'I want to prove I'm back': Olympic freestyle ski champ Cassie Sharpe combines motherhood and halfpipe
CBC
The itch to compete became full blown scratching when freestyle skier Cassie Sharpe watched the 2024 X Games.
The 2018 Olympic gold medallist and 2022 silver medallist in women's halfpipe thought she might retire when daughter Louella was born in 2023.
The yearning Sharpe felt watching her friends and rivals drop into the pipe in Aspen, Colo., confirmed the freestyle fire still burned within her.
"I was watching the contests and thought 'huh, maybe I'm not as done as I think I am,"' Sharpe said.
"I was like 'oh my gosh. I want be there. I want to be with those girls, I want to be in that pipe, I want to be with that energy."'
The 32-year-old from Comox, B.C., returned to competition this winter after a two-season hiatus.
After a rough start to her World Cup season, Sharpe landed on the podium in her third event, and received her coveted invitation to the X Games that run Thursday to Sunday in Aspen.
"Before our sport was in the Olympics, this was our Olympics," Sharpe said. "That first X Games invite that I ever got in 2016, I will never forget that feeling of feeling so validated and being accepted.
"That's kind of how I felt this year, was coming back and proving I can be on that stage with these younger girls. It's super fun."
Sharpe was the halfpipe gold medallist in Aspen in 2019 and took silver in her most recent appearance in 2021. She's among 11 Canadians invited to this year's X Games.
Regina snowboarder Mark McMorris holds the record for X Games medals won with 23 and gold with seven.
The rest of Sharpe's season includes the Feb. 14-16 freestyle World Cup in Calgary, as well as March's world championship in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Sharpe and husband Justin Dorey, a 2014 Olympian in freestyle halfpipe, had "some really big conversations" about how she could return to an elite level of a sport involving international travel with a baby in tow.
"Justin was immediately supportive, but then what do we do with the baby, what's the plan?" Sharpe said.
