Kaitlyn Farrington retires from competitive snowboarding because of spine condition

Kaitlyn Farrington, who won gold at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, has been forced to retire from competitive snowboarding because of a spine condition.

It was less than a year ago when Kaitlyn Farrington was atop the snowboarding world as the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics snowboard halfpipe gold medalist.

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Now, she has been forced to retire.

At the age of 25, Farrington has a degenerative spine condition called congenital cervical stenosis that has forced her to retire from competitive snowboarding.

“I thought I was too young to hear the word ‘retirement,'” Farrington said, via ESPN.com. “There’s so much I still want to do in the halfpipe. I thought I’d be pushing the sport for many more years and try to make the Olympic team in 2018. But the risk of snowboarding in a halfpipe or hitting jumps is too high. It’s been tough to accept, but I’m retiring from competitive snowboarding.”

Farrington learned of the condition after a fall in October of 2014 in Hintertux, Austria. After the fall — which she describes as one of the scariest moments of her life — she could not feel her body.

“My body went completely numb,” she says. “I couldn’t feel anything from the neck down. I was looking up at the sky thinking, ‘Get up. Just get up.’ All I wanted to do was stand up and walk. I heard the guys yelling, ‘Are you all right?’ and all I could say was, ‘Help. Help. I need help.'”

That fall led to a routine MRI and the degenerative spine condition was discovered.

It had to be a heart-breaking moment for Farrington and it was clearly a difficult reality for her to handle, but at least the last moment of her competitive career will allow her to be remembered as, “Kaitlyn Farrington: Olympic Gold Medalist.”

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