Colby Stevenson is an American freestyle skier. He participated at the slopestyle at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2021, winning a medal.
Colby Stevenson: What happened to| Accident| Age| Ellen| K2
What happened to:
It was deep into the night. The lullaby hours. Colby Stevenson was driving on a quiet road in rural Idaho when “all of a sudden, boom,” he remembered the moment, back in 2016, where it nearly all went away. “I woke up in a hospital bed with my loved ones around me. “I didn’t know what happened.”
What had happened was catastrophic. After driving nearly 500 miles from a freeski event at Mount Hood in Oregon, where he’d won best trick and was named the week’s best skier, and was doing what he calls “the best skiing of his life,” Stevenson’s eyelids grew heavy.
Accident:
John Michael Fabrizi, in the passenger seat, had broken his leg at the event and the still-teenage Stevenson – a thoughtful kid, heading the same way – offered to drive his friend and his truck back home to Utah.
Doctors gave Colby Stevenson small odds of returning to competitive freestyle skiing after an auto wreck left him near dead in 2016. Now on the eve of an Olympic debut – and a medal contender to boot – the 24-year-old American spoke exclusively to Olympics.com about his newfound love for all the little things.
Age:
| Born | October 3, 1997 Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States |
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They gave Colby Stevenson small odds of returning to competitive freestyle skiing after an auto wreck left him near dead in 2016.
Now on the eve of an Olympic debut – and a medal contender to boot – the 24-year-old American spoke exclusively to Olympics.com about his newfound love for all the little things.
Ellen:
The crash, which Fabrizi somehow came through unharmed, left Stevenson clinging to life. The truck flipped over several times. The roof collapsed.
There were more than 30 fractures in Stevenson’s skull, the largest right between his eyebrows. The swelling of his brain left doctors pessimistic of a full recovery and they put him in three days of a medically-induced coma.
K2:
It was a matter of how much brain damage Stevenson would have on the other side. The big questions weren’t if he’d soar and spin gracefully over a slopestyle course again, or glide across the rail sections, but, rather, how much of him would be left?
The crash was on Mother’s Day and when Stevenson woke and saw his mother, Carol, by his bedside, he apologised for the inconvenience. “She’d been in Hawaii,” on holiday, he told Olympics.com. “I was sorry she had to come back.
