Sandpoint’s Nate Holland brings a piece of home with him to Sochi
SOCHI, Russia – Olympians like Nate Holland travel the world to compete in the highest-level competitions. But no matter where they go, what they see or how many competitions they win, most will always return to the place where it all began; where they first found their passion.
Snowboardcross (SBX) racer Nate Holland has strong ties back to his home in Sandpoint, Idaho, where he grew up as a skater fascinated by watching snowboarders on Schweitzer Mountain. He started competing in snowboarding competitions when he was 10, but his hobby didn’t turn to a passion until his seventh-grade birthday party.
“My parents rented Critical Condition (with Shawn Farmer and Damian Sanders) and bought me a snowboard,” Holland said at the United States Olympic Committee Media Summit last September. “I was just so glued to the TV and that movie… (Farmer and Sanders) were my idols.”
Holland’s obsession with the snowboarding movie about the legendary first successful attempt of the “Huck of the Fingers” was the starting point in his dream to snowboard professionally.
He spent his teen years training and competing while attending school in his hometown. He attributes his approach to competition to his high school football coach. Holland says Coach Santini Puailoa is who taught him that hard work and dedication produces results, and Holland has the success to prove it.
Since 2006, Holland has won gold in eight X Games competitions, medaled 17 times at the World Cup and participated in three Winter Olympics – 2006 Torino, 2010 Vancouver and 2014 Sochi.
Nate is grateful to his parents in Idaho for giving him the gift that changed his life. He says everyone in his family has been incredibly supportive of his career, but his dad, Don, who arrives in Sochi this weekend, has had the biggest impact on his actual competition.
“My dad is a competitive man and we have bounced competitive strategies off each other through the years, which I believe adds to my winning formula,” Holland said. “Thanks, Dad, for being the rock of a man you are.”
But it took two role models to raise and support Nate; his mother, Rebecca, is who noticed her middle son’s active nature, incredible poise, and his key strengths.
“From a young age, we recognized Nate had extraordinary balance,” Rebecca Holland said in an interview. “He could climb everything with ease. I don’t think he was hyperactive, but he usually appeared very focused when he had something he wanted to accomplish.”
She said Nate’s real strength is, and always has been his “keen concentration with a healthy dose of tenacity.” And, as a 35-year-old athlete competing in the Sochi Winter Olympics, that tenacity still proves strong and persevering.
“I still love racing. I will race as long as I am competitive,” Holland said about racing at his age. “I have worked my butt off to get where I am, and it’s been a helluva ride.”
Not knowing what lies ahead of him between Sochi and the PyeongChang Olympics in 2018, Sochi may or may not be his last chance to win an Olympic medal. But he has a plan in the meantime.
Though he currently lives in Squaw Valley, Calif., Holland opened a water sports recreation business in Sandpoint with his brother Patrick four years ago, called Action Water Sports, where the two give wakeboard and water ski lessons, rent boats, jet skis, paddle boards, kayaks and canoes out at Lake Pend Orielle.
He and his family loved spending time by the lake and the connecting river by their home during their summers together. Rebecca Holland said the river area was a perfect swimming hole for her boys, who liked to get down in the dirt.
“Nate especially liked to coat himself head to toe in clay, then jump off the bridge (20 ft.) into the clear water to make a visibly muddy stream,” she said about his love for water and his home. “It comes as little surprise to anyone that Nate and Patrick opened a summer business (in Sandpoint), where they also now teach what they love to do.”
Nate’s favorite spot in North Idaho is still the lake where he spent those childhood summers. He says he and his brother wanted to share their passion of the lake and water sports with everyone, and being able to own and “play on a bunch of toys myself” is an added bonus.
Back to the present in Sochi, Holland will compete Monday, but he has been in Sochi testing the boards and their grinds since Feb. 4th. He says that compared to previous Olympics, he is more experienced now and he knows what to expect.
“It boils down to just a snowboard race,” he said. “My job is to figure out how to be the fastest man in the race.”
He doesn’t have an Olympic medal to show for his past two Games, and he wants one, bad. The two biggest competitions in the world for SBX are the Olympics and the X Games, which he has eight medals from, and he is ready to fight to add an Olympic medal to that collection.
To avoid distraction from his goal, Holland and other snowboarders haven’t been staying in the Athlete’s Village until after they compete. They are staying focused in a hotel on the mountain in the meantime.
As he prepares for competition and keeps a cool head, he has a message for all of his supporters and fans back home in Idaho.
“Hello from Mother Russia everyone! Thank you so much for all the love and support. I can feel it from halfway around the world. You have my word that I’ll try my best, ride my heart out, in hopes of bringing home some Sochi gold to North Idaho.”
Olympians like Holland are built from the ground up to be champions. But no matter the outcome of competitions like the Olympics, they never forget where they came from.