LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — U.S. freeskier Nick Goepper checked out of the hospital with only a knee sprain and a bad shin bruise after a scary fall in the halfpipe finals at the Winter Olympics, team officials said Saturday.
The 31-year-old Goepper, who learned to ski on baby hills near his hometown in Indiana, went flying above the halfpipe and came down on his back in Friday night’s final before bouncing to the bottom. He stood up and was walked gingerly to the bottom, holding his back.
The all-or-nothing trick Goepper threw down said a lot about his goals and the sport itself. He came out of retirement after the last Olympics to move from slopestyle to the halfpipe. He already has two Olympic silver medals and a bronze, and clearly wasn’t in the contest for second or third again.
He was in third place when he dropped in for his final run. His final trick — an attempt to add a full extra rotation to the same jumps he had landed earlier to close his runs — was his final gambit to win the gold.
Shortly after his wreck, Canada’s Brendan Mackay landed a strong run to push Goepper off the podium and into fourth place.
“He is just absolutely unbelievable,” said Goepper’s teammate, gold medalist Alex Ferreira. “He is a great competitor and great teammate and friend, and for him to go for it in that moment took serious guts. He is a real man.”
Goepper was not the only freeskier to go down hard in the halfpipe.
Top-ranked Finley Melville Ives of New Zealand suffered a scary crash in qualifying earlier in the day. Team officials said he briefly fell unconcious but was stable after he was taken off in a stretcher.
On Thursday, 2018 Olympic champion Cassie Sharpe of Canada also took a wicked spill in women’s qualifying that briefly knocked her out. Coach Trennon Paynter said Sharpe was not seriously injured.
“We’re really disappointed that it happened like that last night but so, so glad that she’s going to be OK,” he said.
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