Halfpipe skier Sharpe enters third Olympics with new perspective thanks to motherhood

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This article was published 30/01/2026 (246 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Cassie Sharpe’s third Olympics will be a family affair, with daughter Louella front and centre.

And that means Sharpe, a halfpipe skier who won gold in Pyeongchang in 2018 and silver four years ago in Beijing, goes into the Milan Cortina Games with a new perspective.

“(At the) 2018 Games, I was kind of going in as a hot-headed twentysomething just feeling like if I didn’t win or if I didn’t podium, I had screwed up. It was like my whole value of who I was was riding on my performance at the Olympics,” she said. “Whereas going into these Olympics as a 33-year-old mother with a daughter and a husband and a family and a house … I’ve kind of shifted where I hold value.

“To me, it’s like all of these little golden moments outside of skiing are kind of held at a higher value than this one moment leading up to the 2026 Games.”

So while the competitive fire still burns bright, it’s everything in perspective.

“I obviously want to go in to win and be on the podium,” said Sharpe, who calls Comox, B.C., home. “That would be beautiful and amazing and great. But if that doesn’t happen, I’m still coming home to my family, to my daughter, to my life that I’ve created here. So there’s definitely a wider view of what life means to me these days.”

In a video for FIS Freestyle Skiing, Sharpe sums her feelings in a letter penned to her younger self.

“You’ll see that motherhood doesn’t change you. It adds to you. It makes you stronger, sharper and more certain of why you fight for your dreams.”

While Sharpe stays with other athletes in Livigno, she will have plenty of support nearby.

Her mother, Chantal, who took a leave of absence from her job as an airline attendant to help care for Louella on the road, will be there as well as Sharpe’s father, husband, two brothers and other friends.

With training at night, Sharpe expects to be able to spend mornings with Louella and the extended clan.

Husband Justin Dorey was a 2014 Olympian in freestyle halfpipe, while younger brother Darcy was a 2022 Olympian in snowboard slopestyle and big air

In advance of the games, Sharpe has signed on as a global ambassador for Corona Cero, a non-alcoholic beer, as part of a campaign to get people back into winter sports.

“Life gets busy,” Sharpe said. “I can see how, if it wasn’t your career (or) something that you were doing as a profession, it would be easy to get away from.”

Corona is holding Olympic watch parties in Whistler-Blackcomb, B.C., Lake Louise, Alta., and Mont-Tremblant, Que., and running a contest offering 1,000 Canadians ski passes at those mountains. It also plans to host athletes and fans at “Casa Corona Livigno” in Italy.

Winter sports have long been part of Sharpe’s life.

She started skiing at age 10 after her family moved and her father got a job at the Mount Washington Alpine Resort on Vancouver Island. Sharpe and her siblings would hit the slopes every weekend.

She began competing at 16 and, in 2012, went to a slopestyle contest in California that proved to be fateful. After she was unable to land a move, her coach suggested she try the halfpipe. She ended up winning her first halfpipe contest and made the national team in 2014.

Medals followed.

After having Louella in August 2023, Sharpe returned to action in September 2024 at a World Cup event in New Zealand. It did not go well.

“It was horrible. Louella got the most sick she had ever been in her one year of life,” Sharpe said. “She had a fever for five days.”

It required a hospital visit the day before qualifying. Then Sharpe herself got ill, suffering from vertigo-like symptoms and having trouble breathing.

“(In) hindsight, I probably should have just pulled out of that contest, but I was so determined to show that I was back and I was competing,” she said.

“It was a tough one and a learning experience,” she said.

Restored to health, she finished fourth and third in subsequent World Cup events in December 2024 and won her third Superpipe gold at the X Games in January 2025 in Aspen.

Sharpe then placed third at the 2025 FIS World Championships at Engadin, Switzerland.

Sharpe’s runway to the 2022 Olympics was vastly different as she battled to recover from knee surgery to repair a torn anterior and medial collateral ligament in winning silver at the 2021 X Games. Somehow, she returned to competition 10 1/2 months after the surgery.

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As a result, she says the silver she went on to win in Beijing “almost meant more to me than the (Pyeongchang) gold because I worked so hard for it.”

En route to Milan, she was sixth and third in World Cup stops in China and Calgary and placed third in January at the X Games, collecting her seventh medal in the competition.

Sharpe’s musical soundtrack during competition is a four-song playlist, with “Feisty” by Fred Again as her current tune of choice.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 30, 2026