Ricker Is Living Dad’s Dream, With a Twist

Maelle Ricker was put on skis and pointed downhill when she was 18 months old.

It was her father’s dream that his daughter or son would “become a legendary ski racer, but we both ended up on snowboards so that didn’t work out,” she says.

It worked out well enough. Ricker, who lives in Whistler, British Columbia, has become a champion snowboarder and today will represent Canada in the snowboard cross competition, which is making its Olympic debut.

This is her second Olympics -- she finished fifth in the halfpipe event at Nagano in 1998 -- and she’s one of a few riders with a legitimate chance of upstaging the United States’ favored Lindsey Jacobellis.

“Like Lindsey, I’m a lot stronger in snowboard cross,” says Ricker, 27, whose competition highlights include two X Games gold medals in boarder X -- same as snowboard cross -- an International Snowboarding Federation world championship and an ISF junior world championship.

That she has excelled is not surprising, given that her second home, while growing up in West Vancouver, was Whistler-Blackcomb resort.

“We spent all of our holidays and weekends there,” says Ricker, who now considers the facility and back-country slopes her playground. “My dad is a big mountaineer, so all of our vacations were in the mountains. We never even went to the beach.”

Knee problems kept her out of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics so it was rewarding to her simply to have qualified for the Turin Games.

In Nagano, she says, the snowboarders were housed in a remote hotel away from the Olympic village and other athletes “so there was no real Olympic feel.” At the Olympic village in Bardonecchia, she’s sharing space with freestyle skiers and biathletes.

“We also have a Canada athlete lounge, so every night the Canadians get together and cheer on the fellow Canadians,” she says.

This has lifted her spirits since her parents, Karl the geologist and Nancy the teacher, couldn’t be with her. Neither could her brother, Jorli, a cinematographer.

“They couldn’t get away from their jobs, so it’s a bummer,” she says, assuring that they’ll be watching the event on TV.

After the Olympics, Ricker will return to Whistler, which she describes as “a big resort with a small-town feel.” Her summer job is running a snowboard camp on Blackcomb Glacier, and her recreational passion is mountain biking in the wilderness.

Of course, in such places there are inherent risks.

“Lots of bears,” she says. “Once, I was biking on a fire road and I rode between a mom and her cub, but we were all just as startled and scattered in different directions.”

When the racing begins today there will be only one general direction: downhill over a topsy-turvy course 3,000 feet toward the finish line. To beat Jacobellis, she says, it will be “crucial to be fast out of the gate and into that first corner.”

Whatever happens, she can count on the support of her family, even if it will have to be over the phone.