Having won a bronze medal four years ago in Beijing, Canadian halfpipe skier Rachael Karker is feeling freer at the Milan Cortina Olympics.
Gone are the COVID restrictions and the fear of getting sick. And against that stifling backdrop, Karker felt the pressure of earning the Olympic medal that was missing from her resume.
“I was so desperate to get that medal at those Games,” she said. “And then I did. And so now I don’t really feel the same desperation to go in and make sure that I medal. I just want to go and enjoy them and ski my best. And my whole family’s going, so that’s going to be way more fun than no one being there in China.”
“Obviously, I would still love to medal. But I sort of feel like I’ve been able to do, so there’s less pressure for me this time,” she added.
After just missing out on the Pyeongchang Games in 2018, Karker landed on the Beijing podium with teammate Cassie Sharpe, earning silver while China’s Eileen Gu took gold.
The road to Italy has not been all smooth sailing for the 28-year-old from Erin, Ont., who now makes her home in Calgary with fiancé and fellow Milan halfpipe skier Brendan Mackay (a former world champion who was ninth at the Beijing games).
A chronic knee injury has limited her competition.
“It’s not really a dangerous injury, but it’s an injury that causes me a lot of pain,” Karker explained.
Given her Olympic qualification was not in doubt, she chose to dial down competition this season.
“We really made the decision to manage load. And competing is sort of the highest load I can put on my knee,” she said.
The injury had been building last season, restricting how many training runs she could perform in advance of competition.
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In December, Karker tested the waters at a World Cup stop in China but did not finish the event. Karker has pulled back since, largely training on airbags to protect the knee.
Karker competed at the X Games in Aspen, finishing fifth on Jan. 23 behind fellow Canadian Amy Fraser. Britain’s Zoe Atkin won gold ahead of 15-year-old Australian Indra Brown and Sharpe.
Karker has a good track record at the X Games, collecting two silver (2020 and 2023) and two bronze medals (2019 and 2023) in her five previous trips there. She was sixth in 2025 and missed the 2024 competition due to a back injury.
She also has a silver (2021) and bronze (2023) from the FIS World Championship.
Growing up, Karker’s sports menu was varied, starting on skis at the age of two.
Between seven and 11, she studied at Canada’s National Ballet School, participating in the part-time Associates Program (now called the Young Dancers Program) after qualifying via an open tryout. During that time, she appeared in shows at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for Performing Arts.
She believes that experience helped prepare her for being on the world stage.
At 10, she shifted to gymnastics and then trampoline, but fell in love with freestyle skiing when she was introduced to it at 14 by her brother.
After competing in slopestyle, she settled on halfpipe at 18.
“I think all of those sports really just combined to give me all of the skills I needed to be really good in halfpipe,” she said. “So I’m really thankful for all of them.”
Halfpipe proved to be the right fit.
Excessive speed heading into jumps in slopestyle led to botched landings, not to mention a broken heel, among other injuries. In halfpipe, she could go as fast as she wanted, as long as she had the right takeoff.
Karker flies high in halfpipe, soaring up to 15 feet above the wall, which measures 22 feet. Getting it wrong can be very painful.
“The worst is when you hit the coping, which is what we call the edge, and then you bounce in. Because then you hit twice, which is not fun,” Karker said cheerfully. “But if you can hit and then like sort of slide in, and try to catch the tranny (the curved section of the halfpipe wall), that’s a lot easier to deal with than doing a two-part hit.”
The athletes don’t wear much protection, other than a helmet and mouthguard, although some wear hip and back protectors. A back protector can help prevent the so-called scorpion, when you land on your face with your back bent the wrong way.
Karker has taken to wearing hip protectors since suffering a “pretty bad” hip contusion last season.
“It still hasn’t gone away, so if it gets hit, it flares up, and it hurts a lot. I try to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Depending on the length of the pipe, Karker will do five or six tricks, using training to figure out the order. Her preference is to do five bigger-amplitude tricks.
Like other halfpipe athletes, she provides her only musical soundtrack to training and competition. Karker picks three albums at the beginning of each season and sticks with them.
“I can usually tell how long I’ve been skiing based on what song is playing because they’ll all play in the same order.”
While Sharpe likes “hype-up music,” Karker dials it down a little. Her current playlist comes courtesy of Electric Guest, a Los Angeles-based alternative band.
“I really like the vibe of it,” she said. “It’s very fun but also not crazy.”
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 18, 2026
