STRATTON, Vt.—Before their falls, snowboarders Kevin Pearce and Danny Davis were among the world’s best—up-and-coming young riders with daredevil hearts and the skills to match. They were bound for the Olympics.
Then Pearce suffered a brain injury in a halfpipe accident while training in 2009. Three weeks later, Davis broke his pelvis and three vertebrae when he crashed an ATV into a gate.
One is back on his board, competing again with the world’s best. The other can only wish he was. But both feel lucky, and they’re celebrating their triumphs over adversity at this week’s U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships.
Eric Willett captured the men’s slopestyle title and Enni Rukajarvi took the women’s event Friday, slogging through the slushy, shrouded Stratton Mountain course in rain and fog.
The night before, Pearce and Davis got together to play some poker, reminisce and compare notes about their recoveries.
“We were hurt together. I got hurt pretty good and he got hurt pretty good,” Davis said Friday. “It was nice to have somebody to go through that with and go through the ‘Oh, you should’ve been in the Olympics.’ It was the same thing for both of us. But we’re alive and we’re healthy and our sponsors are still supporting us. We’re really lucky.”
The 22-year-old Davis, from Truckee, Calif., is fully recovered but still rusty after eight months off his board.
Competing for the second time since his January 2010 accident, he failed to make the finals in halfpipe or slopestyle.
“I can’t expect to make finals. Your tricks need to be dialed. And I just haven’t ridden that stuff. My tricks aren’t dialed,” he said.
It doesn’t bother him, he says. He just needs more practice.
He knows the difference between his injury and Pearce’s.
“I was being an idiot, and Kevin was pushing his limits of snowboarding. And he was in worse shape than I was. That was a pretty tough thing,” Davis said.
Pearce, who grew up in nearby Norwich, Vt., says his doctors have told him he may be well enough to return to boarding next winter. But the 23-year-old’s days of competitive riding are over. He still does cognitive therapy, eye exercises and balance drills. He does some announcing.
It’s tough being around a mountain without a board to ride. But he doesn’t dwell on it.
“It definitely hurts in a huge way not to have a board. But I look at the fact that there’s no point to being bummed. Obviously, I could be really bumming because it’s what I want to be doing and what I love so much. I just know not to go to that place,” Pearce said.
In Friday’s men’s finals, Willett, of Frisco, Colo., outpointed Mark McMorris 90.40-87.80.
“The rain wasn’t too bad. It actually sped things up a bit. It was the fog and the bumps in between everything that was hard to handle. You had to power through it and make it to the jumps,” Willett said.
Rukajarvi, of Kuusamo, Finland, topped Jamie Anderson, of South Lake Tahoe, Calif., 86.50-84.80.
“It was so hard,” Rukajarvi said. “It was raining, you couldn’t see anything. It was so difficult.”
The 29th annual Open, sponsored by snowboard maker Burton, wraps up Saturday with finals in men’s and women’s halfpipe.
Absent is two-time Olympic halfpipe gold medalist Shaun White, who pulled out earlier in the week, citing a foot injury that will require surgery.
