Faye Thelen Is At Her Fifth Olympic Games. She's Already Won

Faye Thelen is late.

She’s not actually late. At least, not to me, a chronically down-to-the-wire type of person. But for someone who is about to head to her fifth Olympic Games and has the type of discipline and time management required to achieve such a feat, I imagine that the six minutes between the time she told me she’d meet me at the chairlift at the base of Park City Mountain Resort and the time she arrived probably felt like an eternity. Her oldest child, Theo, was coming to the mountain to ski (or maybe snowboard, he hadn’t decided which yet by 9:30 a.m.) later in the day, and she was helping her husband Jake get him ready.

A little more than a week until she flew out to Italy for her fifth Olympic Games, and Theo’s Sunday on the hill was still top priority.

“Life with two kids,” she tells me with a big smile.

This wasn’t necessarily the plan. Faye had decided to hang up her boots after the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. She had qualified in fourth place for these games but finished in ninth place in Snowboard Cross Team – Mixed and 13th in the individual event. Plus, Covid-19 meant that athletes could hardly enjoy the Olympic Village and all the pomp and circumstance that typically surrounds the Games. Families weren’t allowed to travel to China. It all went down very differently than her three previous games.

Faye first strapped into a snowboard at the age of eight, at Snowbird Resort. She won her first race, and eventually, after competing in FIS slopestyle and halfpipe events, transitioned into snowboard cross. She became the youngest snowboard cross athlete at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Then in the 2014 Games in Sochi, then-Faye Gulini just barely missed the podium, finishing in fourth place. In Pyeongchang, she finished in 21st. She’s never podiumed in the Olympic Games despite a long, illustrious career on her board.

That must be the driving force to return to her fifth Games, right? A classic underdog story of one of the greatest athletes in her discipline yearning for the podium?

Not quite.

“My motivation to return to sport and return to border cross was them,” she told me on the chair lift. “The very reason I originally retired is the very reason that I knew I had to come back, which was not something I ever thought was going to be the case. I’m like, ‘OK, I’m pregnant. I need to hang it up and be present for my kids.’ And then I realized, no, I need to go back for them. I need to show them what I can accomplish, what we can accomplish, and I need to experience it alongside them and just hug them in the finish corral at the Olympics.”

But if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to send that child’s mother back to her fifth Olympic Games. That village started with Jake.

This story all started with a DM.

Faye Thelen’s husband Jake slid into the Snowboarder Magazine Instagram page’s direct messages. It was filtered into a folder that usually doesn’t get checked. I happened to check it.

“Sorry for the random message, but this is my wife Faye Thelen, she just qualified for her fifth Olympic Games for snowboard cross and has a pretty incredible story,” Jake wrote to me. “She trained all fall with our infant with her at the gym. I know I’m biased but feel like her story has flown under the radar.”

He was right, her story had totally slipped through the cracks. Perhaps it was a product of Faye racing snowboard cross. Unfortunately, snowboard media doesn’t pay as close attention to racers as we should. It’s weird. It’s probably the spandex. Either way, it isn’t right.

So much credit has been given to slopestyle legend Jamie Anderson for her decision to comeback after giving birth to her daughter Nova Sky and make a push to qualify for the Olympics. Those flowers are well-deserved. What Jamie is doing is incredible. But Jake knew that Faye needed hers as well.

Jake and Faye met through Wasatch Adaptive. Faye’s brother Zach was on the team, and Jake was a volunteer. They became disconnected then bumped into each other in 2019 at a concert at Red Butte Garden. They made plans to meet up for a beer and catch up. Two years later, they were married.

“Things moved fast, but when you know, you know,” Jake said.

It’s clear that Jake is Faye’s biggest fan. He saw the pressure she felt during the run up to the 2022 Olympics. He saw how she didn’t have the greatest experience.

“I could just tell that that wasn't the Olympics that she wanted to finish on. Obviously, we started a family. Things got really hard,” he said. “But, I mean, I would say we're pretty good at adapting.”

And adapt they did. While on the World Cup circuit, Jake would work into the early hours of the morning to get his work done. Faye was both working for a tax firm and raising Theo and their daughter Scarlett. Jake’s suggestions to return to the snowboard cross circuit were jokes at first. Then, they discussed logistics.

“We started talking,” Jake said. “How cool is it for our kids? Like, even if they don't remember it, they're going to have the pictures and the memories of seeing their mom compete in the Olympics.”

So the decision was made. Faye would go all-in. But first, she had to start training, just a couple of months after giving birth to Scarlett.

A system was born. Theo would go down for a nap. Jake would keep an eye and ear out for him while he worked from home. And Faye would bring Scarlett to the gym with her.

“Normally she falls asleep in the car, and I can transfer her car seat into the gym, and I just put a little car seat cover over her,” Faye said. “And I can normally get an hour or two done at the gym with my strength coach before she wakes up.”

There, of course, were times that Scarlett did wake up, though. Yes, that could be a problem. But typically, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard staff would simply walk over, scoop her up, and carry on with their day.

“Whatever their job entails, they’ll tote my daughter around so that I can finish my workout. And it's incredible, because (I couldn’t do it) without them," Faye said. "Then when I’m done with my workout, I go back and bring Theo to some more activities and keep him busy. I’m a stay-at-home mom, that’s trying to be an athlete, that’s what I am."

Perhaps the craziest part of all of this is the simple fact that there was not a single guarantee that Faye would make the team. She is by no means old, but certainly the oldest rider  on the women’s snowboard cross team. Not many people make it to a fifth Olympics. She was in China for a FIS World Cup event when she found out she’d likely be on the team, but it wasn’t until the following Thursday that she learned she’d really, really be going to Italy.

“I'm just so excited to get to share those moments with them,” she said. “And that's what it was all about. You know coming back to sport and racing, was to hopefully share this Olympic dream with them, and now that we get to go over there and have that experience, I'm so thrilled.”

So a podium? Sure, that would be nice. Showing Theo and Scarlett that they can accomplish hard things, no matter how crazy the circumstances might be?

Well, Mom’s already doing that.