“I use to ride half-pipe and it got inducted the year I started snowboarding so I when I was about 14,15 I really wanted to go to Torino and then to Vancouver. When Vancouver got announced that was really when I remembered being like, ‘okay I want to go to the Olympics, that would be so special to compete in half-pipe at home.’ Then this new event started showing up at contests that we were doing called slope-style. My dad’s whole thing with driving us an hour to the ferry, then 5 hours across the province every weekend was that if we went all the way to these events then we had to do everything, so we did snowboard cross, we did GS, we did half-pipe and when slope-style came along we did that as well then I really liked it. Kind of that following year my mountain stopped building half-pipe so all I did was ride park and it was just so much more ‘me’. It fit ‘me’ completely and that’s when I started watching X Games then I started following the movies and the magazines more. Kind of when I found slope-style was when I decided, not that I wanted to go to the Olympics but that I wanted to be a Pro snowboarder and that’s where my passion was because I think I just found my place in the sport. So I kind of let go of those dreams of going to the Olympics, I actually never thought I’d get a chance to do that in my career so going to Sochi was a really special moment for me.” – Spencer O’Brien, Pro Snowboarder, X Games Gold Medallist, Olympian. (4/7)
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