This was not how snowboarder Kevin Pearce saw his Olympic experience going down. He had prepared for months for this moment, going on six-hour bike rides with his personal trainer and dialing in new tricks. After all that, Kevin was supposed to be standing atop the 22-foot halfpipe at Cypress Mountain in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, ready to drop in for a gold medal run in the men's snowboarding competition.
Instead, Kevin was in his room at Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado, last February watching on a small portable TV with poor reception as Shaun White, whom Kevin defeated in a halfpipe competition a year earlier, won gold. "Watching the Olympics on TV was so much pain for me," Kevin says. "To know that I could have been there and doing all the tricks that [the other competitors] do and [instead] to be in a hospital bed not being able to walk was just nuts." (Tejada) This is one one the many examples of professional athletes who suffer traumatic injuries while participating in winter sports. Kevin Pearce had dedicated his life to snowboarding, and in return, he was almost killled. As a snowboarder of seven years, I understand that accidents can happen to anyone at anytime. On the other hand, many people that are unfamiliar with winter sports may feel that winter sports are just a breeding ground from catastrophe and that nothing good can arise from participation in winter sports. To those people that feel that way, through research and personal experience, I have found that the benefits greatly out weigh the negative aspect of winter sports.
