Mt. Washington produces another 2018 Olympian
A triumphant winter for Mount Washington continues.
A fourth competitor from the Island’s main ski hill, crossboarder Carle Brenneman of Comox, has been named to the Canadian team for the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic Games in South Korea next month.
Adding to the Mount Washington vibe on Saturday, men’s snowboard slopestyler Darcy Sharpe, from Comox, won the silver medal in the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado.
It was the first career medal at the X Games for 21-year-old Sharpe, who just missed making it five Islanders on the Olympic team when he was named alternate for Pyeongchang.
The X Games silver represented a memorable consolation prize as Sharpe overcame an ankle injury, which kept him out of the earlier big-air event, to place second in slopestyle to Olympics-bound Marcus Kleveland of Norway and ahead of Pyeongchang-bound Canadians Mark McMorris of Regina (bronze medallist) and Tyler Nicholson of North Bay, Ont. (fifth place).
Brenneman will join fellow Mount Washington products Spencer O’Brien of Courtenay, Cassie Sharpe of Comox and Teal Harle of Campbell River as the Island foursome in the 2018 Winter Olympics freestyle events. O’Brien is going in snowboarding slopestyle, Sharpe in skiing halfpipe and Harle in skiing slopestyle.
O’Brien, a former world champion and Sochi 2014 finalist, who has overcome severe early-onset arthritis to compete at the highest levels of her sport, is an Olympic veteran. Brenneman, Harle and Cassie Sharpe, the older sister of Darcy Sharpe and a breakout three-time World Cup circuit champion this season, will be Winter Games rookies in Pyeongchang.
All four attribute growing up near Mount Washington as the reason for their success.
The 2018 Winter Olympics run from Feb. 9 to 25.