Opinion | Canada’s Meryeta O’Dine overcomes long list of setbacks to capture bronze in snowboard cross

BEIJING It’s been called the most dangerous sport at the Olympics, full of crashes and carnage that often have the course-side medics calling for the stretcher. So as time passes and Canada’s Meryeta O’Dine tells the story behind her bronze medal in snowboard cross at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, she’ll honestly be able to say she didn’t so much win her piece of Olympic hardware as she survived to claim it.

To say O’Dine’s journey to the Olympic podium has been harrowing would be an understatement. The 24-year-old from Prince George, BC, has seen her career de ella waylaid by a long list of setbacks, from multiple injuries to a family tragedy. On Wednesday, as she basked in the glow of her first Olympic podium, she was asked to take an inventory of the hurt.

“I broke my back. I got a terrible concussion at the last Olympics. My brother passed away. That was super tragic,” O’Dine said.

She might have added that, in the wake of brother Brandon’s death after a battle with cancer, she has said she struggled to cope with the effects of anxiety and depression, and that it took her plenty of hard work in therapy to essentially re-learn how to be an elite athlete. She could have also thrown in the fact that she’s nobody silver-spoon Olympian; that she worked at McDonald’s to help pay for her snowboards as a teenager; that she’s currently the purveyor of her own landscaping business.

“There’s been a lot that’s happened over the past four years that have made me a stronger person through breaking down different barriers and coming out to the other side,” she said. “I’ve found a really great system and community that works for me and my friends and my family have been just absolutely nothing but supportive of me and my mission.”

The value of perseverance was the theme of the day around Genting Snow Park snowboard cross stadium, set in the craggy mountains northwest of Beijing. While O’Dine held off Australia’s Belle Brockhoff to take third place in the four-racer big final, six-time world champion Lindsey Jacobellis of the United States used her fifth trip to the Games to win her first Olympic gold medal. Chloe Trespeuch of France, who won bronze in 2014, took the silver.

O’Dine had her eyes on something better than bronze, but the competition was stiff. And, of course, she was more than aware of a false move’s risks.

“I had two Olympic medalists in front of me and women who have paved an incredible path for themselves so it’s definitely difficult to try and get by them,” she said. “I knew I was better in the lower part of the course and you just have to be patient and plan your attack. I came close to a couple of times but never got by them because they were battling it out up there.”

If O’Dine lived through moments of doubt over the past few years, if she questioned whether her pursuit of elite sport was worth it, you could easily understand why. If her broken back was n’t enough, her young career has been ravaged by concussions.

“I’ve pretty much had a concussion every year that I’ve competed,” O’Dine said a few years back.

In Pyeongchang four years ago she suffered a concussion in the lead-up to the main event that kept her out of competition, which was essentially a grim replay of the 2017 world championships, when she was selected to the national team but missed competing after another brain injury.

There’ve been other upheavals, and at least one for the better. O’Dine cited a recent change in her training environment, going back to hone her craft with the British Columbia provincial team even though she was still a member of the national team, that did her good on the road to Wednesday’s career moment.

“You don’t have to be stuck in the environment if it’s not working for you, and it might work for some people and be amazing, but just because it’s working for them doesn’t mean that it’s going to be working for you, ” she said. “I went back to my grassroots, to the team that I started boarder cross with and the team that I’ve gotten a lot of success with in the past… The athletes overall just have a very supportive and encouraging and very fun vibe about them . And that’s why we all begin to be an athlete is because it’s fun, and you want to have a good time, and you want to push yourself.”

The most dangerous sport at the Olympics sometimes has a way of making you forget it’s supposed to be fun. As much as the road to Beijing has been bumpy and often gutting, O’Dine said her moment of her on the podium provided a high that made her grateful she did n’t give up through the lows.

“It feels like I should never have stopped believing in anything,” she said. “Everything that I’ve been through in the past four years I’ve always kept a strong head on my shoulders and to believe in myself, that everything was going to come back around, and you can achieve your goals.”