Gold Medal Retiree

Less than a year ago here on Sportsmans' Spotlight, I was interviewing good friend Josh Loubek, a Freestyle skier who helped start the trend of skiing in the half pipe and went on to become a professional skier. so successful was Josh, that he was chosen as an Olympic judge for the winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The subject of our interview was not Josh, it was about Kaitlyn Farrington who won the gold medal in women's snowboard half pipe at the Olympics in Sochi. "What was amazing is that the conditions of the half pipe were really difficult. That was because of weather. It was warm, it had snowed a little bit and it created difficult conditions. There was a challenging aspect of it for the girls in general to make it through their run without falling and really going for it. She had to battle through that with all of the other girls and not only did she do that but her run was technically way harder than everybody else. She was doing extra rotations and different types of grabs and all of that. So her run was incredibly technical. So her run was incredibly technical." Sadly, Farrington, 25, has been diagnosed with congenital cervical stenosis (narrowing of the spine) and has accepted her forced retirement from the snowboard half pipe a short nine months after she won gold in Sochi. She grew up in Bellevue and lives in Salt Lake City.