Five years later, it’s still nearly impossible to watch Maëlle Ricker’s gold medal run in snowboard cross at the Vancouver Winter Olympics without getting goosebumps, a lump in the throat or even tears in the eyes.
A replay of the dominant run was shown at North Vancouver’s Level 10 Fitness Wednesday morning and Ricker’s assembled friends, family and even media members couldn’t help but smile, laugh and cry as commentator Jamie Campbell belted out his boisterous call that ends with his own voice cracking, “Maëlle Ricker’s Olympic dreams have come truuueeeee!”
A few minutes after the replay ended Ricker, a West Vancouver native and Squamish resident, announced that at age 36 she was retiring from competitive snowboarding. She’ll hang up her board as one of the most decorated winter sport athletes in Canada and will forever have the distinction of being the first Canadian woman to ever win an Olympic gold medal on home soil.
“It’s with absolute pleasure, and nervousness, that I step away from the start gate and hang up the race jersey today,” she said, her own voice now cracking. “There aren’t enough words, there aren’t enough thank-yous, to show my gratitude for being part of the team.”
Thus ended a competitive snowboarding career that spanned more than two decades and included appearances at four Olympic Games in a pair of disciplines, snowboard cross and halfpipe. In 1996-97, her rookie season on World Cup snowboard cross circuit, Ricker, still a teenager, hit the podium twice. Since then she’s racked up two X-Games gold medals, two Crystal Globes as the overall World Cup snowboard cross champion, a World Championship gold and of course, Olympic gold in 2010.
Her career, however, is defined as much by devastating low points, and her resilience in coming back from them, as it is by her soaring victories. A knee injury kept her out of the Olympics in her prime, 2002 in Salt Lake, and over the years she would collect so many knee surgeries that she has literally lost count (the total is at or near double digits). At the 2006 Olympics in Turin she was the gold medal favourite but suffered a horrific crash in the championship. She finished fourth and suffered a concussion that has, to this day, wiped the crash clean from her memory.
In 2014 Ricker was intent on defending her Olympic gold medal but she suffered another nasty crash while training in Aspen, Colo., the radius and ulna bones of her left forearm breaking, with the smaller radius bone popping right through her skin. She was due in the Olympic start gate in 19 days.
The night of the accident she was getting prepped for surgery and made a phone call to her father.
“I was a bit teary-eyed and pretty emotional and he said, ‘chin up, grit your teeth, smile and we’ll see you in a few days,’” Ricker remembered Wednesday. “And that’s exactly what happened.”
By the next morning she was already mapping out a plan to get herself ready to race in Sochi, Russia.
With 16 screws and two plates in her arm she did make it into the Olympic start gate, amazingly finishing fourth in qualifying. There was no medal on the line in those time trials – Ricker would go on to crash in her first heat, well before the medal rounds – but her performance in Sochi helped define her career as a fierce competitor.
“It wasn’t the crash, but the next few weeks of how we all worked together, Canada Snowboard, the coaches, everybody pulled together to get me out of the gate,” she said. “It allowed me to have one of the most unforgettable time trial runs of my life. One of my greatest accomplishments in my snowboarding career.”
That moment also resonates for Anthony Findlay, the owner of Level 10 Fitness who has spent thousands of hours working with Ricker over the years getting her body fit for competition. On Wednesday Findlay revealed that Ricker was also racing with broken ribs in Sochi, an injury that made it hard for her to breathe during the race. Ricker never disclosed that injury to the public.
“She didn’t want another crutch for people to know about,” said Findlay. “That was kind of her in a nutshell…. She’s just the toughest athlete in the world. And then she came fourth in her time trial!”
Findlay, whose client list includes players from nearly every league you can name, right up to the NFL and NHL, calls himself lucky for getting to work with Ricker all of these years. He was there with tears in his eyes at the bottom of the course at the 2010 Olympics and he was by Ricker’s side in 2014 as she was lying on the side of a mountain in Aspen with her arm bones broken.
“She’s one of these very unique people that some get the privilege to be able to meet and deal with and get to know what drives them,” he said. “She strikes a chord. Everything you’d want to achieve or how you’d want to do it, Maëlle has done that. All the examples that you’d want your kids to watch and emulate, she’s done that.”
The location of Ricker’s retirement announcement was fitting given the amount of time she’s spent at Level 10 getting her injury-wracked body back into racing shape. She drives down from her home in Squamish nearly every day for morning training sessions.
“It’s a second home, really,” she said. “There are plenty of facilities closer to my house that I could go to but the atmosphere and the passion and the energy that Anthony has brought to the team is just undeniable. I’d drive 1,000 kilometres a day if I had to to work out with him every day.”
She’ll likely need to continue to make the trip to keep her body functioning – this retirement was not by choice. She hasn’t competed since the 2014 Olympics but Ricker spent this summer preparing for another season. This August she went to Snowboard Canada’s South American training camp but when she got on snow it was clear that her injuries had finally caught up to her, her right knee ultimately keeping her from performing at her peak.
“This past year has been really tough,” she said. “Even thinking about it now brings the hairs up on my arms. I really would have loved to be in that start gate in Pyeongchang (at the 2018 Olympics) with our younger generation of team. (But) I just knew. A switch flicked.”
The switch wasn’t just based on her physical status but also her mental preparation, Ricker said.
“I know what I need to feel and what I need to risk to be in the start gate and on the podium. I just know that I’m not able to get to that point anymore.”
The years of flying down hills, racing side-by-side with other boarders over jumps and around bends have taken nearly all of the cushion out of her right knee, making snowboarding, training, even walking a painful process for Ricker, said Findlay.
“It’s tough to see, knowing her, knowing that she never wants to stop,” he said. “She’d probably keep going, as she said years ago, even if she needed to be bolted together. And that’s kind of what’s happened.”
Ricker will continue to work with Snowboard Canada athletes in a yet-to-be-determined role. Judging by the response to her retirement – praise has been pouring in from her teammates, many of whom were seen in a tear-jerking thank-you video shown at her retirement announcement – she’ll be an inspirational mentor no matter what role she takes.
“I’m still looking for a way to give back and be part of the team and still live, dream, eat, breathe snowboarding, day in day out,” Ricker said. “The kind words from my teammates and friends was over the top, it brought tears to my eyes. It just makes you realize how much of a special environment you’re in, and how fortunate I am to be in the presence of such amazing people.”
