Canadian Olympic gold medallist was hospitalized just six weeks ago
Megan Oldham may be one of Canada’s best Olympic stories in Italy.
The 24-year-old skier is having an Olympic Games to remember, capturing two medals, including a gold in Monday’s big air event. She’s had to fight through all sorts of adversity to get to this point.
Entering the 2026 Olympics, Oldham was looking for redemption. She had just missed out on the podium in Beijing 2022 and wanted to finally deliver a medal for Canada. That was accomplished early on with a bronze in women’s slopestyle.
There was also some doubt over whether Oldham would be healthy enough to compete, as she was hospitalized with a concussion following a ski crash just six weeks before the Olympics.
“It was a pretty scary moment for me,” Oldham told CBC’s Ariel Helwani. “I was in the hospital. I still to this day don’t remember anything from that day. Apparently, I was asking my coach, ‘When’s the Olympics?’ because I didn’t even remember when it was coming up, and obviously was stressed about it.
“It was my first big concussion. Coming home, I had like four weeks on the couch and was still dealing with symptoms and wasn’t really sure how long it was going to take to heal.”
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Getting injured right before the Olympics, especially with how her last experience went, must have been pretty close to the worst-case scenario for Oldham. She had been wanting to redeem herself after missing out on a medal in 2022, and suddenly that was at risk.
Though it was far from ideal circumstances, Oldham told Helwani that she never let the thought of potentially missing the Games get to her.
“I think I didn’t let that thought come into my head too much, because the Olympics has been such a forefront in my mind that I was like, I will do whatever until the last hope,” said Oldham. “I was just focused on every little step I could take to make it there.”
That belief paid off more than she could have ever hoped for, as she will return to her home in Parry Sound, Ont., an Olympic champion.