At the age of 22, Kevin Pearce was one of the world’s top halfpipe snowboarders and months out from competing at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. He was living the dream. That dream came to a crushing end when Kevin clipped the edge of his board while practicing a cab double cork at Salt Lake City in late 2009. On the way down he struck his head, sustaining career-ending traumatic brain damage.
Thanks to excellent hospital care and never-ending support from his family, Kevin has made a remarkable recovery, all of which has been captured in Oscar nominated director Lucy Walker’s documentary The Crash Reel. Pearce met Lucy at a Nike Camp called A Better World - his first trip after the accident. Kevin shared photos and emails his aunt had written after the accident keeping family and friends up with Kevin’s recovery. While Walker knew nothing about snowboarding, she saw the potential for a documentary. Interestingly, it was Kevin’s family rather than Kevin himself, who first realised how beneficial and important this documentary, could be to others.
At the age of 22, Kevin Pearce was one of the world’s top halfpipe snowboarders and months out from competing at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. He was living the dream. That dream came to a crushing end when Kevin clipped the edge of his board while practicing a cab double cork at Salt Lake City in late 2009. On the way down he struck his head, sustaining career-ending traumatic brain damage.
Thanks to excellent hospital care and never-ending support from his family, Kevin has made a remarkable recovery, all of which has been captured in Oscar nominated director Lucy Walker’s documentary The Crash Reel. Pearce met Lucy at a Nike Camp called A Better World - his first trip after the accident. Kevin shared photos and emails his aunt had written after the accident keeping family and friends up with Kevin’s recovery. While Walker knew nothing about snowboarding, she saw the potential for a documentary. Interestingly, it was Kevin’s family rather than Kevin himself, who first realised how beneficial and important this documentary, could be to others.
Kevin is still working hard at his recovery, and this traumatic event has led him down a new path in life; to spread the word about brain injuries. He kindly took time to have a chat about his recovery, this incredible documentary and life after competitive snowboarding.
RC: This is such a moving and inspirational film, especially for people who have suffered from a brain injury or a challenge in their life. Everyone who has watched it says it stays with them for days – it’s such an affecting film.
KP: It’s been really cool to have such a powerful film been made about me and to have something so terrible happen and be able to turn it into something positive and so good.
This new chapter in my life, which in a million years I would never have thought I would have and obviously injuries are possible in snowboarding and that’s part of it, but to be able to turn an injury into something so positive and so good and successful has been fun and exciting for me.
RC: The film is rewarding for others suffering from brain injuries, but has this documentary had an impact on your recovery?
KP: It has in a different kind of way, I’ve been able to step back and watch this movie and see what I have gotten and what everybody has done. First and foremost my family and what this has consisted of and being able to take that in and try and put it to use for other people and help other people. Being able to show them what it takes and what I’ve gone through has been really cool.
RC: What was it like watching The Crash Reel for the film for the first time?
KP: I’ll be honest with you, I’m very honest, I didn’t like it the first time I watched it. I was bummed about it. The first time I watched it was at Sundance last year with a full movie theatre of people and I went in there and watched it and, as you know so well from seeing it, there’s a lot going on in that film, there’s a lot of different stories. It was almost too soon and too much for my brain to really be able to absorb everything. Everything I did to my family and then everybody in snowboarding, all my sponsors, all my fans, and then everything that happened with Shaun White was all just mixed into one and I couldn’t really understand it or take it all in which was weird. And now I’ve seen it multiple more times and now I truly love it and I think it’s remarkable what’s been involved. People have done other edits with the same footage and I think Lucy just did the most unbelievable job telling such a complex, difficult story.
RC: Did you realise before the documentary how badly injured you’d been?
KP: I guess I didn’t realise the extent of the injury. I had heard about it and a lot of stories had been told to me about everything that happened, so I did know how bad it was but I didn’t know how much was involved. How long a process it was and how many different things had to happen in order for me to live and for me to turn out the way I have. It has just taken so much for all of that to come true and I think that’s what the film does, it does the amazing job of showing how everything worked out.
RC: What can you remember of the accident and the months following?
KP: There’s a long gap of time that I don’t remember, and it’s so weird not to remember such a long period of your life at such a young age. It would be one thing if I was 70 or 80 and I don’t remember this, but being 22 and not remembering a month of a half… A lot of the stuff at the rehab hospital I don’t remember any more, so it’s really no memory at all for about the first month, I have a little bits of memory from the rehab hospital but none from being in Utah.
RC: This is your remarkable story, but coming from the loving, close-knit family you do, it’s their story too – how did they feel about sharing this extremely difficult time with a camera?
KP: I think they were amazingly open and willing and they really saw the bigger picture in what was an impossible year and sharing such an amazing story and how we had everything - we had the parents, we had the brothers, we had the doctors we had everything. Everybody came together to make this possible and my parents and my brother realized that, and they saw that there is such a huge need to spread the word about brain injuries because its such a quiet and unknown injury.
RC: I was intrigued about when Lucy began this project because she’s done an incredible job making us feel she was documenting you even before the accident…. obviously archival footage was key to this.
KP: We were so luck because so much of my life I had a camera on me, as you can tell. Everything I did was being filmed back then – now it’s much different. Always one of my friends, one my buddies, or one of my brothers had a camera filming one of the stupid things I was doing. At the time I never thought about whether it was cool, or needed to happen, but now looking back, I’m so thankful we filmed all that. [Lucy Walker] got footage from 232 people to make this film.
RC: The point in the film when you tell your family you won’t snowboard competitively anymore is very moving – the visible lifting of this burden on your family is immense. But up to this point you honestly thought you could snowboard competitively again.
KP: That’s because of my brain and what it was telling me. There was nothing telling me that I didn’t have that ability. Still to this day I feel I could go up there and do that stuff. Naturally a turning point was getting back on the snowboard, and being able to really feel myself. Hearing it from my parents, the doctors and my brothers and everybody, that didn’t set in for me, because I felt so fine, there was no reason or need for me to believe it, because I felt so good. It wasn’t until I actually could feel it, that I could understand my abilities and where I was at.
RC: Is that one of the misconceptions of brain injuries and the effects of them, that people don’t understand how hard it is for you to judge reality?
KP: I think the hardest thing about brain injuries is that you can’t see it. I would hope that if you walked up to me right now you wouldn’t be able to tell that I had gone through that. And because it’s so invisible, I get treated like any other person out on the street, which is amazing, but at the same time it also makes it much more difficult.
RC: Can I ask how are you these days?
KP: That’s another interesting questions because for how bad I was, I am doing so well now, I am extremely happy and extremely thankfully that I’ve been able to make the recovery that I have. I’ve been so open and I’ve seen many people who haven’t been able to do that so I’ve been really able to understand how amazingly fortunate I have been to go through something so terrible and to be able to have come out of it the way I have. There’s still so much I can’t do, but there’s so much I can do and I see the huge opportunity to really help.
The main way we’re doing this is we’ve started a company called Love Your Brain, my brother and I, and with this company we’re selling t-shirts and glass bowls my father made and some random stickers to be able to give money to kids that are in serious need. The first hospital I was in cost US$10,000 a day, and for these kids that don’t have insurance, what happens to them? … I got all the help, and now being able to give it is really special.
RC: You didn’t make it to Vancouver but you did make it to Sochi – how was that?
KP: It was interesting, I actually didn’t make it to Sochi, I went to a town called Krasnodar that is a town outside Sochi in Russia. I just carried the torch for a leg of the opening ceremony….so I am still yet to go to the Olympics!
RC: So you didn’t have to watch other people compete? Is that a good thing?
KP: Yeah, I don’t think I would have enjoyed that. It would have been hard on me. I would have been bummed that I couldn’t have been competing so it actually was OK.
RC: There was a lot of talk over there from Ben Bright and other snowboarders about the standard of the half pipe – do you worry competition organisers aren’t taking the risks seriously?
KP: I truly believe the risk is taken very seriously, and this is what the athletes wanted, for the halfpipes to be growing and the sport to be progressing and its all the snowboarders that are pushing for this. I was never forced to learn to do those tricks or made to do stuff, I was doing that because that’s what I wanted to do. It was totally my choice to do that stuff. There’s was never a sponsor going ‘you need to go out and learn how to do a double cork’. I did everything I could to get Nike to build me a halfpipe to learn them in a safe way and I think as long as they continue to be growing safely and people learn these tricks in a good way then it’s OK. I think there’s a lot of risk but then there’s a lot of risk in everything we do in life. I got so unlucky that day, I just didn’t quite get it around. Watch it again and you can see I landed 90 degrees and if I had gone another 90 degrees I would have been totally fine.
RC: Is that how you look at it Kevin, just unlucky?
KP: I look at it as completely, totally, just unlucky. It was a total fluke that it happened. I feel like that’s possible when I go and get in the car, I could get unlucky and get in a car accident.
RC: You always talk positively about snowboarding – about how athletes are still pushing the boundaries of the sport and how that excites you – most people would understand you if you weren’t so positive.
KP: It’s been damn hard, don’t get me wrong, this recovery has been crazy. I’m still recovering. I was just back at the doctor’s this morning trying to get help with my eyes. I’m still going to doctor’s appointments and I’m still dealing with stuff 4 years later. That’s the hardest thing about the brain, it doesn’t like to heal quickly and everything goes very slowly and you have to be very patient. So that’s been the hardest part but the most exciting part is I am still healing and I am getting better, and I have to believe that my eyes will heal and I will make a full recovery.
RC: But you’re back on a board recreationally right?
KP: Exactly, I am back on it, and having so much fun, it’s just so incredible to be back snowboarding and doing what I love.
RC: Thanks so much for talk to us - best of luck for the future!
Don’t miss The Crash Reel, Thursday 27th March, 8.30pm on Rialto Documentary