BONGPYEONG, South Korea — Freeskier Annalisa Drew might have been the happiest fourth-place Olympian in South Korea.
“I knew she had it as soon as she dropped in,” said Drew, whose friend Brita Sigourney edged her out of winning a bronze medal Tuesday.
Sochi Games champion Maddie Bowman fell in the same spot on her three runs in the Phoenix Snow Park halfpipe on a calm winter’s day in the Taebaek Mountains. But she choked up only when asked what a medal meant for Sigourney, who grew up in Carmel.
On a day Sigourney, 28, waited until the final run to put an exclamation point on an injury-plagued career, U.S. teammates could not have been more supportive if they had won themselves.
“I’m happy for the medal but I’m even happier to share it with everyone,” said Sigourney, who played water polo at UC Davis. “There is no rivalry there. It’s just love.”
The love was spread across the snow where Bowman’s mom, Sue, kept telling the Sigourney family, “I’m OK, I’m OK.”
Recalling what it was like in Sochi, Russia, four years ago when her daughter won the gold medal, Sue Bowman added, “Your day is going to get really crazy in the next few minutes.”
It already had been hectic. Sigourney had to rally this season just to reach the Pyeongchang Games. She didn’t qualify until her final run last month at the Olympic trials at Mammoth Mountain.
Sigourney reflected on the stress at Mammoth afterward, saying she faced an inner battle.
“I had a really bad warm-up before the contest,” the skier said. “I wasn’t really landing any of my tricks and it kind of got to my head.”
She remembered how well she had mastered her halfpipe trickery.
“There is no reason I can’t do it when it matters.”
On Tuesday, the woman who now resides in Park City, Utah, faced a similar scenario.
Sigourney was sixth in Sochi. Now she wanted more — even if it meant knocking a friend off the medal stand.
Drew had edged past her friend moments earlier with a score of 90.80 points — “the best skiing I’ve done all season,” she said.
Sigourney felt nauseated before descending into the steep pipe that would determine her fate. She breathed and breathed again.
“This time I really wanted it,” the skier said. “To see me pull it off, I don’t know, I’m still in shock. I didn’t know I could do that. Just to see myself compete under that kind of pressure and pull it off, I’m just so relieved.”
Sigourney relied on going big off the walls instead of executing helicopter-churning spins that are part of this action sport. It was enough to score 91.60 points to finish behind Canadian Cassie Sharpe, who dominated with 95.80 points, and France’s Marie Martinod, who earned a point more than Sigourney.
“I was happy either way,” father Thad Sigourney said. “My daughter is a two-time Olympian.”
But not her mother.
“I was going to take it really hard if she wasn’t going to win a medal,” said Julie Sigourney, an outdoor education teacher and water polo coach at Santa Catalina High in Carmel. “We already did that four years ago.”
The family celebrated mostly because they got a front-row seat of what it took to earn the medal.
Three knee surgeries. Two shoulder surgeries. One thumb surgery. One ankle surgery.
It took nine months to recover from two of knee surgeries.
“She hung in her and she never complained,” Julie said. “She’s very self-contained.”
The parents had shuttled their kids between Carmel and Lake Tahoe throughout their lives. Brothers Brendan and Bryce Sigourney also are accomplished freestyle skiers.
Thad Sigourney, a retired physical education teacher who played water polo at UC Davis, never saw it as a sacrifice, though. “We wanted to ski, too,” he said.
They had a second home in Alpine Meadows, the neighborhood of American downhill skier Bryce Bennett.
Brita and Brendan played water polo at UC Davis, Bryce competed at Cal Poly. But Brita had to quit the team when freeskiing took priority.
“Water polo didn’t hurt her leg strength for skiing, though,” Brendan Sigourney said Tuesday.
Had they lived in a warmer climate Brita might have picked surfing over skiing. But the Central Coast’s frigid ocean temperatures kept her on land. At least when Sigourney isn’t suspended in flight high above the halfpipe.
The Olympian reflected on all of it Tuesday. Last month, she had finished second to Bowman, of South Lake Tahoe, at the X-Games halfpipe.
Now it was Bowman getting supportive hugs from Sigourney’s parents after failing to put together a medal-winning run. The Olympics commands so much attention it has more prestige than X-Games medals. It makes disappointing days seem even bigger.
“In the eyes of the world the only day that matters is this day,” Julie Sigourney said.
The only run that mattered was her daughter’s final one.
Brita Sigourney pushed off in the mushy snow and began a descent she won’t soon forget.