4 months after near-fatal accident, Pearce returns home to Vermont

Injured snowboarder returns home to Vermont

Kevin Pearce no longer focuses on pushing envelopes inside the halfpipe or winning gold medals at the Olympics. Instead, he works on walking with less effort, seeing clearly, maybe even someday getting back on that snowboard — simply for an easy ride down the mountain.

The 22-year-old, once one of the best halfpipe riders in the world, has returned home to Vermont more than four months after an accident that put him in a coma and nearly took his life.

During practice in Park City, Utah on Dec. 31, Pearce was trying one of his sport’s toughest tricks when he banged his head on the halfpipe and had to be rushed to the hospital for lifesaving surgery.

He spent the next four months recuperating at hospitals in Utah and Colorado and was recently released to return home in Norwich, Vt.

“It’s so great to be back in my hometown with my whole family,” Pearce said Tuesday in a statement released by his publicist. “I can’t thank everyone I met in Utah and Colorado enough. It’s been a long road, and I know I still have a ways to go.”

In interviews with NBC and The New York Times, Pearce said he is still struggling with his memory, balance and eyesight and says he has no recollection of the accident that forced him to watch the Olympics from his hospital bed. He said he plans to return to snowboarding someday.

But at the elite level?

Well, the Pearces don’t look that far ahead — not after what Kevin has been through.

He was wearing a helmet when the accident happened but the injury brought up difficult questions about the risk involved in a sport that has rapidly been pushed to new levels.

Pearce was one of the few riders with the talent to challenge Shaun White, and the jumps both men tried — much of which are spent upside down without any view of the icy edge of the halfpipe they fly over — raised the stakes in an already dangerous sport.

Less than a month after Pearce’s accident, White bashed his face against the halfpipe while practicing a similar trick. But he walked away and went to Vancouver, where he was barely challenged en route to his second straight gold medal.

At the time, Pearce was rehabilitating at a hospital in the Denver area.

In the past two weeks, he was released from the hospital. On Saturday, he returned home, where the rehab will continue, and a different kind of life will begin.

“Over the past four months, our family has embarked on an unexpected, yet very rewarding journey with Kevin,” said a statement from his parents, Simon and Pia. “We are incredibly proud of how hard he has worked to recover from his injury and take joy in all of the milestones Kevin has reached so far.”