4 years after injury heartbreak at Beijing, Vernon skier Elena Gaskell looks for redemption
CBC
Four years after a devastating injury rendered her unable to compete at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Vernon skier Elena Gaskell is looking to redeem herself at the Milano-Cortina Games starting Saturday.
Gaskell, a freestyle skier, will compete for Canada in the slopestyle and big air categories — with slopestyle qualification kicking off Saturday morning.
While technically her Olympic debut, Gaskell had qualified for the games in Beijing four years ago and was a medal favourite.
But the 24-year-old tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and meniscus in her knee just one day before what was supposed to have been her first Olympic event.
Four years later — and after weathering another serious injury — Gaskell said there's understandable jitters going into Milano-Cortina, but she is blocking them out.
"I try and cut out the words of like, 'Don't get hurt,' or, like, 'try not to get hurt again,'" she told Sarah Penton, host of CBC's Radio West.
"It's just like, I'm gonna keep staying healthy. Like, I'm gonna keep moving forward," the athlete said. "I think progressing [in] your sport, you just have to, like, jump over fear at some points and not think about it."
After her injury four years ago, during an Olympics that was marked by strict COVID-19 protocols, Gaskell had to stay masked and walk around the Olympic Village in crutches as the rest of the games went on.
"It was like all my dreams and everything that I wanted to happen ... it felt like I was living in a movie," she recalled. "And then all of a sudden the crash happened and I was in pain".
The skier said she definitely went through a low moment in her life and was depressed after her injury.
But Gaskell said it inspired her to raise awareness about the importance of athletes' mental health, and she's come back stronger as a result.
That strength has been reflected in her recent results — Gaskell grabbed a bronze in a World Cup competition in Aspen, Colo., last month.
But those results were no sure thing. Gaskell only started competing last October, after suffering another ACL tear in her other knee.
She said she feared another low point in her life, and doubts about not coming back had crept in.
The system behind the emergency department wait times Winnipeggers see online had multiple flaws that made waits sometimes appear lower than they should, an internal memo shows.
Police on the west coast of Newfoundland say a 27-year-old woman was arrested on Friday night for impaired and dangerous driving, after being caught speeding down the main road in the rural community of Piccadilly at 88 km/h over the speed limit.
Scientists are seeing tropical fish in Nova Scotia with more frequency, and their arrival is prompting concerns about what their presence could mean for local species down the road.
New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt says health care won’t be exempt from her efforts to cut spending — even though her health minister says big spending increases will be unavoidable in coming years.
Pierre Ny St-Amand, the man who drove a bus into a Laval daycare in 2023, killing two young children and injuring six others, has been declared a high-risk accused.
A former CTV and CBC reporter hired to serve as Manitoba’s trade envoy to the United States is taking home more than $480,000 Cdn a year in consulting fees, according to his contract with the province.
The teen who lit her classmate on fire at a Saskatoon high school returns to court on Monday to learn the judge's decision on her sentence.
On a July morning in 2024, Dwayne Cardinal was packing up his tent outside the Bissell Centre when a police cruiser pulled up and two officers got out.
The City of Revelstoke and the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District have passed motions formalizing their intention to push the provincial government to protect an old-growth forest.
The province will once again decide who will hold Niagara’s top municipal post after the sudden resignation last week of Bob Gale, but exactly when the next regional chair will be announced isn’t clear just yet.
A wind warning is in place for Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent and Sarnia-Lambton on Monday with gusts as high as 90 km/h possible, according to Environment Canada.
Just a year after the Alberta government made a big splash unveiling its new border security team to the public with an announced $29-million investment, its latest budget shows the province only spent a third of the total it earmarked for the work over its first year.
Following several fatal collisions in northern Ontario this winter, a Sudbury, Ont., resident has created a website to track incidents across the region.