Park City hometown freeskier Colby Stevenson started skiing at 2 years old and made the US team at the age of 15.
Stevenson was in a car accident in 2016, which resulted in a surgical steel plate implanted in his head due to more than 30 skull fractures, broken bones in his jaw, ribs, and neck. His miraculous recovery has been publicized throughout the years since.
He won a silver medal in the Big Air event in Beijing which he called a miracle because he wasn’t slated to be a medal contender in that discipline.
“They kind of turned it into like a thing where it was a miracle that you were even at the Olympics and like, after my car crash and stuff,” he said. “But what I meant was it was a miracle that I was able to land those tricks and that they ended me on the podium in second place because I had to learn that trick, first one I did, right there in the finals.”
Stevenson said staying at the Olympic Village was a highlight. His team spent about a week isolated there before their events were scheduled. He said he and his teammates made an impression on athletes from other countries.
“So, we were out in the village playing cornhole and all these other countries were just like what are you guys doing, like what is this game and they had never seen it before,” he said. “We stuck out like a sore thumb in that lower village because everyone's so serious and freeskiers are just so like having fun and outside playing games and pretty laid back.”
Stevenson said he was not happy with his slopestyle performance in Beijing, and he’ll be back on the road competing in a couple of world-cup events before the season is over.
“Pretty gutted at the Olympics to not land a clean run,” he said. “I gave it all I had and the way I look at it is if I had podium in the slopestyle, I would not be as motivated to keep going and work harder to ski more slopestyle because that's always been my passion, skiing slopestyle and performing runs and the creativity that goes into it. Yeah, I just feel like I'm hungry as ever after the Olympics and want to keep going.”
Stevenson will compete in France and Switzerland hoping to hit his goals with a couple of number one world cup finishes.
