STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — Steamboat Springs is home to some of the best winter athletes, born and bred to live life on the mountain.
Denver7 caught up with one local Olympian, Mick Dierdorff, to learn about his journey to get to the world’s biggest sports stage.
Dierdorff's earliest memories begin on Steamboat's slopes.
“I was in a little harness in front of my dad going down. I was a part of the Little Toots program and a ski racer in the Soda Pop Slalom,” explained Dierdorff.
Dierdorff started on skis as a tiny toddler. He raced for nearly 10 years, and was good at it but then made the big switch to snowboarding.
“When I started snowboarding, I just wanted to do the free style events," Dierdorff said.
In high school, he'd spend his afternoon on Howelson Hill, practicing and perfecting his craft.
“I had a coach that said, 'You really gotta try this event. You’d be good at it, you like to just bomb down the hill,'" he remembered.
Dierdorff's event is called snowboard cross, kind of like motocross. It's a fast and furious competitions unlike any other. He explained how it works.
“A gate drops, and there’s four or six people that go out of the gate at the same time. It’s all about technical difficult features, jumps, rollers and then big berms and you’re racing head-to-head against these other athletes,” he explained
Dierdorff never thought the Olympics could be in reach until he was graduating high school. He thanked his mom and dad for always supporting his dreams.
“My parents were the best, they never pushed me to do anything. You gotta find that will on your own and that passion for something that you love,” he explained.
He said qualifying for the Olympics was tough with only four spots to fill across the entire country. Despite the odds, Dierdorff made it to the Winter Games. His first experience was in South Korea in 2018 and then again in Beijing in 2022.
“Seeing the Olympic village and going through the opening ceremonies… it still gives me chills, it was amazing,” he remembered.
He had a big crash, but still made it into the finals.
"I was a bit busted up... I walked away with 5th place which was tough knowing how close I was to possibly medaling,” he said.
While Dierdorff is retired from the sport now, he dreams of the day he'll get his newborn daughter out on a snowboard.
