Snowboarder Mercedes Nicoll has competed in four winter Olympics in halfpipe, and seven world championships. She’s been the Canadian National Champ five times, stood on eight World Cup podiums, and is a shining example of what it means to love the competition and camaraderie of sport.
These days she’s a coach, a writer, a public speaker, an organizer of fun and host of the podcast Dropping In with Mercedes Nicoll. Also: Host Feet Banks once saw Shania Twain pause in between songs at a stadium show in Vancouver and get the entire audience on their feet as she gave Mercedes a shout-out. That kind of street cred is hard to beat. WARNING: A few bad words in this one.
Here are some highlights from Feet Banks’ conversation with Mercedes:
Roots
“It started about five years before my first Olympics [Turin, 2006]. And as you know, the roots of snowboarding from where I saw it, which was pretty early on in Whistler, came from skateboarding. It came from doing your own thing, going in your own direction and having fun with your friends. And then all of a sudden it starts to shift into the Olympics….I think what happened is that there were two avenues of snowboarding. And it’s so hard to explain to people that aren’t in the core bubble world of snowsports. You either competed, did magazine [shoots] and you were part of the core of snowboarding, or you kind of were on the competitive path. And not many people could do both at the same time.
It’s just too time-consuming and also expensive…. And it’s really hard for kids to get into competitions now without having a coach. So that doesn’t make it easy for anyone to get into the competitive world. Whereas the course I took, which was just going out with friends, having a good time—that’s still definitely there. And I hope that never changes because that’s the soul of snowboarding.”
The Olympic Crowds
“When I was dropping into the halfpipe, I couldn’t hear anything, because I was in the zone and it took me a while to figure out what the zone was. But if there’s a crowd roaring and you’re at the top of the halfpipe ready to drop in, you’re in tunnel vision, doing your duty, doing what you’ve come to do. And I couldn’t hear the crowd whatsoever. So I was the sole woman to make it into finals for Team Canada in 2010. I went through qualifiers and semifinals and then night finals all in one day, which was super new for us. We’d never really done that many runs in a competition before. Usually you do qualifiers the day before and then you do semis and finals. So this was a jam-packed day.
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And Tora Bright, Australian snowboarder, a good friend of mine, comes up and says ‘I love it when you drop in—the crowd goes wild.’ And I was like, ‘They do that for everyone.’ And everyone in finals, 11 women, were like, ‘No, only for you!’ And I had no idea….
My stomach started hurting and I was so tired and wondering what’s going on—can I get through this, is it just butterflies? Long story short, right after the Games [Vancouver 2010, where Mercedes finished sixth, the second-best Olympic result ever by a Canadian halfpipe snowboarder] I ended up in hospital with pancreatitis… which is said to be more painful than childbirth.
And I haven’t had any kids yet, so I can’t tell you that, but it freaking hurts.”
Sochi Olympics
“You might remember that the weather was quite warm [in Sochi, 2014] and the halfpipe is supposed to have straight walls. But this was a wavy halfpipe. It was just built like crap. Obviously the conditions were not good. When I watched the men’s qualifiers I thought, ‘I’ve never seen so many guys pop out of the halfpipe more in two years of competition combined.’ It was insane.
It was such an ugly thing to watch. And so my last round of practice right before we were going to compete, I thought, ‘this is my last Olympics. [Nicoll competed in one more—PyeongChang, 2018—where she placed 18th in halfpipe, her second-best Olympic result.] So I’m gonna do all the tricks I know I can do.’ So I went to practice a backside 900, which is two full rotations.
And when I went up to the lip, you can see in the video, the snow kind of gives way, so I can’t get my full rotation. I know I’m gonna pop out of the halfpipe. I just didn’t know how much of my body was gonna end up on the deck, which is 22 feet high, or at the bottom. Unfortunately, my heels clipped the deck and then I bounced on my hip and my face down 22 feet. And I didn’t black out. Usually when I get concussed, cause I’ve had a fair few, I don’t black out. I get back up and pretend I’m okay, which is what I did. And don’t recommend it, kids…”
Listen to the full conversation here.
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