{"id":792953,"date":"2019-02-11T21:28:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T04:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/for-park-citys-brita-sigourney-halfpipe-bronze-is-latest-milestone-on-long-journey\/"},"modified":"2019-02-11T21:28:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T04:28:00","slug":"for-park-citys-brita-sigourney-halfpipe-bronze-is-latest-milestone-on-long-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/for-park-citys-brita-sigourney-halfpipe-bronze-is-latest-milestone-on-long-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"For Park City\u2019s Brita Sigourney, halfpipe bronze is latest milestone on long journey"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
California’s Brita Sigourney competes in the FIS World Championships freeski halfpipe finals at Park City Mountain Resort on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2019. Sigourney placed third among the women. (Tanzi Propst\/Park Record)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PARK CITY, Utah \u2014 Where do the years go?<\/p>\n

For Brita Sigourney, they\u2019ve seemed to pass in a flash.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been nearly eight years since she left Carmel, California, her hometown that sits tucked into a bay on the Monterey Peninsula, and her position on the water polo team at U.C. Davis for the snowy heights of the Wasatch Mountains.<\/p>\n

When she came to Park City, she was one of the pioneers of freeskiing, joining the U.S. team in its infancy in hopes of making a name for herself in the sport she\u2019d participated in since she was 2. The sport has since grown and changed rapidly.<\/p>\n

But Sigourney, the oldest competitor in Saturday\u2019s ski halfpipe World Championships at 29, still has what it takes to compete. By results, she is still in the summer of her career.<\/p>\n

Lately, she\u2019s been hoarding bronze like a laid-back, 5-foot-7 dragon.<\/p>\n

A year ago, she notched perhaps the biggest achievement of her career with a bronze at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. After that, she took third in qualifying for the World Cup in Tignes, France, last March \u2014 then took bronze in the competition itself.<\/p>\n

She struck again in December, qualifying third for the World Cup at Copper Mountain in Colorado, where she once again scooped up a medal made of a certain copper and tin alloy.<\/p>\n

On Feb. 7, she qualified third for the World Championships in halfpipe skiing.<\/p>\n

And finally, on Saturday, she did it again.<\/p>\n

She stood on that little dais off the snow near the base of Eagle Superpipe at Park City Mountain Resort and bowed as someone slung a medal of you-know-what color over her head.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s honestly just self-confidence and feeling good,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m having a lot of fun. I\u2019m not trying to put pressure on myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she has taken some time off from training to go powder skiing and focus on her love of the sport, a tactic she said might have cost her podiums at X Games Aspen and Dew Tour in Breckenridge. She took fourth in both of those events.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a rough spot to be in,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re so close but you don\u2019t get any of the attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday, she said she was happy to put those results behind her with a podium at the World Championships \u2014 her first time medaling in three appearances on that stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was hoping for a medal, but I just came out to ski like I know how,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The winner of the event, Kelly Sildaru of Estonia, is 16, while Sigourney picked up the mantle of being the oldest competitor on the scene. Just last season, that wasn\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been competing with people who are older than me for the last 10 years, and all of a sudden they are all gone and I\u2019m the lone one left,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But Sigourney is excited about the future of the sport, and for now, she still considers herself part of that progression. And may continue to be for some time to come. Though she\u2019s had multiple knee and shoulder surgeries over her career, she\u2019s healthy once again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about how you feel,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd my body is feeling really good right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her skiing is good. She\u2019s having fun. Why stop?<\/p>\n

A good reason doesn\u2019t come to mind, so long as the sport is still bringing her joy and her body is up to the task of hurling out of the halfpipe and \u2014 more importantly \u2014 sticking the often-dicey landings that follow her multiple flips and twists.<\/p>\n

Sigourney said she will continue to pursue the top level of freeskiing indefinitely on a bi-yearly plan, stopping to check in on how she\u2019s doing every other year to evaluate where she\u2019s at physically and mentally. She\u2019s not ruling out the possibility of competing at the Beijing Olympics \u2014 \u201cIt could definitely happen\u201d \u2014 but that is a long time away in a sport with a risky, draining competitive season.<\/p>\n

Sigourney, who has trudged over enough peaks and through enough valleys in her career to know when it\u2019s time to clip in and when to sit out, understands the time to call it quits could be lurking over the lip of any competition.<\/p>\n

But as Sigourney stood on the podium at PCMR Saturday, that was all just hypothetical.<\/p>\n

For now, it\u2019s still medal season.<\/p>\n

sports@parkrecord.com<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

California’s Brita Sigourney competes in the FIS World Championships freeski halfpipe finals at Park City Mountain Resort on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2019. Sigourney placed third among the women. (Tanzi Propst\/Park Record) PARK CITY, Utah \u2014 Where do the years go? For Brita Sigourney, they\u2019ve seemed to pass in a flash. It\u2019s been nearly eight years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-792953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-12 19:10:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}