The mountain has always been a family affair for Olympians Cassie and Darcy Sharpe

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This article was published 03/02/2022 (1712 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There was one firm rule in the Sharpe household where Olympic halfpipe skier Cassie and Olympic snowboarder Darcy grew up: Be in the truck by 7 a.m. or you don’t go to the mountain.

“They all only missed out one time because they were so bummed they didn’t make it,” Don Sharpe says of children Cassie, Darcy and Doug.

When it came to sporting excellence in this family, the Sharpe kids drove themselves.

There are many families, coaches and sport programs that work hard to foster and develop elite athletes, sometimes controversially so. But Don and Chantal Sharpe raised two Olympians not by design so much as happenstance.

The kids grew up, quite literally, on a mountain: Vancouver Island’s Mount Washington. That’s where Don worked as director of business operations for the mountain resort. And Chantal’s job as a flight attendant for WestJet turned out to be very handy once the kids started travelling to competitions because, as she says, “we’re not made of money.”

It all comes down to “many, many blessings,” she says. “For them to have the athleticism and then develop this love and passion, it just kind of grew from there.”

All the way to the Olympics.

Cassie won gold in halfpipe skiing at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games and she’s preparing to fly high again over the 22-foot icy walls of the pipe in the Beijing Games. Darcy makes his Olympic debut Sunday in slopestyle snowboarding and he’ll compete later in the single trick event, big air.

He was just four years old when his dad got the job at Mount Washington and took him to the daycare-cum-ski school at work.

“That first year he had 65 days on snow,” Don Sharpe says. “He was the kid that wanted to be first in the lift line and last down at night. We used to shove chocolate bars and granola bars in his pockets so he’d have something to eat because he wouldn’t stop.”

Cassie and older brother Doug were already in school but were on the mountain every weekend and a few other days, too, given the family’s liberal definition of a “snow day.”

“I’m surprised my dad never got fired for how much he had us around,” Darcy says, adding it was all fun and time with friends. He recalls plenty of support from his parents but no pressure to succeed. In fact, maybe a little bit of the opposite.

“I remember one time my dad gave me a pair of goggles and said, ‘These were given to me to give to you at the start of the season because this company wanted to sponsor you, but I didn’t give them to you because you were acting too cocky,’” he says. “I definitely didn’t have hockey parents.”

His elder brother Doug was moving on from competitive snowboarding just as Darcy was coming up and Cassie was in skiing so there wasn’t the competitive sibling rivalry that often drives young athletes, either.

“It’s something I love to do, so I wanted to do it well,” Darcy says.

He admits to feeling competitive with the local snowboarders and being just a little motivated by the prospect of prize money. He still remembers his first big prize — “86 bucks” — snatched from older kids, no less.

He is nearly 26 now and these days his winnings and sponsorship deals go to things like his Tesla — spray-painted by GucciGhost, an artist he admires — and his investments. “Cars and investments, all a man needs,” he says, with laugh.

But what drives him the most, he says, is the same thing that did when he was a kid, his love of snowboarding. “Playing with gravity feels good.”

Around the time Darcy was 15 and Cassie 18, their parents had come to realize that sport would become careers for them. But they didn’t imagine the Olympics.

“The first time was over the top,” Don Sharpe says of watching Cassie compete in 2018. “This year, to find they’re both going, it’s a little bit surreal.” The only downside is that they can’t be there because of the pandemic and China’s ban on foreign spectators.

It’s not the heights their kids have reached or the accolades that come with it that makes Don and Chantal Sharpe proudest, they say. It’s the dedication and effort Darcy and Cassie put in to get there. Their time on a slopestyle course or a halfpipe or a big-air hill can be over in minutes, if not seconds, but as their father says, “it took them three years to be able to do that.”

As a partner with Sobeys’ Feed the Dream campaign, Cassie has been casting back to childhood memories.

“My family has been everything for me and they’re a huge part of my journey,” she says. “It’s going to be weird (in Beijing) with no family and friends but, to have my little brother there with me, it’ll mean everything. Not a lot of people will have that. So for us, I think that’ll be incredible.”

MORE BEIJING OLYMPIC SIBLINGS

Marielle and Broderick Thompson

Whistler, B.C.

She’s a three-time Olympian and the 2014 gold medallist in ski cross and he’s a two-time Olympic alpine skier who this past December earned his first World Cup podium in super-G.

Justine and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe

Montreal

Justine won gold in 2014 and silver in 2018 in moguls skiing and Chloe shared the podium with her in 2014, picking up silver, and is the first Canadian moguls skier to compete in four Olympics.

Christian and Scott Gow

Calgary

Both brothers are biathletes competing in their second Olympics and their top finish to date came together with an 11th-place result in the men’s relay event in Pyeongchang in 2018.

Hannah and Jared Schmidt

Ottawa

This is the Olympic debut for both siblings in ski cross. He found the podium in a World Cup just last month and she’s been top five in several races.

Kerry Gillespie is a Toronto-based sports reporter for the Star. Reach her via email: kgillespie@thestar.ca