cannabisnews.com: Snowboarder Sees Hopes Go Up in Smoke Snowboarder Sees Hopes Go Up in Smoke Posted by FoM on February 03, 2002 at 18:37:12 PT By Owen Slot Source: Daily Telegraph Gold Medals affect people in different ways. For Ross Rebagliati, a snowboard medallist in Nagano, Japan, four years ago, the gold medal caused him to split from his fiancee, gave him international fame as one of the Olympics' most celebrated drugs cases and now finds it has barred him from entry into the United States.Rebagliati was the most entertaining and controversial of winners four years ago. He and his fellow snowboarders had been welcomed into the Olympics for the first time and they cut a new image, baggier of clothes and cooler of attitude than the Games had been accustomed to. There was thus general amusement and very little collective surprise when Rebagliati tested positive for marijuana and was stripped of his gold.His story then got better. His fellow riders started wearing `Free Ross' slogans on their T-shirts and Rebagliati had the gall to suggest he was an unlucky victim of "passive smoking", that he had obviously taken in too much of the evil fumes in a bar back home in Whistler weeks earlier.Then came his moment of glory. His Canadian delegation checked the rules and discovered that marijuana was not on the International Olympic Committee's list of banned drugs. Rebagliati was reinstated, he was rewarded with international renown far beyond that of almost every other of his fellow champions and the snowboarding posse was able to stick up two fingers to the IOC.This is all rather amusing until he takes over the story. Despite being a snowboarder, he says, he had never actually seen himself as the sort of rebel to take on the most powerful sports body in the world, just being a gold medallist would have been enough. New-found fame was hard to handle."I got engaged shortly after the Olympics," he says. "It was a spur of the moment thing and kind of a product of feeling a little isolated from my comfort zone. Of course, you can't do things like that." Thus the engagement failed. "I broke it off. That was a six-month ordeal which was enough to break your back on its own."He also bought a house he couldn't afford. "I was being told by the corporate community in Canada that I was going to be able to take advantage of all these new endorsement deals and I would have to think about how to handle the money. I bought the property thinking it would be true." It wasn't.The endorsement deals that did come his way, however, conflicted with those of the Canadian national team and so the year after the Games, he found himself cast out of the team and training on his own. This was not much fun and so he took the following year off, he made a comeback last year but then found himself in a no-win situation: because he was not in the Canadian team, he could not accrue enough points to qualify for the big events, and because he didn't have enough points, he was unable to get back into the Canadian team.Could he win the gold again in Salt Lake City? "Absolutely!" he insists. But because of all this he will not be in town as a competitor - that is if he is allowed there at all.Last weekend, the Olympic hangover was still lingering when he was turned away from a flight from Vancouver to Las Vegas because a drugs incident showed up on a computer. "Now I have an immigration lawyer!" he says. "It seems I need a waiver to get into the US, it's a big problem for me; my mother lives in California. This is a major hit to my lifestyle."Yet despite all this, the Whistler One relates his problems with all the laid-back equanimity of a true snowboarder. He has, after all, got to play golf with Freddie Couples and John Daly and his initial ill-advised sortie into property-buying has opened a career in the real estate market.Is he not selling out snowboarding ideals by moving into an area as commercial as real estate? "I'm not going to be concerned with the image of snowboarding or what the norm would be, I'm just taking opportunities," he replies. "Anyway, it fits my lifestyle great because I can talk to people on the chairlifts during the day and make contacts that way."And finally, what of the great passive smoking story? "It's true," he insists.Does he smoke marijuana now? "With the US being so close and having a zero-tolerance policy, it's not a question I can even begin to answer, as much as I'd love to say openly what I'd like to do in my personal life, I'll leave that up to people's imagination."Complete Title: Winter Olympics: Snowboarder Sees Hopes Go Up in SmokeSource: Daily Telegraph (UK)Author: Owen SlotPublished: February 02, 2002 Copyright: 2002 Telegraph Group Limited Contact: dtletters telegraph.co.ukWebsite: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Related Articles:Rebagliati Says US Won't Let Him Go To Olympicshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11904.shtmlDude!!!! No Marijuana for The Snowboarders http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11874.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #1 posted by potpal on February 04, 2002 at 09:01:16 PT Pot Heads... Wonder how Sir Paul McCartney managed to get to the the land of the pee to sing a song about fighting for freedom during the Super Bowl (hmmm, a super bowl...of pot, yeah, that's something I could get excited about)(freedom from what?) ,when everyone knows Sir Paul loves reefer and has a documented history of pot bust, even called for discrim a few years ago. Remember Japan, Band on the run, bet you he does. No qualms letting him in?..had a smoke, and somebody spoke and I went into a dream...Smoke pot, smoke pot, everybody smokes pot... [ Post Comment ] Post Comment