Nearly two years have passed since snowboarder Kevin Pearce suffered a violent crash that shattered his dream of participating in the Olympics and left him with a severe brain injury, facing long odds of a successful recovery.
On Tuesday at Breckenridge, Colorado, Pearce rode a snowboard for the first time since his accident, and for family and friends, and just about anyone familiar with his story, the event was both inspirational and heartwarming (see video).
Pearce, who was a rising star and considered a favorite to win a medal at the Vancouver Games, remembers nothing about that December night in 2009. As he was preparing for the Olympic trials, something went awry while he was airborne, and he slammed his head on the lip of the icy halfpipe.
He'd spend the next several weeks in the hospital. He experienced loss of memory, blurred vision, and problems with balance and speech, as he left the hospital to enter an extensive period of rehabilitation.
His snowboarding career was over, but that didn't matter. His family and friends just hoped Pearce would recover enough to be able to enjoy a somewhat normal lifestyle.
Pearce put snowboarding aside and worked tirelessly at rehabilitation, ultimately regaining his speech and vision, while trying to reclaim enough balance to one day ride his snowboard again. That would be his personal Olympics.
"There are bigger things in life than snowboarding," he said during a recent interview. "It was my whole life for the last 10 years, and my life got flipped upside down 100%. So it's different now in every single way. What's so cool, though, is that I've been able to deal with it."
His ride at Breckenridge was remarkably smooth, his turns crisp. He smiled a lot and his personality shone. It was a good day on the slopes, one of the best days yet.
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