Cassie Sharpe grew up on Mount Washington. She and her brothers tore up the slopes from when they were kids.
And in 2018, Sharpe skied her way to gold in freestyle halfpipe at the Pyeongchang Olympics in Korea.
It was her first Olympics, and she dominated the competition.
She was getting ready for the 2022 Olympics when something awful happened.
Sharpe blew out her knee at the X Games in January 2021. She’s been hurt before. She told the Daily Hive that she’d had 15 injuries and six surgeries.
But this was different.
“In surgery, when I was getting the ligaments put back together, and they had to put a staple in my femur, they actually fractured my femur,” she told the Daily Hive.
So now she had a blown knee and a broken leg.
Sharpe had doubts about whether she’d get back to the Olympics.
“100%,” she told CBC Sports. “I doubted it from the day I blew my knee to the day that I had surgery… I wasn’t sure that I was going make it back on snow.”
But part of being an Olympian is getting back up even when things go really wrong.
She got back on snow in November 2021. And in February 2022, she was back on the Olympic podium.
In true VanIsle style, she brought a teammate with her. Rachel Karker from Guelph won the bronze medal in the same event.
She told CBC Sports that her whole family supported her through her injury and the Olympics.
“I’m so grateful to have a family, the way that my family is. I’m so lucky and very blessed.”
Watch Sharpe’s silver medal run right here:
