The Olympics & You

OLYMPIC MEMORIES

Who: Ross Rebagliati

Gold Medal, Snowboarding

1998 Nagano Games

Whistler's Ross Rebagliati became the first man to win a snowboarding
gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Keeping his prize turned out
to be just as tough as winning it as Rebagliati tested positive for
marijuana in a post-race drug analysis. Despite the overwhelming
attention his ordeal received, little was said about Rebagliati's
actual imprisonment in a police cell smaller than the span of his arms.

"They pressed charges that I was importing a banned substance into
their country, even though it was just in my blood, right. So they
had opened a case and the case was that if I didn't get my medal back
then I'd go to jail. So we walk into the police station and all the
cops look liked John Wayne, with their hair slicked back and
cigarette's rolled up in their sleeves and this layer of cigarette
smoke. They're all plugging away with one finger on the typewriter
like I was in a Hawaii 5-0 show.

"And they stuck me in a room not even as wide as that [park] bench
and interrogated me [for] hours. The interpreter barely spoke
English, so I had no confidence he was able to translate what I was saying.

"One of the funniest things was they asked me all about weed. They
asked me to show them how I smoked weed. So I was like, all right and
asked them for a cigarette. I took one of their smokes and broke it
open, emptied out all the tobacco, filled it back up again and rolled
it up. And then the next question was, 'Everyone who smokes marijuana
smokes tobacco?' They had just no idea. They didn't even know what
marijuana was. For them it's like heroin or crack, it's a drug. It
was getting a little bit out of hand.

"Finally, after six hours I said I'm not answering any more
questions. I want a representative with me, right now. So they let me
in the room with all the Canadian officials -- who weren't supposed
to be separated from me in the first place. I had an RCMP officer
with me and they were trying to get me diplomatic immunity and all this stuff.

"During that I learned that I could keep my medal. So the police
chief said if the IOC was returning my medal they couldn't keep me
any more, it would be too big of a controversy. What a lot of people
don't realize is I was standing on the front steps of the police
station ... it's then when I was holding up my medal after just
getting out of jail."

As told to Ian Walker, Vancouver Sun