rescue dogs, a passion she found after seeing all the strays around Sochi, Russia. She was ready to walk away from competitive snowboarding. In a sport where young athletes such as Kim and the promising Maddie Mastro work full-time on snowboarding, a rider who is distracted by responsibilities such as school and a grown-up life can’t keep up with the breakthrough tricks. Even athletes who spend half a year recovering from an injury struggle to catch up. That’s the pace of progression in women’s snowboarding today.
Almost giving up the sport
The 2016-17 season was the worst. Gold couldn’t find podiums. She wasn’t landing her runs. She was scared of hurting herself again, surprised by a paralyzing fear of tricks she’d been throwing for years.
“I was wondering if I was burned out and wondering if I could even have fun snowboarding,” she said.
On the advice of a friend, she called a sports psychologist. The counselor told her to make a choice: snowboard or don’t. And be happy with that call.
She made the decision and rededicated herself to her board. At the first contest of the season in December, the Olympic qualifier at Copper Mountain, she felt a spark. The next week at the Dew Tour, it was a fire. By the end of the season, at the Aspen X Games, just before she left for South Korea, she was raging, throwing big 1080s and shining as bright as ever. The Gold glow was back.
At the Aspen X Games in late January, she fell on nearly every trick during practice. That’s the kind of thing that used to get in her head. Not anymore. She went on to win silver, stomping what was the best run of her life before she upped her game in the Pyeongchang pipe.
“It used to be so much of my time was spent looking over my shoulder at what the other girls were doing. But now this season, it’s been so much more about what I want to do in each contest. I don’t even watch any more,” she said.
U.S. Snowboarding coach Ricky Bower has seen a lot of comebacks over his many years in the halfpipe. Gold’s, he said, is number one in his book.
“The best turnaround I’ve ever seen,” he said.
After she struggled through team training camps in California, New Zealand and Austria last fall, Bowers told Gold her challenges weren’t physical. After she worked with her sports psychologist, he was floored with how quickly she came around.
“She showed what’s possible to have happen when she addressed the mental side of things,” Bower said.
When these top-tier athletes in the pipe reach a certain level of technical expertise, the game becomes largely mental, Bower said.
“To see Arielle get on the podium with a medal was the most special moment for me, maybe of any Olympics,” Bower said. “It was the sweetest moment for me. To see her come into this year with her level of poise of focus was just so special.”
Casual watchers of snowboarding didn’t see the Gold comeback. She wasn’t invited to the pre-olympic media summits that introduced contenders to reporters. NBC didn’t gather the drippy video it banks for potential medalists.
And Gold remains in the bronze shadow; a shade made even more obscure by the radiant glow of Kim. She didn’t get the call to visit talk shows. She wasn’t rushed back to the States for a media tour. When NBC made a fun video of her holding a handmade sign asking for pins in exchange for a photo with her and her medal, she said most of the passers-by in the Olympic coastal village didn’t recognize her without her helmet, goggles and board.
Fine by her.
She’s spent the week after winning bronze visiting as many Olympic events as she could.
“I’m going to hockey and spending time with my friends and really experiencing what the Olympics are about, which I didn’t get to do in Sochi,” she said. “For me, the medal is more of a validation for myself than for anyone else. I didn’t do this for glory. Snowboarders do it for the love of the sport and the love of progression. It’s not so much about proving people wrong as much as it’s about proving to myself that I can do whatever I set my mind to.”