As Colby Stevenson prepared for his run down a mountain in Switzerland on Thursday, his hopes of making the U.S. Olympic team hinged on this performance.
A strong showing in qualifying at the FIS Freeski World Cup would get him into the competition's finals two days later. And another big performance in that round might secure him a spot at his second consecutiveWinter Olympicsnext month in Livigno, Italy.
Many athletes in the same situation may have crumbled under the pressure. But Stevenson, 28, said he doesn't feel that anymore.
"I should be dead right now," he told NBC News. "I got nothing to lose."
Stevenson is referring to a car accident almost a decade ago that nearly killed him.
In May 2016, following a freeski event in Mount Hood, Oregon, Stevenson and a friend, John Michael Fabrizi, were driving nearly 500 miles home to Utah. Fabrizi had broken his leg at the event, forcing Stevenson to drive the entirety of the trip. Hours into the excursion, exhausted and eyes growing heavy, he considered stopping at a hotel but decided to power through with their destination approaching.
Then his eyes closed.
His truck veered off the road in Idaho, flipping eight times with the roof caving in. Fabrizi, in the passenger seat, escaped with minor injuries. Stevenson's skull was shattered in more than 30 places and he suffered brain trauma. He was placed in a medically induced coma for five days.
"I was very close to bleeding out," Stevenson said. "I'm in the 1% of people with that type of skull fracture and no permanent brain damage."
He was lucky, but his road to recovery was long. The 6-foot-1 Stevenson said he lost all of his muscle mass from the two weeks he was in the hospital, dropping to 139 pounds. His neck muscles atrophied and, for months, he couldn't sit at a table and eat without it hurting.
Stevenson's brain injury also led to a sharp decline in memory and decision-making, he said. He developed vertigo and often got dizzy when he lay down.
"I went from being the most active kid doing all these different sports to then just bedridden for three months," he said. "My life was done. The life that I loved living so much felt like it was gone."
The mirror was also a constant reminder of how much his life changed. He said he would wake up each morning, see a huge scar across his forehead and scream out loud. He said he became heavily depressed and "would look in the mirror and wish I had died in the crash."
Early on, Stevenson was mostly aided by his mother, though she eventually needed to return to work. His grandmother then stepped in to help — and that's when his perspective started to change. She stayed with him for a few months and the two would play cards and go on short walks together around the neighborhood.
"Those things brought me so much joy when I was in my darkest times," Stevenson said. "I realized you don't need a lot to be happy."
After five months of rehab, feeling better both physically and mentally, he put skis back on for the first time. Even though he was supposed to take it easy, he did a double cork 1080, which involves two full flips and a spin, "to prove to myself that it was going to be all good."
Even at his lowest, Stevenson said, he never gave up the dream of being a competitive skier. That was most evident at a FIS World Cup slopestyle event in the Italian Alps in 2017. All the anxiety he previously experienced in competitions went out the door. He was back living life.
With his father looking on, he dominated his run and took first place.
"We couldn't really believe it," Stevenson said. "It was totally out of a fairy tale."
Stevenson began looking back on his accident as a positive and it showed in his skiing. In 2022, he made the U.S. Olympic team in Beijing. Though he finished in seventh place in slopestyle, his main event, he surprised everyone in Big Air.
On the bus to the finals, Stevenson had a set plan of what trick he wanted to do. Then "Fly Like An Eagle" by Steve Miller Band shuffled into his headphones. Stevenson took it as a sign to take a bigger risk, and pivoted to a trick he had never attempted in a competition: a "nose butter" triple cork, 1620 Japan grab.
"I was just gonna do a Hail Mary in the Olympic final," he said.
Stevenson said he was too scared to do it in training and wanted to do it when it counted most, good or bad. He landed it perfectly on his second run, and followed it up with a switch double cork 1800 to take the silver medal.
Four years later, he's back, but the competition to make the U.S. team in Italy next month is stiff. Alex Hall and Troy Podmilsak have already qualified, and Mac Forehand — who won the U.S. Grand Prix in Aspen, Colorado, last week — is all but assured a spot. The fourth and final opportunity is still up for grabs.
All of which led to this week's World Cup.
Stevenson needed a strong performance during qualifying in Switzerland to get into the finals, and that's exactly what he did Thursday by earning the top overall score in the competition. One more impressive performance Saturday could lock in an Olympic berth.
And while he's excelling on the skis, he's just as excited about life outside the slopes. Stevenson admitted he's become much more vulnerable with people and cares less about what others think these days. The little things he previously took for granted are now also being celebrated.
He credits the accident for this feeling.
"In these last nine years, I've lived the sickest life because of the mentality I learned from that accident. It just brought so much more love into my life," he said. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me."
