The defending champ is out of (slope)style
But Howell still has something to prove after missing final
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— Four years ago and more than 7,000 kilometres away, Dara Howell came to the bottom of a slopestyle course with the gold-medal-winning run in a brand new Olympic sport.
“I can’t believe hard work pays off,” she said, grinning in disbelief, at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
Here, at the bottom of another slopestyle course, she learned something else: Hard work doesn’t always pay off, at least not in the form of an Olympic medal.
Howell landed hard and lost a ski on the final jump of her final qualifying run Saturday, leaving her to make her way to the bottom on the remaining one. It was a moment of duelling emotions for her.
“A sense of pride because I landed, well, I made it to the bottom; also major disappointment because I knew I was done,” the 23-year-old from Huntsville, Ont., said
Kim Lamarre, who was on that po- dium in Sochi with a bronze medal, came up short on her landing on the final jump and also did not advance to the final.
“As soon as I hit the knuckle, my heart was kind of shattered,” said the 29-year-old from Lac Beauport, Que.
“I fought through,” Lamarre said, a black eye already forming from her fall on the first run. “I skied really well. I know people probably won’t remember, but I’ll remember,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
There were two Canadians on the women’s slopestyle skiing podium in 2014. This time, there were none.
Whistler, B.C.’s Yuki Tsubota, who was taken off the Sochi course on a stretcher, was the only one to the make the final here. She finished sixth with her strong, consistent skiing.
When Howell first started speaking about her second Olympics she, was smiling and upbeat but found that she couldn’t maintain that front.
“Oh, crap,” she said, her eyes starting to fill with tears.
“It’s not the result I wanted but it’s something I’m really grateful for. I feel like me, as Dara, I’ve had a lot of success in my life so far. Some hard times, too, but they make me who I am and that’s something that I’m really grateful for, so I wouldn’t change it.
“I wouldn’t change my results today at all because it defines me, it makes me who I am, it makes me humble.”
At her first Olympics, Howell was the naturally gifted 19-year-old. She had spent her childhood alpine racing and figure skating and only switched to slopestyle — throwing tricks down a course of rails and jumps — four years before the 2014 Games.
Those were four years of discovery and fun.
This time round, they were a much harder four years. Howell struggled early on with the expectations that came with being an Olympic champion.
Her hometown gave her a key to the city, changed the welcome sign on the highway to “Home of Dara Howell” and named a street after her. Everybody wanted to celebrate her success, but she couldn’t enjoy any of it.
“How do you top this?” she kept asking herself. “Where do you go from here?”
For her, the answer was a downward spiral, losing her confidence and joy in skiing.
She took a year off and then came back, sort of, competing without much enthusiasm or success for the next two years. It would take nearly three years for her to regain some confidence and rediscover her love of skiing.
She worked hard then to try and learn the new, more advanced tricks, particularly on the rail features of the course, that she knew would be needed to win an Olympic medal here. But, in the end, it wasn’t enough time to get back to the top of her sport.
“I have a lot of people here who care about me and I’m forever grateful to all of them, my family and my friends, people who have never given up on me,” she said. “It means a lot.” Howell is the first woman to ever win an Olympic slopestyle skiing medal and leaving here without a second medal doesn’t change that.
“It’s just part of my story,” Howell said. And that’s not over yet. “My dad is going to kill me. I just said to him: ‘I’ve got to go four more years,’ ” she said, smiling.
“Every Olympics is a different experience and you learn so much along the way and for me, we’ll see, but I don’t think I’m done. I still have stuff to prove to myself.”