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A smile to remember

Flood of condolences and donations in wake of freeskier Sarah Burke's death
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Sarah Burke. photo by darren roberts

If family, friends and fans of Sarah Burke can take any strength from her passing it's the strength in numbers. Condolences have come in from around the globe, and from all walks of life — including millions of people who probably never heard of Burke before her untimely accident during a halfpipe training run on Jan. 10, but know a lot about her now. Few 29-year-olds lived as large or accomplished as much as Burke.

A Facebook page in her memory garnered almost 50,000 likes in a matter of days. Fans have posted compilation videos of her career, and tens of thousands of posts on Facebook and Twitter. When it looked like husband Rory Bushfield and Burke's family would be on the hook for her medical bills an online donation site raised close to $300,000 in less than a week — money that will also be used to create a charitable trust in her memory.

For Mike Douglas, who has known Sarah Burke since she first came to Whistler from her home in Midland, Ontario at the age of 14 to attend a Momentum Ski Camp seeing all the support has been gratifying.

"Speaking with the family, they've just been overwhelmed by all the positive things that came out of this and the support that's been shown through the Give Forward website," he said. "It's hard to say if there is any comfort in it, but there's a feeling like... Sarah was such an outstanding person in really every way you can be, and it's very satisfying to see the recognition that I felt she deserved all along as a human being. And to see her on the cover of all the papers nationally, and as the top story at every television station, it's a nice feeling because, like I said, she was just an outstanding person that transcended beyond the sport of skiing."

Douglas said her career as a skier, as incredible as it was, was not what he'll remember most about her.

"She did a lot of amazing sports feats and changed her sport, and got it into the Olympics and did all kinds of tricks first, but the really outstanding thing about her as a person was just who she was — she was gracious and humble and polite, and just everything you hope your daughter will be."

Douglas is currently at the X Games, where there will be a tribute to Burke tonight, Thursday, Jan. 26. It won't be aired on Canadian television, but will be covered by Canadian networks and posted online at www.expn.com. A Whistler memorial is planned in the near future when Burke's family sets a date that doesn't conflict with any ski events. "They want the whole ski family to be there," explained Douglas.

The atmosphere at Winter X Games is subdued, Douglas said. Originally, he didn't want to go, but he said it's been helpful to meet with others who knew her and relive memories.

"She was a big part of this community," said Douglas. "This was the world that Sarah loved, more than any other. The X Games was her family; it's where she was happiest. Seeing everybody today was actually really nice and hugging everyone and talking through it. Everywhere I went, every room, every hallway, I had a memory of Sarah."

John Smart has also known Sarah since she was 14 through Momentum Ski Camps. Douglas has moved on, but Smart has continued to run and coach the program of which Sarah was a part for 15 years. She started out as a camper, then transitioned into coaching.

"She came to camp with us for four years, age 14 to 18, and would do multiple sessions," said Smart. "She was a staple of our summer camps, and she excelled and did so well that we brought her in as a coach — and she has been a coach with us for 11 years. She never missed a year with us."

Smart said Burke was obviously a gifted skier from the start and had a real affinity for jumping.

"I don't know what age she started doing 1080s, but she was young," said Smart. "She always wanted to jump... I was on the World Cup still and she was hucking bigger tricks than I would ever do. She would crash, get back up, crash — nothing got her down. I was going through photos from our early camps and in every single shot she's smiling."

Sarah got into the sport of freeskiing on the ground floor. Mike Douglas went to Salomon with an idea for twin tip skis in 1997, and Burke came to camp for the first time in 1998.

As an athlete, Burke fought to be included in contests, to have categories for women or to be allowed to compete with the men. In some early events held in Whistler she was the only female skier competing until a few women — including some of the girls she herself coached — finally rose up to challenge her.

When Burke started she was the only one at her level —now the Association of Freeskiing Professionals lists close to 100 women in their world rankings.

She fought successfully to have a women's slopestyle added to the X Games, and for ski halfpipe to be included in the Olympics.

Despite her success, Smart says Burke was incredibly humble and loved working with kids.

"It didn't matter what she did or what she won, she was always incredibly rooted and humble," said Smart. "It always blew the minds' of all the people who put her on a pedestal, and they would come to camp and Sarah would be sitting on the snow with them and talking to them. I remember one adult camper who was just trying to learn to slide rails and Sarah had just won X Games gold — but she stayed with him all day until he figured out how to nail this little four-foot rail, and I think she was more excited when he nailed it than he was. She was so real, so genuine with people."

Like Douglas, Smart said the amount of attention Burke's story has been getting has helped him since he heard of her death.

"I think it's her story that's driving this, and it's such an incredible story that I just want to tell it. Her story is so important, and so great. Those that didn't know her before are really touched by it and blown away," he said.

"I never took her for granted, and always recognized how special she was as an athlete, as a coach and as a person.

"I remember one classic day with her on the glacier, when it was pouring rain. All the other coaches found excuses to leave the mountain with their kids, but there was Sarah and six munchkins bouncing and laughing and full of life in the pouring rain. They were the only crew on the hill, spinning laps and having fun because she was with them.

"Her memory needs to stay alive because of who she was, and people need to know her story because we need more people like her. Her positivity was unbelievable. It didn't matter when or where, she had it all the time."

Burke was injured while training for a sponsor event at Park City, Utah on Jan. 10. She had landed a flatspin 540, but fell over in the halfpipe and hit her head, rupturing a vertebral artery and going into cardiac arrest. She was given CPR on site and transported to a hospital in Salt Lake City where she successfully underwent surgery the next day to repair the artery. However, she never awoke from her coma and passed away on the morning of Jan. 19.

She's survived by her husband Rory, her parents Jan and Gordon and her sister Anna. Her family, in accordance with her wishes, donated her organs and tissue to save the lives of others.

Her list of accomplishments is long, but last season — where she deliberately sat out of most events to heal from shoulder surgery — she won two World Cup events and the X Games superpipe title.

She was also a founding member of the national halfpipe team, joining the group in 1997 before they had any support or funding. Athletes paid into the program to hire Trennon Paynter as a coach.

Paynter sent this comment to Pique from X Games, where he and Burke's teammates are competing in her name this weekend:

"She embodied thoughtfulness, kindness and genuine care for all of her friends. Whether it was cooking everyone the best dinners ever, providing rooms in her house for anyone who needed a place to stay, or making handmade presents for her friends and family... If I ever went through hard times, I could always depend on Sarah to step up for me. She had a wisdom beyond her years...

"I think her greatest achievement was finding the happiness that her and Rory had together. They had the real deal: one-in-a-million, pure, uncut, fairytale true love."

Both Douglas and Paynter also remember Burke as a prankster. One of her favourite things to do was to hide and jump out at people to scare them.

"She liked it so much, she started videoing it and even started a website devoted to her scares (http://scarah.com)," said Paynter. "She got me plenty of times, but never quite as good as she wanted, so the last few times she enlisted Rory to help her and they executed some pretty elaborate plans. The one where they used night vision goggles was definitely her finest work, but the video of that one didn't turn out."

Burke lived in Whistler after graduating high school and spent a few winters in California before moving back to Sea to Sky country and buying a house in Squamish.