A crash could cost me for the rest of my life not just my boarding career
Battling spinal issues since childhood, Irish snowboarder Carrigan defies medical advice to excel at her sport
MAGGIE Rose Carrigan grew up in Steamboat Springs, a ski town nestled in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It was an idyllic childhood. Each evening after school, Carrigan and her friends would be out on their boards on the slopes, trying out new tricks or racing each other.
‘It was a pretty cool place to grow up, kind of like a snow globe,’ Carrigan says with a smile. ‘There was a real ski-town vibe. We would hike up the mountain after school, be there from four until eight, snowboarding under lights. And it would be the same the following evening.’
Steamboat’s claim to fame is that they have produced more Winter Olympians than anywhere else in North America. Carrigan hopes to join that club this coming February by representing Ireland in parallel slalom snowboard, where athletes race each other. If she gets there, it will be a testament to her determination and resilience as her whole professional career has been about defying the odds.
Carrigan was just 10 years old when she started to notice that something was wrong. Her back and knees would feel sore after those treks through the snow with her classmates.
‘We would be hitting rails and jumps, as we do on the board, but then my back started hurting. My knees were hurting. And I was only 10 or 11 at the time.’
Her mother was massaging Carrigan’s back one night before bed, hoping to ease the pain, when she realised that she could feel her daughter’s spine. And something wasn’t right. A local doctor asked Maggie Rose to bend down and touch her toes. By the time she stood up again, she had heard the world ‘scoliosis’ for the first time.
Scoliosis is a curvature to the spine shaped like a C or an S. It can develop in early adolescence as kids go into puberty. If left untreated, the spine will eventually curve inwards and could even puncture vital organs. It can also leave someone unable to walk.
The spine specialist at Denver’s Children’s Hospital gave them two options. Wearing a brace or back surgery which would hopefully correct it. ‘I was so young, was only like 11, so I didn’t really grasp what having surgery would mean. I was pretty scared and there was a lot of crying myself to sleep,’ Carrigan remembers over a Zoom call from Italy, where she competed last weekend.
‘I didn’t really know what this meant. I was afraid I would never be able to snowboard again, which is the only thing I wanted to do in the whole world.’
The date of her surgery – May 8, 2008 – is imprinted in her brain. It was a success, she even grew an inch from the surgeons pulling her spine into place. ‘I came out of surgery and I was taller than my sister,’ she remembers.
Two 14-inch rods were inserted to hold the lower part of her spine in place. They remain there to this day. But that was only the first part. Recovery was long and took a mental toll. ‘I had to take a full year off. Not have any physical contact. That was really tough, not being able to do anything. Seeing all of my friends going off snowboarding without me. When you are a little kid, it was really difficult, especially if I didn’t know if I would do it again.’
The doctors advised against returning to the sport. But Carrigan says it was the only thing she wanted to do. She had been snowboarding since the age of three – her twin siblings were ten years older and would bring her up the slopes.
‘After all I had been through, I didn’t want the one thing I loved most in the whole wide world taken off me,’ she recalls. For her 12th birthday, Maggie was given the gift of her first Alpine board from a friend of her father, a renowned snowboard designer.
Alpine was the one discipline that she was still able to do. There were less jumps and turns. ‘My doctors weren’t superexcited about me going back to snowboarding, but it was something I had to do,’ she says.
CHALLENGING TIMES
Everything was a challenge. She needed her mother’s help to reattach herself to the snowboard and suffered a lot of back spasms after the surgery. She can only bend from her hips and so had to re-learn her sport in a way.
‘It was a struggle and it still is,’ she concedes. ‘But I just love this sport so much. I just need to take care of it and manage it. Our sport is forgiving with my body in that I can still do it. But crashes are part of this sport, and I have been through a lot. Because I can’t curl my back, I fall backwards and my head hits first because I can’t brace. So, I had a few concussions. After a crash, my back usually hurts a lot more and last season, I struggled quite a bit with it. I do a lot of core work, because this sport is all about balance, I need to do that to keep my back strong.’
‘MY DOCTORS AREN’T TOO EXCITED ABOUT ME COMPETING BUT IT’S WHAT I LOVE’
She has broken ribs. Torn a kidney and dislocated fingers.
But her back remains the biggest issue. ‘It gets quite sore after races, because there is a lot of pressure on it with our turns. In normal circumstances, it would take a toll on your body. I do a lot of yoga, stretching, work with a physical therapist, a lot of dry-needling.’
Unsurprisingly, doctors remain unconvinced about her chosen profession. Her back is x-rayed after every crash to make sure the rods are still in place or none of the screws have loosened.
‘At the bottom of my spine, I have three vertebrae that have been left untouched. And the doctors don’t want me compressing those because if they become compressed, that could be really bad. If I fall really hard or slam into something, they would be concerned about something twisting or breaking. They don’t want any movement of the screws.
‘So, when I have had a couple of really bad crashes, I have had to have x-rays on my back. Whenever I crash, my back has to be examined in case there is anything wrong with me. That could cost me for the rest of my life, not just my snowboarding career. It is really important I check.
‘So, doctors weren’t too excited about the idea of me snowboarding. Still aren’t, but this is what I want to do. It keeps me focused and I want to represent Ireland at the Olympics.’
NEW REALITY
Within three years of being back on a snowboard, Carrigan had adjusted to her new reality to be competing internationally for the US team. She had won a North American championship, which opened the door to competitions in Europe. By 2016, she was in contention for a spot at the 2018 Winter Olympics. When she narrowly missed out on a place on that team, Carrigan re-assessed where she was going and began to wonder if it is worth it. Then, she had a brainwave.
Having dual American and Irish citizenship, she could compete for Ireland.
‘I knew about Seamus [O’Connor, the snowboarder who will compete in his third Olympics at Beijing], and that he was representing Team Ireland. So I contacted Seamus with all these questions. Asked everything I needed to ask. He was really sweet. Got in touch with Snowsports Ireland and immediately, it felt like this weight off my shoulders. It felt the right thing to do.’
Carrigan says that she comes from a big Irish family in New Jersey. Her grandmother, Margaret Shine and her sister Rose, both of whom she is named after, came over to New York together in their early 20s from the townland of Drumlosh, on the Roscommon side of Athlone.
Having met her second-generation husband at an ‘Irish dance’ in New York, she raised a large IrishAmerican family in Newark. ‘It’s one of those big Irish families in New Jersey,’ Carrigan chuckles.
Carrigan has accompanied her grandmother back to Drumlosh and visited the family grave in Clonmacnoise. ‘It is really special for me to be able to honour her in this way, by representing Ireland, and hopefully going to the Olympics. My Irishness has always been very important to me, and that’s because of her.’
Her father, a passionate ski-racer, went to Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs, met Maggie Rose’s mother, also an ardent skier, and opened up a business. Her older siblings, Torrie and Lex, both competed for the American junior team in snowboarding.
GREEN SCENE
Since switching allegiance to Ireland, Carrigan has got a new lease of life. Her two best finishes on the circuit – a 22nd place in a World Cup event in Cortina, Italy and 25th in the World Championship – have both happened since competing under the Tricolour. She’s currently ranked in the world’s top 40 and in a decent place to get one of the 32 quota places available for her event in Beijing.
The snowboarding circuit has taken her across Europe. From Bannoye in Russia to Carezza in Italy to the Swiss Alps, there is a lot of travel involved in their 10-week season. ‘There is a lot of travel and a lot of craziness. All of us lost our luggage at one point, which meant all our equipment. But thankfully, we got it all back.’
As Carrigan is the only Irish snowboarder on her circuit, she travels with her Italian coach and another Canadian athlete. ‘With some countries, there are whole teams of snowboarders, but obviously I am the only Irish one.
‘But it is a little different to Alpine skiing in that we all compete together, men and women, so we all travel together. So when we lost our bags ahead of a recent competition, it was a little stressful. But it happened to the whole field, so everyone was in the same boat.
‘It has been crazy travelling around Europe, especially with Covid. We have had to be very careful and take a lot of tests But, it will all be worth it if I can get to the Olympics.’
There is a break in the season for Christmas now and Carrigan plans to go to snowboard school to work on a few different things. Come the New Year, there will be two more competitions before the final Olympic qualification list is published.
Maggie Rose Carrigan always dreamed of adding her name to the list of Winter Olympians that came from Steamboat Springs.
If she ends up making the Irish team for Beijing, her story will be the sort that embodies the Olympic spirit because if she does grace our television screens during the snowboarding, it will all come down to her determination and resilience in the face of adversity.