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Jul 10, 2020 · Pearce was a star in the making as a 22-year-old when he suffered a horrific crash during a training run in Park City, Utah, that resulted in a traumatic brain injury. "I don't remember the...
- Overview
- Adventure: Looking back at your snowboarding career, what motivated you to push yourself so hard and do such daring big-air tricks?
- A: So the drive was coming from within you, not coaches or sponsors?
- A: What is your first memory after the accident?
- A: What’s it like to see yourself in the film, in those early days after the accident?
- A: What’s it like to see the footage of when you were at the very top of your snowboarding game, at the very top of the sport?
- A: But you have made such an amazing recovery—and will continue to improve. In the film, we see many other traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients who were not so lucky, including the legendary Sarah Burke. How were you able to do that?
- A: We got to see how close and loving your family was through that process. How did that make a difference?
- A: Some people are going to watch the film and think snowboarding is too dangerous, as well as the other extreme sports. Do we need to crack down on them? Do you think these sports should be tamed?
- A: You have had one of the worst injuries. And yet you still wouldn’t regulate a thing?
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It’s possible to be both incredibly unlucky and incredibly lucky at once. Just ask Kevin Pearce.
On New Year’s Eve day in 2009 in Park City, Utah, the champion snowboarder, who was neck-and-neck with Shaun White for Olympic glory in Vancouver, suffered a horrific crash while practicing a double backflip with a twist on the half pipe left. He caught a toe-side edge in the landing and basically smashed his head above his left eye into the wall. Kevin was left with a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
A new film, The Crash Reel, airing Monday, July 15, at 9 p.m. ET on HBO, shares Kevin’s story—and looks far beyond the themes of snowboarding and the risks embraced by extreme athletes. Two-time Academy Award-nominated director Lucy Walker turned the cameras on the the incredible Pearce family’s relentless commitment to bring Kevin back—and Kevin’s indomitable spirit to never give up. The film also includes video culled from more than 200 sources. (Learn more about the making of the film in an upcoming interview with Adam Pearce, Kevin’s devoted older brother and a co-producer of the film.)
It’s been three and a half years since the accident. Now 25 years old, Kevin doesn’t remember that first month of recovery. And every day he is confronted the frustrations of a TBI—loss of memory, vision problems, balance difficulties, and fatigue. He has returned to snowboarding, but not to compete.
That doesn’t mean he’s surrendered his passion for life. Kevin has found new ways to channel his love of risk. For example, public speaking. He spends his time encouraging people to “love their brains.” He started the Kevin Pearce Foundation to help families of kids with TBIs and Down’s syndrome (as seen in the film, the Pearce family has a wonderful, insightful son named David, who has Down’s Syndrome). He has also taken up surfing—in a helmet.
Kevin has something to say to all you out there who think you are too cool for a helmet when you hit the slopes: “Tell them they are idiots. Tell them to live a day in my shoes.”
Kevin Pearce: It was the love I have for snowboarding. It gave me a special feeling that I haven’t found in anything else—being up in the mountains, on my own, the freedom, the self expression, that I could go up there every morning. It was able to do what I wanted and not to have any rules or regulations. It was such a special feeling for me.
KP: 110 percent. I never had coaches, really. There was never anything from my parents or my sponsors. It was all me.
KP: The first thing I remember was a month after it happened. They put me in an airplane when I was at the University of Utah and took me to a Denver rehab hospital.
I would have thought that I would have gotten to go on a nice jet and it would be all plush. But it was this little ghetto propeller plane. It was loud as all hell. And the flight attendant was being really mean to me and my brother. It was just really sad.
KP: It is cool for me to watch the film just because I don’t remember so much of what’s in there. So to see where I was and what I put people through is very important for me to have. I think it’s very helpful. In some of those shots I don’t even recognize myself. I think, holy cow, did I really look like that and was I really doing those things?...
KP: It’s hard to watch that stuff just because I still know so well how it felt to do it. And how much fun it was. It’s just hard not to be doing that anymore.
KP: I have always had this certain drive and push in me. And I have always done things to the limit. When I found out that I could have a future in snowboarding, I just took that and ran with it. I feel like the focus and the energy and the love were things that just allowed me to become that good at it. And that is how I approached my recovery, to...
KP: Yeah, they were the biggest part of my recovery. There have been so many different things that happened. One of my buddies in the film said it was the perfect storm for it all to come together. It was the perfect crash to have something so bad happen, but then it was the perfect storm to have such a good recovery happen—with my family, first an...
KP: I believe that these athletes should be able to do what they want. That was so amazing for me and that’s why I loved it so much. There were no rules. No regulations. I could wake up every morning and do whatever I wanted. I could get up there at 3 p.m. in the afternoon or 8 a.m. in the morning. There was never a coach up there telling me what I...
KP: I think people should be smart. And I think they should be doing tricks within their abilities. And I think helmets should definitely be worn, 100 percent, hands down, no question, when you are snowboarding.
Kevin Pearce, a former Olympic hopeful, suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2009 while practicing a double backflip. He shares his story of recovery, passion and advocacy in a new HBO film, The Crash Reel.
- Mary Anne Potts
On December 31, 2009, Pearce was critically injured while training in Park City, Utah on the same half-pipe that would kill fellow skier Sarah Burke in 2012. He struck his head above his left eye during a training run while attempting a cab double cork.
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Learn how professional snowboarder Kevin Pearce overcame a life-threatening traumatic brain injury (TBI) and founded LoveYourBrain, a nonprofit organization that helps people with TBI build community and resilience. Watch the trailer of The Crash Reel, a documentary that captures his remarkable story.
Mar 31, 2017 · That is, until he sustained a traumatic brain injury when he hit his head on the halfpipe in Park City, Utah during his Olympic Trials training, forcing him to cut his career short just shy of...
Dec 17, 2013 · Snowboarder Kevin Pearce suffered a severe brain injury after an accident on the halfpipe in 2009. His road to recovery is the subject of director Lucy Walker's documentary The Crash Reel.
