Forbidden From Leaving The Ground, Kaitlyn Farrington Has To Find Snowboarding All Over Again

Just last October, defending Olympic snowboard halfpipe gold medalist Kaitlyn Farrington heard the words that are scarier than any icy halfpipe or contest run: "You can never snowboard again." Farrington was on a trip to Austria in October of 2014 for a product shoot for Giro when she sustained a life-changing injury. A few days into the trip, a storm came in and closed the resort, so she and a few of her teammates took the opportunity to build a small kicker just by their hotel. The jump was no more than 10-15 feet, but Kaitlyn recalls "I went off and caught it, caught my heels, and ended up landing on my high back, low neck and instantly just lost feeling from the neck down."

After an MRI and several X-rays, the diagnosis was congenital cervical stenosis. She'd never heard this term before, yet it was a condition she had been living with all her life, and it essentially means the area in which her spinal chord runs through is too narrow, and gives very little room for movement when her spinal cord bends and flexes. She was in fact extremely lucky that nothing worse had happened before the injury. 

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Coming to terms with what the injury meant to Farrington's lifestyle as a professional snowboarder was a very tough process. At first, she was trying to avoid dealing with it, and was in denial. Her road to acceptance started with conversations with Dr. Hacket, who had traveled the world with Kaitlyn, and knew her as a snowboarder and how tough and resilient she was. 

This meant a serious change in her career as a professional snowboarder. She could still ride, but now has to keep her feet on the ground. She will have retired from competitive snowboarding at the age of 25, with her Olympic gold medal being the last of her career. She's kept a positive outlook after the injury and considered this to be a start of a new snowboarding career, focusing more on backcountry and jokes she's the best carver and turner on the mountain these days. Although Kaitlyn has had to make some sacrifices in her riding and outlook on snowboarding, her resilience and positivity will keep her shredding for many years to come.