The Canadian team for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics looks to be razor Sharpe.
Snowboarder Darcy Sharpe of Comox was named to the men’s slopestyle/big air squad Wednesday and will be joining sister Cassie Sharpe, 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic gold medallist in women’s ski half pipe, in the Beijing Games.
“We all grew up on Mount Washington and being in the Olympics with Cassie will be so special,” said Darcy Sharpe.
“I loved growing up there. Mount Washington groomed us. We would spend all day on the slopes. I looked up to my older brother, Douglas, and fell in with the trouble-making boarder crowd while Cassie stuck to skiing” he added, with a chuckle.
“It took over our DNA. We have so much love and passion for what we do.”
Both siblings will have gotten to Beijing the hard way after near-catastrophic injuries almost kept both out. Cassie Sharpe only recently returned to competing following knee surgery and a fractured femur in a frightening fall at the Winter X Games last January in Aspen. She gave the V for victory sign as she was being sledded off by the medical crew and has gamely battled back into the world top-10. The Canadian freestyle ski team for Beijing has yet to be announced, but it is hard to imagine a scenario in which the Islander isn’t selected.
Darcy Sharpe also had only the narrowest of margins due to a torn ACL while competing last fall robbed him of pretty much the entire qualifying period. Contracting COVID didn’t help, either: “Should have stayed away from the after-party,” quipped Sharpe.
The best-three World Cup events count for Olympic qualifying and Darcy Sharpe returned to health with only three events remaining in the season and had to record killer scores in each of those to have any hope. With zero room for error, he came through with a trey of gutsy performances.
“I had to go three-for-three and was relieved I was able to do it and become an Olympian,” said Sharpe, who will turn 26 next month while in Beijing.
“I knew what I had to do and did it.”
A broken ankle kept him out of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games. Twice in a row would have been hard to take: “Two consecutive Olympics being injured would have been truly unlucky. I really felt I should have been there in 2018.”
It turned out to be a dream deferred, not denied. But only through his own relentless determination and drive. And that go-for-broke attitude of all freestylers.
“It’s the art of not giving a damn,” said Sharpe.
That is the freestylers’ outlook while competing. But, of course, they are human and subject to the same anxieties and doubts of all athletes.
“[Freestyler attitude] helps me deal with the pressure,” said Sharpe. “I’m never super-nervous when that clicks in and I get into that flow-state.”
And what about that sibling rivalry with an Olympic gold-medallist sister?
“Cassie pushes me. What she has accomplished is incredible,” said Darcy Sharpe, himself an X Games gold medallist and three-time silver medallist, and world championship silver medallist.
“Joining her in the Olympics will be unreal. I’ve wanted this on my career checklist. Now the next step is hardware [medal].”
Don’t count out that possibility. After all, it runs in the family.
cdheensaw@timescolonist.com
