Bardonecchia, Italy – After her long, strange trip, Flat Rosey is finally going home with a medal.
Of course, she’ll have to share it with her snowboarding mentor, the real Rosey Fletcher, who did all the hard work to win the bronze medal in women’s parallel giant slalom snowboard competition at her third and final Winter Olympics. Still, it’s not a bad haul for a cardboard cutout simply along for the ride.
As an underdog in the twilight of her career, Fletcher, 30, accomplished Thursday what she never was able to in two prior attempts.
After failing to finish her Olympic giant slalom race in 1998 and placing 26th in PGS in 2002, she drew inspiration from a cardboard cutout given to her by a schoolgirl from her elementary school in her hometown of Girdwood, Alaska. After reading the children’s book “Flat Stanley” – about a boy who is accidentally flattened and takes a journey around the world – the girl created a “Flat Rosey” for the hometown hero, which Fletcher carried with her all the way to the podium.
“Flat Rosey was in my suit, on the left side, and I asked her, ‘Are you ready?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I’m ready,’ ” Fletcher said of the unusual prerace ritual before her run. “So today was about Flat Rosey and me racing. It wasn’t about the media pressure, it wasn’t about the team pressure, it was just a race for me and Flat Rosey.”
Carving smooth, fluid lines throughout the day, the Roseys posted the second-fastest qualifying time heading into the 16-woman PGS tournament as teammate Michelle Gorgone of Sudbury, Mass., skidded out and failed to make the cut. Once in the head-to-head bracket, Fletcher lost only one of eight duals, albeit at a critical juncture, when an early toe-side slip-up cost her the second run of the two-run semifinal against eventual gold medalist Daniela Meuli of Switzerland.
“It is a really, really great day for me,” Meuli said. “At the qualifications I was very nervous. But then I just said to myself, ‘Passion Lives Here,’ the motto of the Torino Games.”
Fletcher was able to regroup and come through in the bronze-medal race against Doris Guenther of Austria for the seventh U.S. snowboarding medal of the Olympics. She carried the maximum 1.5-second time advantage into her second run against Guenther, who struggled around the same gate as Fletcher in the first run of the “small final.” She then had a clean second run to clinch the bronze by .69 of a second.
Before the Olympics, Fletcher had announced her impending retirement from competitive snowboarding at the end of the 2005-06 World Cup season. After 20 World Cup podiums, two world championship silver medals and two U.S. Open titles, the Olympic bronze caps off an impressive career for the most decorated woman in American alpine snowboarding.
“I don’t want to take anything away from Jerry Garcia, but what a long, strange trip it’s been,” Fletcher said. “I feel like I’ve had some ups and downs, but I think every athlete does. This year really came together in terms of physically and mentally having everything together. And all those little pieces are so important.
“You could be in the best shape of your life and mentally just not have it together. I feel like this was just the year when everything came together and I came into my own.”
Staff writer Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-820-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
