After suffering a season-ending knee injury—which required reconstructive surgery exactly one year ago this month—Whistler’s Marielle Thompson wasn’t sure if she’d ever get back to her pre-injury self that dominated the women’s ski cross field for years.
But once this season started, feeling better and better with each race, the old Marielle started to make a comeback.
It only took two World Cup starts for Thompson to get back on the podium with a third-place finish in Val Thorens, France in December. She then followed that up with three more medals across five World Cup starts including a gold in Switzerland, a bronze in Italy and a silver in Nakiska leading up to the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Managing to make it to the semi-finals at the Games, Thompson, currently ranked third in the World Cup standings, found herself in a heat with top-ranked Sandra Naeslund of Sweden who has dominated the field for a calendar year.
But to say Naeslund has been dominant is a bit of an understatement. Dating back to April of last year, you can count how many times she hasn’t finished first on a single finger.
“Basically, I just tried to have the best start I could and stay as close behind [Naeslund] as possible all the way to the finish line, but I knew my teammates were also quite fast on that course and they were in my semi-final, so I just really tried to ski as offensively as I could while also defending my line from my teammates who were behind me,” said Thompson, who managed to hold off fellow Canadians Hannah Schmidt and Courtney Hoffos to lock up her spot in the finals.
Once in the finals, disaster almost struck for Thompson when she made an error out of the gates and found herself trailing the pack early in the race. But through determination, focus and a never-say-die attitude, she was able to fight her way back and pass both Germany’s Daniela Maier and Switzerland’s Fanny Smith, crossing the finish line in second place behind Naeslund and securing her second Olympic medal.
“I just knew that I’d done training runs with Sandra and Daniela on the other days and I had managed to pass Daniela in one of the training runs down there in that same spot. So I just knew from experience that I had the speed and if I skied my own race cleanly at the bottom, I could potentially pass,” she said.
“And I’m just super proud. It feels like it's been a long couple of years, particularly this last year, even just to get to the Olympics. When I hurt myself in March of last year, I really wasn't that confident that I would even have been at the Olympics just because the timeframe just seemed kind of out of reach.
“So to be second behind Sandra, I was super proud, and I’m proud of all the hard work it took for me to get to the Olympics and just proud that I could bring it home for Canada.”
This medal marks the sixth time Thompson has won either a gold or silver in a major competition. The long and growing list of accomplishments includes an Olympic gold and silver, a World Championship gold and silver, an X Games silver and a Junior World Championships gold, not to mention finishing atop the World Cup standings three separate times.
That resume is enough to give Thompson a strong case to be crowned the greatest ski cross athlete of all time. And while that is something she doesn’t think about too much, she admits it is “pretty cool to hear that out loud,” but is ultimately just happy to have had the chance to do what she loves and hopefully inspire the younger generation along the way.
“It means a lot just to have the support of these young athletes,” she said. “I know I'm cheering for them every step of the way, because I had those role models to look up to as well. So I'm just cheering them on and wishing them the best and hope I can lead by example.”
