Melo Imai was 18 years old and headed to Turin 2006 as the favorite for gold. 🏂
She had won the half-pipe World Championships a year earlier and had been training since age 7 with her father as her coach, up to 18 hours a day. But in the Olympic competition she suffered such a severe fall that she was knocked unconscious and ended up in a hospital, last in the standings. The pressure and depression did the rest: she quit snowboarding, worked as a hostess in bars and, years later, entered Japan’s adult film industry.
No one expected what came next. In March 2017, with just four days of training, Melo returned to competition and won gold at the Japanese Snowboard Championship in Gifu, scoring 90.75 points. She tried to qualify for PyeongChang 2018 and didn’t make it, but she had already won something greater than a medal: the chance to start over. 💪