From sick bay to Canada Winter Games gold
Editor’s note: this is an edited version of a story that first appeared in a 2015 edition of the Prince George Citizen.
A concussion temporarily zapped the short-term memory of snowboard crosser Meryeta O’Dine.
As if that wasn’t enough, while she was on the sidelines unable to race, she developed a kidney infection and ended up losing 20 pounds.
In a gravity-dependent sport such as snowboard cross, where the more weight you carry the faster you go down the slope, losing body mass is never a good thing. But despite those setbacks, O’Dine made a triumphant return to the medal podium in Mont-Tremblant, Que.,
In only her second race day since she hurt her head in a Europa Cup training run in late 2014 in Austria, the 17-year-old from Prince George battled to a third-place finish in Wednesday’s NorAm Cup final.
“It was good, it was actually a lot of fun today,” said O’Dine. “[On Tuesday] I waxed with the wrong wax and had a bit of a crash and that kind of sucked, but today I had the right wax and got third. I could have made a pass but played it safe and got a podium still, so I’m happy with it.”
O’Dine has been a rising star on the national snowboard cross scene ever
since she began racing FIS events two seasons ago. Last January she won bronze in her first NorAm Cup race and went on to post six top-10 NorAm finishes.
She started the 2014-15 season on the South American Cup circuit in Chile, where she won a race in August. That
carried significant weight in putting her on top of the points standings to determine the two-female, two-male B.C. boarder cross team for the Canada Winter Games. “Canada Games is pretty much what got me into snowboarding,” said O’Dine. “It’s one of the higher-stake events for me. I was 13 when it was announced we were getting the Games in Prince George and I was so young then and I was so new into snowboarding I didn’t think at all that it was a possibility. I was just announced as the top pick for boarder crossing and it’s really cool to see it happening after all this buildup.”
After the women’s preliminary heats at the Canada Winter Games, O’Dine, 18, was ranked second behind Ontario’s Tayler Wilton, 21 who went into the event as the defending Canada Games champion.
On opposite ends of the draw, both Wilton and O’Dine won all of their quarter-final and semifinal heats to qualify for the final which was a close contest right to the end.
“I was last going into the first berm and there was a pass on every berm and on the last section of the course I held a good line and I managed to come out with it,” said O’Dine. “I was extremely nervous today, but I’m so excited about how it all turned out.”
“It was hard to beat someone like Meryeta today, unfortunately I made a small mistake there near the end,” added Wilton. “This is probably my favourite course. It was fun, fast and technical with amazing berms.”
Katie Anderson from Jaffray, B.C. won the bronze medal.