Eagle athlete’s Olympic comeback story tops an exciting US team announcement

The Olympics are often the site of great comeback stories in the world of sports, and this year’s U.S. halfpipe team announcement came with one on Thursday: Eagle’s Jake Pates has been named to the team.

It’s the second time the local snowboarder has surprised the world with a strong performance in the run-up to the Olympics. Pates was also considered an outside shot to start the 2017-18 season, until he unveiled a new trick at an Olympic qualifier and won the event in a life-changing moment for the then-19-year-old athlete.

A brain injury in 2019 took Pates’ career on a different trajectory, and he didn’t compete in any competitions from 2021 to 2023. He became an advocate for baseline brain scanning for athletes, a practice in which scans of athletes’ healthy brains were taken so they could have a frame of comparison for deciding when to return to the sport.

Pates credited baseline brain scanning with giving him the confidence to return, saying he was able to watch his brain heal.

“This gave me the confidence to go out and snowboard again,” he told Olympics.com. “At the end of the process, I realized this is something the sport needs.”

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Familiar faces

When Pates returned to World Cup-level competition last season, his re-entry was less than spectacular, not making finals at his comeback event in Mammoth and next returning to the North America Cup level — a step below the World Cup — where he quietly won the Aspen-Snowmass NorAm on March 18.

That earned him an invite to the Copper Mountain Grand Prix in December, an Olympic qualifier. Pates made finals and finished sixth surrounded by some familiar faces — Chase Blackwell was in fifth (another Colorado snowboarder who spent most of his formative years in Summit County), and Ryan Wachendorfer, a fellow Eagle County local from Edwards who knows Pates well, finished seventh.

Blackwell locked in his Olympic spot at that moment, as the best single American in finals at an Olympic qualifier event was among the objective criteria selections the team has in place. With 2022 Olympian Lucas Foster of Telluride also a contender, an all-Colorado halfpipe team was looking to be among the possible permutations after that first Olympic qualifier at Copper.

At the second qualifier, which took place in Aspen Jan. 7-9, Pates and Wachendorfer made finals again, along with the Olympic veteran Chase Josey who, as a member of both the 2018 and the 2022 Olympic teams, made it clear that he was a contender for this year’s team, as well, with his appearance in finals. Joey Okesson of Connecticut also made finals.

But things changed for the American halfpipe picture when Alessandro Barbieri became the first American to land the difficult triple invert at a World Cup competition, taking third at the Aspen event. The Oregon snowboarder had locked in his Olympic spot, and by adding the coveted triple cork to his bag of tricks, Barbieri had showed the world he could be a contender to make the podium at the Olympics.

Tale of the triple

The snowboarding world saw the triple cork first introduced into halfpipe competition by Ayumu Hirano in the 2021-22 season, when the Japanese competitor used the trick to qualify for, and eventually win, the Olympics. Now in this next Olympic cycle, it’s likely to be the trick that defines the winning run and is likely to be performed multiple times in some Olympic runs.

It’s history repeating itself, as far as halfpipe progression goes. After Shaun White unveiled the double cork in 2010, it went on to be the dominating trick during the next Olympic cycle. Pates changed up White’s backside doublecork 1260 in 2018 by doing a tail grab instead of grabbing between the feet, as White always had. Australia’s halfpipe sensation Scotty James, then, ahead of the 2022 Olympics, began performing a switch version of that trick en route to his second-place finish, a trick Wachendorfer has also perfected and was working into his runs in the recent round of Olympic qualifiers.

Besides the triple cork, and maybe that switch backside doublecork 1260, the most exciting trick heading into this Olympic cycle appeared to be Lucas Foster’s alley-oop doublecork 1260, spinning up the halfpipe rather than down the pipe, something that had been all but worked out of the modern halfpipe run before Foster brought it back.

But it’s obvious that the triple cork will be a necessary part of any podium run at the Olympics, and before the Olympic qualifier in Aspen, Pates stomped one in practice and posted a video of it to Instagram.

A who’s who of snowboarding legends commented, including Todd Richards, who called the winning run that earned Pates his spot on the Olympic team in 2018. It was Richards who, at that time, was the first to notice Pates had landed the never-been-done double McTwist 1260 with a tail grab.

In Pates comments on his triple cork post, Richards made a quick but accurate observation, saying “it’s happening.”

A Netflix-worthy story

But Pates didn’t work the triple cork into his finals run in Aspen and took seventh, with Wachendorfer close behind in eighth, Josey in ninth and Okesson in 10th.

Pates failed to make finals at the final Olympic qualifier of the season in Laax, Switzerland on Jan. 15, but so did much of the American field, including Blackwell, Wachendorfer, Okesson and Foster. Foster had an impressive run, landing his signature alley-oop double 1260, but the run didn’t get him into finals, remarkably. Josey and Barbieri were the only Americans to qualify, with Josey finishing above Barbieri in finals to secure his spot.

The podium was swept by Australian competitors, with James incorporating both the triple cork and the switch doublecork 1260 into his run. Second-place Campbell Melville Ives had two different variations of the triple cork in his run.

With Blackwell, Barbieri and Josey all claiming spots as the top-finishing Americans at the previous competition, the fourth and final Olympic qualifying spot came down to coaches’ discretion. It was given to Pates, as he was the second-finishing American in two Olympic qualifier events this season. Wachendorfer, the third-finishing American at two Olympic qualifiers, would have been the next in line.

The U.S. Team made the announcement via Instagram on Thursday morning, with the caption “guess who’s back.”

Pates said he was grateful for the opportunity.

Always a good sport amid his many close attempts to make the Olympic team, Wachendorfer was one of the first people in the comments to recognize Pates’ achievement.

“I can’t wait for this Netflix comeback documentary,” he said.