by Tina Basich
Angie taking care of me and painting my nails while I’m laid up in the recliner.
I was also about to turn thirty years old and couldn’t help but wonder if this was a turning point in my career. I was now one of the older female professional snowboarders, but those little girls coming into the sport hadn’t stepped up and taken me out yet. In the span of my career so far, I’d already seen girls come in and out of the sport for various reasons like lack of sponsorship, bad attitude, or injuries. I still felt like I wanted more out of snowboarding, but wondered if the circumstances I was now in would allow me to continue. I didn’t want an injury to be the reason I stopped snowboarding professionally. I had assumed that would be my choice—when I got married and had kids, when I was ready to move on. I was feeling so down and desperately needed to feel something good was happening.
The highlight of my summer was when Lisa Hudson threw my thirtieth birthday party. She rented out the Boom Boom Room, a popular bar in San Francisco known for great live blues music, during the Summer X Games—where I was supposed to be competing in the big air—and got all of my sponsors to pitch in money to throw the party. She had a salsa band play, a photographer taking black-and-white Polaroid photos, and a big birthday cake. Old and new snowboarding photos decorated the walls. It was like walking through a photo gallery of the history of my life. My mom had sent out pages of a book to all of my friends for everyone to draw a picture or write a poem for me. My brother had hand-carved the outside of the book and put it all together.
Dave gave me diamond earrings that night just before the party, wrapped in a blue Tiffany box. I was so surprised. I hadn’t worn earrings in years because jewelry got in the way of my snowboarding and all I could think of when I opened the box was, “Oh no, I hope the holes in my ears didn’t close.” I don’t think he even noticed that I’d never worn earrings before. I said I had to get ready and I went to the bathroom and tried so hard to poke them through because I wanted to wear them right then and there. I wanted to feel like everything was all right and all I had to do was get these earrings in. I tried so hard and it hurt because I couldn’t get them through and my ears started to bleed and I was already running late…so I stopped and cleaned my ears, but they stung the rest of the night.
My broken foot didn’t keep me from dancing on the dance floor with my walking cast and my Snoop Doggy Dogg cane. We danced all night. That was the night that Tony Hawk did his famous 900 trick, so he showed up later with all of the skaters who were ready to celebrate. Tony took all of the balloons and tied them to himself and did some break-dancing moves on the dance floor. There was even an Eminem sighting at the bar, which was weird because I doubt he knew it was a birthday party for me. The place was packed and everyone was having a great time. It was so much more than I ever expected. Lisa, my friends, my sponsors, and even ESPN just went over the top. It was so relieving and fun.
I wish I could have kept mainlining my happiness that way, but it had to come from inside, and I knew this. My earlobes hurt and I put the diamonds in the blue Tiffany box back in my luggage until I could get my ears repierced. I put so much time into being with my family and friends, and so when someone comes into my life, I give my time to them. I write to them or call or make sure I’m in contact. I travel so much that it takes time to come back into a friendship. But I work hard at this because friends are so important to me. I was trying to be strong in my relationship with Dave. He was busy recording his new album and I thought I should be there for him and I also struggled to balance my time with my family and friends, plus focus on healing my leg.
My body was naturally healing itself, but my mind was far behind. I had to get back into the mind-set of snowboarding. It was a tough uphill battle, and I didn’t even know that it wasn’t at its worst yet. To get back to snowboarding, I had to rally my shit together and pull my confidence back up, so that when my leg was healed, my mind knew how to jump again.
It started with a summer full of physical therapy, which is where I learned so much about how my body heals itself. I did really simple exercises and it felt so weird that I couldn’t even flex my foot. It seemed like it would take forever to get back to normal and be able to fit comfortably back into my snowboard boot. I wondered if my foot would be as strong as before and if I’d be able to return to my way of riding. I couldn’t imagine limiting my snowboarding to just cruising down the easy runs.
Sporting my cast and crutches.
Copyright © Scott Sullivan
I know you can’t focus on an injury and there’s no way you’ll recover if you do, but being hurt, as a professional athlete, shocks you to the bones. It took more energy than anything I’d ever done before just to keep positive and have the strength to get healthy. The only comfort came when I would think about the fact that my leg was going to recover, which meant I would be snowboarding again soon. Snowboarding was such a big part of my life. It was my identity. It was something that kept me on course and gave me purpose and made me into something that I didn’t know I could be. I would never be able to let go—I loved it. I had to get back.
But there was Dave. His life was busy with his own pressures. He had multimillion-dollar record contracts, deadlines with record labels, music videos, press tours, and all along was trying to maintain a focus on being creative and writing music. It was exhausting to me. I don’t know how he can do it. The pressure was too much for our relationship to handle. You can only give up so much of your heart and your career and your time and your spirit, and here I was, giving it all up for a guy and losing myself in the process. There has to be a balance or you just simply run out, go on empty. I felt like I was taking time away from his career, which was his priority—totally putting mine in the backseat without even realizing it. I don’t know how anyone in his profession can have a normal relationship with a girlfriend…or two, as it turned out. I found out secondhand, through the grapevine, when it seemed like everyone else in the world knew about it but me. I was so disappointed and pissed at myself for being sucked in. Breakups suck. But Rockstar exits are the worst. All I got was a five-minute phone call from him, after five weeks of me calling and trying to get ahold of him because I just had to know if these rumors were true and had to hear it straight from the source.
There was nothing. Like he dropped off the planet in my world, but was everywhere else because articles were showing up in all the magazines since he was finishing up a press tour for his new album. And more people than ever were calling me asking for hookups on Foo Fighters concert tickets. Worse yet were all the calls from people who wanted to tell me all the dirt they had on him, like it would comfort me in some way. Whatever. I couldn’t escape the thought of him. I purposely didn’t watch MTV because his video always seemed to be playing, and I didn’t listen to the radio because his single was climbing the charts. I went grocery shopping a few days after we broke up and heard the elevator-music version of “Learn to Fly,” which gave me an instant stomachache, then saw him on the cover of Guitar magazine staring at me in the check-out line. Like I wasn’t having a hard enough time getting him out of my mind. I didn’t know how to handle it.
I thought, I’m just not that strong. Having a broken heart and a broken leg was more than I could handle in one summer. And I was so scared that he would change the way I loved people from then on.
Maybe it’s my downfall, but I’m one of those girls who will trust you when I first meet you. I’m easy to take advantage of. When I fall, I fall hard. But through all of the relationships I’ve had, I’ve learned so much about myself and what kind of person I work best with. I really have no regrets, although I could definitely pass on some of the heartaches. All I ask from a guy is that he be honest and truthful. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask, but maybe it is when the guy doesn’t know that he’s not being honest and truthful with himself.
There should be a book called “Men Have Cabinets, Women Have Shelves.” That’s how I would wrap up my general view on boyfriend relations
hips. In all of my past experiences, guys are so quick to hide their feelings and close the door on the situation and easily never speak of it again. I just wonder, How can they do that? I always have my feelings out there in the open, which makes me vulnerable, I guess, but I have to address relationship issues so I can see what I have, what’s on the shelf, resolved, before I can move on. But like before, I so easily put my happiness in their hands, and I really have to be careful about that. It took me several relationships to realize how important it is to be truly happy on my own and let the next relationship add to my happiness, not depend on it.
When Dave and I broke up, I didn’t leave the house for three days. I got out my paint set and started painting a picture. I couldn’t leave until it was finished. Since Dave was completely “unavailable” this was the only closure I could figure out on my own. I painted a flower fairy with long red hair and the strongest wings that I could think of—in yellow and gold. The light from her wings reflects a golden glow around her head and the wings hold her up, hovering strongly above a flower garden, which had to have poppies and irises and different kinds of red and pink, and beautiful strong flowers in every form and shape. Her arms cross her chest holding on to her heart. I named the painting “Holding On,” which was exactly what I needed to do for a while. Now, when I look at the painting hanging on my wall, I don’t see Heartache at all, I see beauty and my innermost strengths in so many layers. That’s what it represents to me.
More than ever, I was needing my snowboard girlfriends, especially to get me back riding hard. If I could ride hard. Luckily I have such a great circle of friends who are there for me in the rough times. I’d invested so much time with them on road trips, traveling to competitions, sharing feelings about being the girl riders in the group. For about ten months after I got hurt, I had nightmares leading right up to the moment before I crashed. I kept trying to reverse it and reenacted the jump over and over in my head, thinking, “If only I’d gone faster…” I could have cleared that landing. If I had focused. My girlfriends took me out riding. We rode hard. We rode like we wanted to ride. Flying down fast, stopping only to regroup at the bottom of the mountain, then heading back up for another run and launching down a steep pitch or off into the trees for hidden stashes of powder. Regaining my confidence in riding hard made my bad dreams stop.
When the doctor said my leg was 100 percent healed and I could go back to jumping, my mind wasn’t ready yet. The feeling of catching air still scared me. It made me feel breakable and fragile. I was worried about crashing again and misjudging a landing. After my last landing it felt like I went underground and out of the scene. It took so much for me to be where I was, riding on the surface. Jumping made me nervous and I doubted my talents.
Up until this point, I had learned to listen to myself and my gut feeling on every move that I made in my snowboarding career. If I listened carefully, it would lead me back again. So, I thought, start with little jumps that are just there while riding down the mountain—small rollers, natural snowbanks with powder landings. Little airs. I kept doing my physical therapy exercises and riding with my friends, and I felt my lungs again, and my legs were getting stronger. But the hurdle was still in front of me: Could I go back to big air in competition?
There was pressure. My sponsor Sims had stayed with me even though I was unable to compete for a year and missed out on that season’s photo shoots. I had to get back on the horse to prove to myself that I could jump again in competition. And I knew I had to do it for my sponsors—to repay them in some way for their support. If not, who knew—when my contract came up for renewal in three months, maybe I’d be the team rider they decided not to keep. At the end of the year, I decided to enter the Sims World Championship 2000 competition up at Whistler Mountain.
It was a nighttime big-air jump—the worst thing to come back into because night events under fluorescent lights meant harder landings, less visibility, extreme cold, and probably an insanely big crowd, especially at Whistler. But my sponsor was the title sponsor of this event and because of the timing, I felt like I had to do it. I talked to some friends who said that I didn’t have to do my backside 720—that I had already proved to the world that I could do it and had won a gold for it. Other friends were encouraging me to listen to what I wanted to do. All I knew was I wanted to get back on the horse and prove to myself that I could do it again.
Up at Whistler I was staying with my friend, pro snowboarder Leslee Olson. I remember watching her get ready for competition that day. She was eating a granola bar and listening to music and saying out loud the things she needed to bring up to the mountain: “My helmet, my bib, here’s my knee brace…” I had to force every one of those motions and calculate everything she was just doing without much thought. I kept staring at her. That’s when I realized, she was in the zone. Leslee was about to jump off a 65-foot big-air jump in front of 20,000 people and it didn’t seem to even faze her. It fazed me. I had to get back into it and it wasn’t clicking. I had to think everything through. It was calculated. It seemed like I could not find even an ounce of the bravery I once had.
When we got up to the starting gate at the top of the jump, it was already dark outside and lights illuminated the jump for the contest. It was so cold. I felt out of place up there. I was surrounded by all these girls who had competed in fifteen contests previously that season. This was just another big-air competition to them. I hadn’t been snowboarding in any contest in over a year and felt out of the loop. They were talking about what party they were going to go to after the contest and what guy they thought was cute and I was sitting there thinking, How can they talk so casually? I have to completely visualize and concentrate on this jump or I’m not going to even be able to go down this ramp. Normally I’d be chatting it up with the rest of them, but my mind was so preoccupied with what I was about to do, I could barely engage in any social conversation around me. It took everything I had to just concentrate on my jump.
The first warm-up jumps were scary to think about, and I almost talked myself out of doing them. Somehow, mechanically, I dropped in and rode down the ramp. The speed was good and it felt OK. I popped off the lip and pulled a simple, straight air with a grab. I was feeling better and warming up to the jump. My mind and body started to remember the motions. Things were going along OK, but I didn’t want to take anything for granted. I’d only had a few days of jumping something half as big under my belt, because snowparks at ski resorts didn’t make jumps this big. There was a band playing at the bottom of the jump (thankfully, not the Foo Fighters, who had been invited by Sims, then mysteriously uninvited, because I would have never made it off the jump if Dave was singing his love songs in the background), so I wasn’t listening to my music on my headphones in preparation for the competition jump. I also felt like I needed to hear everything around me. Standing there, up at the top of that jump that night, getting ready to drop in for my first competitive big air since my injury, was one of the hardest moments not only of my career but of my life. If I bombed this, it might cost me my sponsorship and I’d be done with professional snowboarding. I might even crack a legbone, again. Or worse: Never get back on the horse. I was scared to death.
I took in my three deep breaths, feeling cold air burn in my lungs. I dropped in. Speed was good. Just at the lip before I took flight, I could feel it. My bravery was there, my talent was there, and I got my 720 spin around. I could feel myself doing it right, my body remembered. I’d visualized it in my dreams. When I came around, I was a little off and dragged the landing slightly, touching back and didn’t stomp it completely. It wasn’t my best performance, but I didn’t care. I’d done it! For my sponsors, my friends, but mostly myself. I was so incredibly relieved and happy. My score was good enough and I ended up getting second place to Tara Dakides that night.
At the Option Institute, they told me if you let every experience and the people around you add to the happiness that you create, then you’re doing pretty well. Depending on co
ntest results or sponsors or boyfriends would only set myself up to be let down or disappointed. After that night, I made many decisions—to be more protective of my body, to land on soft snow, to live my life the way that felt right for me.
I still feel my ankle every time I go snowboarding and it gets uncomfortable. That’s something new and it’s always there. I know what it is—a constant reminder to stay in tune with myself.
* * *
stretching to prevent injury
Stretching is so important in sports. It improves flexibility and range of motion, relaxes the mind, and warms up the body so you’re less likely to pull a muscle. It also aids in recovery and relieves body stiffness. Remember to always stretch at your own rate and don’t force the stretch past your natural tension. Never bounce or stretch until it hurts because this can lead to injury. Hold each stretch at least 10 seconds and breathe in a natural, relaxing manner. Here are a few stretches to do before you hit the slopes:
1. Neck stretch—Keeping your head and neck facing straight forward, tilt your head to one side in slow motion; keeping your shoulders level. Hold down for 30 seconds when you feel the natural tension of the stretch. Tilt your head back to center and then do the same on the other side. Don’t jerk your head from side to side. Do it three times on each side.
2. Calf stretch—Stand two feet away from a wall, place both hands against the wall at shoulder height. Step back with one foot about two feet, in a lunge position, keeping your front leg slightly bent. Keep your back heel on the ground until you feel the calf stretch. Hold for 30 seconds. Switch sides and repeat three times.
3. Lower back stretch—Lying on your back, bend your left knee at 90 degrees. Extend your arms out to the sides. Place your right hand on your left thigh and pull that bent knee over your right leg, keeping your shoulders flat on the floor. To further the stretch, keep your head on the floor and turn it to face the outstretched arm. Hold for 30 seconds and then switch to your right leg and repeat. Do twice on each side.