Prior Glory: The Return of New Zealand’s Best Female Snowboarder

"If it wasn't for bad luck," bluesman Albert King once opined in the legendary 1967 Stax Records hit 'Born Under A Bad Sign,' "I wouldn't have any luck at all."

King wasn't talking about fresh powder, but Kiwi snowboarder Christy Prior would certainly get his vibe.

She was one of New Zealand's medal hopes heading into the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, but Prior—a slopestyle specialist—has had a tough run of things there, and since.

After qualifying for the semi-finals in Sochi, Prior, then the world No 3 in slopestyle, suffered a concussion and broken ribs in practice, ruling herself out of the rest of the Games.

The bad luck rolled on into the following year, when Prior suffered a bad knee injury near Wanaka. While the road back has been a struggle with constant rehab and time off the snow, she's nearly got a full bill of health again. Just in time too; another Olympic campaign—this time in PyeongChang in South Korea next year—is on the horizon.

"I originally did it two years ago, just coming up short on a jump," the 28-year-old Kaukapakapa local told VICE New Zealand recently, about her lingering knee injury.

"I think that's why people think I've haven't been out for that long because…no one saw the down time stuff.

"Recovery is a patience thing—it just takes a long time."

The return to the Olympics will be pressured for more athletes than just Prior. New Zealand didn't come away with a medal in Sochi, and copped plenty of criticism back home for what some people perceived as athletes, especially the free-ski and snowboard team, as being 'too relaxed' on course.

Freeski superstar Jossi Wells nabbed a fourth in the men's half-pipe final -the best Winter Olympics result by a Kiwi since Coberger—but the critics remained unimpressed. One Herald columnist raged, "Not only has the team bombed spectacularly, they seem to be having a good time doing so. It's more like watching a bunch of Kiwis on an expensive skiing holiday than a bunch of top athletes representing their nation at the highest level."

While conceding that you are always judged on your results, Prior says the lack of exposure snow sports get in New Zealand means the wider public don't understand athletes' approach to a sport where they dice with serious injury every time they drop in.

"If people actually knew where we are actually ranked on the world tour, and how well we do on the world stage, they could see we're dead serious about this—it's what we do. We just do it with a smile on our face.

"You try jumping off a two-story building travelling half the length of a rugby field, flipping, spinning and landing on your feet. Sometimes you have to lighten up to get through it, you know." The stakes at the Winter Olympics are high, Prior says, and no-one knows that better than the athletes.

"There's so much more that goes on behind the scenes. You can choose what you portray in the media and through your social media accounts. Unless you show it, and want to show it, nobody sees the stuff that goes on—all the blood, sweat and tears—behind the scenes.

"Or being on crutches for two months every year—no one sees that. Or the coming back, the time spent on the mental side of things to cope with the high pressure and high consequence tricks.

Prior's path to PyeongChang begins, in earnest, at New Zealand's Winter Games, which kick off today and roll into early September.

From there, she'll hit the northern hemisphere—"ten months of winter that see me through to the Olympics … that's going to be living on the road, that whole time"—for FIS World Cup events in hope of picking up enough good results to secure passage through slopestyle, and, possibly, the Big Air events.

Prior, a Dew Tour veteran, says if she wants to really compete this year she'll have to work for it; the inclusion of Big Air in the X-Games in the last year has seen the competition step up their game. The new gravity-defying event demands athletes perform their stunts without the benefit of contact with the ground, and Prior says it's influenced athletes' performance in other events too.

"To be honest, I really do think Big Air coming into play for women's snowboarding has been a huge driving force behind the progression," Prior, a two-time X-Games medalist herself, says.

"We saw a lot of the progression from the men's side of things really taking off when Big Air was introduced…. Like anything, women are always trying to chase it.

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