Snowboarder Brooke D’Hondt ready for Beijing as one of Canada’s youngest Olympians

The biggest goal for most 16-year-old’s is getting their driver’s license, but Brooke D’Hondt has set her sites a little higher.

At 16, snowboarder D’Hondt will be one of the youngest Olympians representing Canada in the Beijing Olympics when she hits the halfpipe.

D’Hondt told CityNews when she first found out she was going to the Olympics, she didn’t believe.

“It definitely didn’t set in for a couple of days until I saw everyone else posting about and I thought ‘I’m going with those guys’,” D’Hondt said.

The women’s snowboarding halfpipe qualifying round is being held on Tuesday evening with the finals happening Wednesday.

D’Hondt first tried snowboarding when she was just five-years-old and it was only a couple of days after her 13th birthday that she finished second in half pipe and fourth in slopestyle at the 2018 Canadian Junior Championship.

Training with the Canadian National Halfpipe team in Calgary when she was 13, D’Hondt said it was the first time she realized that could be her soon.

But, she says training for the biggest winter games in the world has been quite the journey.

Getting training sessions in during the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t been easy. “It’s definitely been nothing I have ever experienced before, like hundreds of COVID tests and getting Swiss visas, and all this crazy stuff but I have had a great support system helping me.”

In preparing for the Olympics, she said she’s been spending “every moment I can in preparation in the gym and on the snow.” Her father, who she says was a snowboarder in his youth, has been able to travel with her to the Olympics as one of her coaches.

“He’s been there with me since day one. The first day I snowboarded, he was there coaching me on the hill. And he still is every day now. And I’m really fortunate that he’s able to come to the games with me,” said D’Hondt.

The U.S.’s Shaun White will be making Olympic snowboarding history this year as the oldest U.S. halfpipe rider ever at 35 years old, but it was another U.S. athlete that D’Hondt has looked up to for years.

“Watching the games and watching Chloe Kim at such a young age dominate, I think really clicked with me and resonated that in four years that could be me to.”

Kim became the youngest woman to win a snowboarding gold medal when she won the women’s snowboard halfpipe at 17 years old at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.

And now D’Hondt is an inspiration to other young girls hoping to follow in her footsteps.

“I’ve definitely had little girls come up before to me and that means a lot, it’s so cool when people come up to you and I try to be my best self because I know how much it would mean to me if I went up to other pros.”

D’Hondt will be competing Tuesday evening in the qualifications for the Women’s Half-Pipe beginning at 8:30 p.m.