Erin’s Rachael Karker heads into second Winter Olympics with fresh mindset

SWITZERLAND – Olympic bronze medalist halfpipe skier Rachael Karker is dropping into her second Winter Olympics feeling like an “underdog” with a fresh outlook.

The Erin native is one of seven Canadian female freestyle halfpipe skiers destined for the Livigno Snow Park, in the village of Livigno nestled around 6,000 feet high in the Italian Alps.

It’s there she’ll drop into the halfpipe next week, skiing across the 64-foot-wide expanse and up 22-foot walls before catching 10 to 15 feet of air, performing an aerobatic trick, and sailing back down to earth.

Competitors can reach up to 65km/h, and the entire 600-foot run – room enough for five or six tricks – is over in just 30 seconds.

The sport demands near flawless execution. A couple degrees off the lip on reentry could mean crashing out on the deck, hitting the lip and getting jettisoned into the pipe, or landing flat and hard on the bottom.

But Karker has taken on the halfpipe countless times.

“I speak to myself and I say, ‘You’re okay, you’re fine,’ as nonchalant as possible. I’ll be dropping in, I’m like, ‘You’re fine, why wouldn’t you be fine, that’s silly,’” Karker said.

She describes the run itself as a “blackout” – more than a decade of training and muscle memory takes over.

“The best thing about halfpipe is that you can go as big as you want to; as long as you take off properly, you’re going to land back in the halfpipe,” Karker said.

She spoke to the Advertiser by video call from Switzerland on Feb. 9, mountains visible in the background, where she was wrapping up a 10-day pre-Olympic training camp.

The next day she planned to head to Portugal for a mandatory rest with her Freestyle Canada teammates, and is expected to arrive in the Olympic Village this weekend.

The journey to the Milano Cortina Winter Games from Calgary, where Karker lives for much of the year with fiancé and fellow freestyle teammate Brendan Mackay, began with a stop-off at the X Games in Aspen, Colorado late last month.

“That’s how our seasons go; we don’t get a lot of time at home,” Karker said.

But the 28-year-old has backed off a bit compared to past seasons that saw her racking up podium finishes across the globe.

She pulled out of the Freeski Halfpipe World Cup in China in December because of chronic pain from a lingering knee injury.

The pain in her right knee, from tears of the patellar tendon, kept her from training for much of the summer and fall last year.

“I’ve been sort of held back in training, but at the end of the day the run that I have now is still really competitive, it’s just how well can I execute it,” she said.

Karker will be judged on the best of her runs with a score out of 100 based on the complexity, variety and execution of tricks, as well as height reached and innovation.

She’s focusing on the variety and “little tweaks that tend to make a big difference,” she said.

She was reluctant to disclose her routine, but intends to add a second switch (facing backward into a move) and to mix up the grabs on her skis, the latter demonstrating mid-air control.

“I’m hoping to get this run down clean,” she said, adding if she does, “I have a good chance of landing on the podium.”

But Karker is less focused on winning a medal this time around after bringing home bronze from the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022.

“All I wanted to do was get in, get a medal and get out,” she said.

In the decade since Karker debuted at the world level in 2016, she has finished on World Cup podiums 16 times and has won four X Games medals and two World Championship medals.

Her podium-finishing streak was broken in 2024. It proved a relief, she said.
“I had a lot of pressure on myself to just keep that going,” she said.

Though she’s not hitting as many podiums lately, Karker said the lack of pressure is liberating.

“There was a point where a terrible day for me would’ve been second place,” she said. “Now it’s like just seeing the life that we live … I appreciate everything and not just for the results anymore.”

Karker said she’s feeling like an “underdog” again and finding the freedom that once drew her to the sport.

She’s intent on enjoying her experience skiing on top of the world as her parents Michael and Michelle, who took Karker on her first family ski trip when she was just two, watch from the bottom of the halfpipe with her older brothers and other family members.

“I feel good, I feel happy with my skiing … I’m feeling pretty ready going into these games,” she said.

Karker is set to compete in the qualifying round on Feb. 19, with the women’s finals scheduled for Feb. 21.