This time next year, the best cold-weather athletes in the world will be shredding the mountains of northern Italy in the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Squamish's Cassie Sharpe plans to be there with them at the Games freestyle- skiing venue, at Livigno in the Valtellina region, in her quest for the Olympic medal three-peat.
The freestyle half-pipe skier originally from Comox, won Olympic gold and silver medals respectively at Pyeongchang 2018 and Beijing 2022 and is rounding back into form for Milan-Cortina after taking time off following the birth of her daughter, Louella, in 2023.
Motherhood has brought with it a different kind of focus, which seems to be working as good as the old one. “This brings a cool new element to my life and skiing career — half mom [time] half ski [time],” she told the Times Colonist.
Sharpe, who has a run, Cassie’s Way, named in her honour on Mount Washington, continued her comeback by placing fourth Saturday in the World Cup event held in Calgary. It follows up the bronze medal won by the Islander in the World Cup event at Copper Mountain in Colorado in December and the gold medal the Highland Secondary graduate won in the 2025 Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado in January. Sharpe, 32, had missed the two previous X Games to tend to motherhood but came back to the half-pipe with steely furiousness last month for her sixth career X Games medal, including three golds, in her third X Games.
Sharpe, who was inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2024 last year with two-time Olympic-medallist swimmer Ryan Cochrane of Victoria, finished with 86.50 points in her three runs Saturday in Calgary behind fellow-Canadian and bronze medallist Rachael Karker (87.00) of Guelph, Ont.
Fanghui Li of China (90.50) won the gold medal and Zoe Atkin of Great Britain (87.75) the silver.
Dillan Glennie of Courtenay, another in the burgeoning number of skiers and boarders out of Mount Washington in World Cups and recent Winter Olympics, placed sixth in Calgary with a total of 71.75.
