STONEHAM, QUE.—Winning an Olympic gold medal is far harder than Dara Howell expected it would be.
Not winning the medal itself, that almost seemed to fall into her hands at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. It was living with it afterward that proved tough for the freestyle skier from Huntsville, Ont.
“I definitely struggled with winning a gold medal, still struggle with it,” Howell said.
She was part of Canada’s freestyle ski team that surpassed all expectations with double podiums in multiple events, including the debut of slopestyle where Howell won gold and Kim Lamarre won the bronze.
Since then, the slopestyle skiers have all faced their own personal battles — from injuries to expectations — and are now trying to get back on track for the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. Lamarre, who finished sixth here, was the only Canadian from the women’s Olympic slopestyle ski team to make Sunday’s final. Howell and Yuki Tsubota didn’t advance out of qualifying and Kaya Turski, who is dealing with a wrist injury, didn’t make it to the Quebec World Cup at all.
On the men’s side, Alex Beaulieu-Marchand, who was 12th in Sochi, finished third.
Ask Howell what her biggest struggle was after Sochi and she has one word at the ready: expectations.
“I put a lot of stress on myself and I felt there were a lot of expectations from others. There probably weren’t, but I felt there was and that I needed to perform,” the 22-year-old Howell said.
Tsubota said the hyper-focus on the Olympics ahead of the Games proved to be too much. “It’s all anybody cared about anymore and I really lost the love of the sport,” she said.
Lamarre sustained a concussion and broken shoulder in a competition after the Olympics, and that set her back.
Turksi had troubles dealing with not winning a medal at Sochi. With a string of Aspen X Games gold medals to her name, Turski was the team’s slopestyle star. She underwent experimental knee surgery just to get to the Olympics and then, once she arrived, came down with a virus that sapped her energy and confidence.
She has spoken since about how another knee and shoulder surgery and her plummeting self-worth took their toll.
Until she won the gold medal, Howell had been under the radar.
“Winning a gold medal brought a lot of stuff with it that Dara had no idea was coming,” said Doug Howell, Dara’s father. “Right off the bat she felt pulled all over the place by people and didn’t know how to handle it.”
The Huntsville mayor named a street after her, people wanted her at events and schools wanted her to talk to children. She had only taken up freestyle skiing a few years earlier after getting bored with ski racing and figure skating and, at 19, it was a lot to take in.
“I noticed after the Olympics I was not a person who wants to be the centre of attention or be in the spotlight, it’s just not my personality,” she said.
Howell took time off from skiing and moved to Winnipeg where boyfriend Mark Scheifle is a centre for the Jets.
While she stepped back after Sochi, her sport moved on.
“The landscape of women’s slopestyle changed drastically, there’s a lot more girls out there doing the big tricks,” national team head coach Toben Sutherland said.
Howell has the jumps and her rails, which have become far more important than they used to be, are coming along, he said.
“It’s getting Dara to a state of mind where she believes in herself again and has the confidence that she has the tools to make it happen. When she has all that, things can come together very quickly for her.”
The trouble is that it is easiest to build confidence in a low-pressure training environment, but the busy competition schedule makes that all but impossible right now. And this is the Olympic qualifying period where Canadians need to deliver results to secure 2018 Games quota spots.
It’s likely Canada will get four spots in men’s slopestyle skiing but, on the women’s side, unless things change, it could only be two, Sutherland said.
Howell feels she’s back on the right track. Her father, who has been travelling with her this season, sees the change, too.
“I’ve seen the fight for a while, but I saw the fire (at the Quebec World Cup stop),” he said. “She’s been fighting to get back to the level she was at and doing what she needs to but at the same time she’d say . . . ‘If it happens, it happens; if it doesn’t, that’s okay too.’ Whereas this week she made a mistake on her second run and felt it cost her a spot in the finals and she was very frustrated with herself; she wanted it.”
Ultimately, it’s a return trip to the Olympics that she really wants. “Obviously a medal is great, but with everything I’ve been through, I want to show myself that I can do it again — that I can make it.”
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