The Olympic hopeful was stuck at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, for more than a day and a half waiting for lost luggage.
And by luggage, we’re talking eight snowboards Steamboat Springs native Mick Dierdorff planned on riding to a spot on the 2022 U.S. Olympic snowboard cross team.
Dierdorff, a mainstay of the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team, is the and competed in the 2018 Olympic games.
But on Tuesday, Jan. 4., Dierdorff, 30, was left wondering if a baggage snafu would thwart his 2022 Olympic dreams.
You see, Dierdorff, 30, was supposed to have been in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. There, a snowboard cross World Cup event that coming weekend would play a decisive role in determining which four American-male snowboard cross athletes will represent the United States in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China starting Feb. 4.
Rather than training, Dierdorff had been waiting for his luggage in Germany for some 36 hours. The wayward luggage included snowboards of different lengths, grinds, and base materials, suited to different courses and snow conditions. If snowboard cross (known also as “boardercross”) is motocross on snow, here was the equivalent of an elite motocross racer without his motorcycle.
Dierdorff, who has made the rounds on the World Cup tour for years, seemed remarkably nonplussed about his delay in arriving at a pivotal pre-Olympic event or the remote possibility that he may never see the slippery tools of his trade again.
His chill attitude likely has helped Dierdorff on the snow.
“I think a lot of athletes have so much going on in their heads and are stressing about so many different things that can happen in the race,” Dierdorff said. “Whereas I think I’ve had a lot of success being able to just kind of quiet out all the noise.”
Eventually, Dierdorff and his boards made it to Russia, and this week, Dierdorff won a coveted berth on the men’s team.
Now fans around the world and in Dierdorff’s hometown of Steamboat eagerly will be watching for a Dierdorff win in Beijing.
Along with his relaxed attitude, Dierdorff credits other factors in contributing to his status as a top-class snowboard cross athlete.
He boasts a low center of gravity (he’s five-foot-nine, 185 pounds in a sport that features misplaced linebackers such as Alessandro Haemmerle, “a 6’3”, 230-pound Austrian tank,” as Dierdorff described him). The Coloradan also has a preternatural ability to glide without engaging the snowboard’s edges. (“Just any little edge touch is essentially creating drag and slowing you down,” he explained). And, he has a knack for turning.
Mick Dierdorff’s need for speed
What worked for Dierdorff in Solitude, Utah on Jan. 31, 2019 – when he became the first American male to win the snowboard cross world championship in 14 years – was working for him at an airport hotel in Frankfurt two years hence.
Given the challenges he faced just to get to the point where he could bomb down steeps, flats, drops, berms, and gap jumps at 40 mph to 60 mph to cross the finish line before the three to five other tanklike speed demons, his bags being AWOL represented no more than ripple on a morning groomer.
He started out at age four as a ski racer with the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club and, while good at it, he found merely shooting down a mountain at breakneck speed wasn’t “enough of an adrenaline rush” for a kid constantly seeking out jumps and “trying to hook 360s.” While drawn to the half pipe and freestyle boarding, his stout body type worked against him in a world where those who thrive tend to be lithe. Kevin “Cactus” Nemec, a Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club coach, noted the young Dierdorff’s propensity to blast straight down Howelsen Hill and Steamboat Resort’s Mount Werner and suggested he try snowboard cross.
The boy won his first two events and was hooked. Clearly gifted, he perched atop the age-bracketed heap throughout his youth and entered his first World Cup race at age 17. He clearly belonged at that elite level, but the timing was unfortunate in that it coincided with a sort of golden age of U.S. snowboard cross, where it took extraordinary performance to break into the U.S. team.
That’s a big deal in snow sports because the U.S. team’s top-level athletes get a lot of their expenses paid for. Dierdorff had to cover his – travel, coaching, and all the rest – on his own. He did so through seasonal work as a carpenter in and about Steamboat Springs. He built farm fences from about age 14, then got into framing, small projects, and, eventually, work on the multimillion-dollar homes of which there was no dearth in Routt County. (He’s still at it, though as an independent contractor now.) He couldn’t afford a private coach, so he tagged along with the U.S. team and spent a lot of time emailing and Skyping his longtime Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club coach Jon Casson about issues ranging from board waxing to race tactics.
In addition to paying for his winter passion, Dierdorff said, “I think I learned a work ethic by working hard in the summers, working with my hands. And that taught me values that I don’t think I could have gotten anywhere else.”
He had to do more than carpentry. Winter Olympics athletes don’t take summers off any more than Summer Olympics athletes take winters off. In Dierdorff’s case, working full-time in the “off-season” meant 6 a.m. CrossFit-style workouts before a physical job.
His ability to focus, combined with his ability to work hard and his natural gifts, boosted his results over time. By 2018, he finished fifth in snowboard cross at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Steamboat native Mick Dierdorff a pro at ‘roller derby on snow’
That Olympics, about a quarter of the men competing in snowboard cross suffered season-ending injuries, Dierdorff estimated.
Dierdorff emerged unscathed, and that’s been a prevailing theme over his 13-year professional career. His major injuries have involved a broken right wrist in 2006 and a fractured scapula (shoulder blade) orthopedic surgeon Dr. Andreas Sauerbrey, a member of the medical staff at UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center, repaired in 2008. Dierdorff said Sauerbery’s orthopedic colleagues Dr. Alejandro Miranda and Dr. Adam Wilson, who also operate at YVMC, have worked with him on nagging issues with his back and knees – both of which endure extraordinary punishment in this alpine discipline – for years. Wilson met Dierdorff when the surgeon traveled with the U.S. snowboard cross team as a team doctor in 2016. They’re next-door neighbors in Steamboat now.
Wilson described Dierdorff as “a very driven guy. He wants to push himself, and is always out there pushing himself and his teammates.” But at the same time, he said, “He’s very vocal in cheering for his teammates when they’re in a position to win or do well. He’s very selfless.”
Dierdorff’s success has not gone to his head, Wilson added.
“If you met him in Steamboat, or you were one of his customers for his off-season carpentry work, you wouldn’t recognize him for who he is: an Olympian and a world champion,” Wilson said.
As Dierdorff waited for his luggage in Frankfurt, the pressing question was whether he would be a multi-time Olympian. His luggage did finally show up, and by midweek he was in Russia. But then, as has been the case with so many during the omicron-variant surge, he tested positive for the coronavirus despite being vaccinated and boosted. His case was asymptomatic, but wasn’t allowed to race in the Olympic qualifiers.
That the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team announced on Jan. 19 that Dierdorff had been selected for the Olympic team despite is absence is a testament to the team’s belief in his chances on the sport’s biggest stage next month. He will be in Europe to train and race in a World Cup tune-up before traveling with the team to Beijing.
“It’s such an exciting opportunity to be able to have another shot at competing for an Olympic medal,” Dierdorff said. “It’s the biggest honor ever to not only represent the United States, but also my community and all the people who have supported me.”
Wilson will be among those watching, just as he did at 4 a.m. on a winter morning in 2018, when he hollered at the livestream on his computer as his patient, neighbor, and friend flashed down the Phoenix Snow Park course in PyeongChang. The surgeon surely won’t be the only one in Steamboat Springs doing the same.
UCHealth is part of Team USA’s National Medical Network and the Official Hospital of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
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