Canadian Snowboarder Max Parrot Wins Gold 3 Years After Rare Cancer Diagnosis: 'Feels Amazing'

"I laid down the best run of my entire life," Max Parrot told BBC Sport following his gold-medal win in the men's slopestyle event on Monday

By

Jen Juneau

Published on February 7, 2022 09:26AM EST

Max Parrot's first-place victory at the 2022 Winter Olympics is extra sweet.

The 27-year-old Canadian snowboarder clinched the top prize on Monday during the men's slopestyle event at the Beijing Games — three years after he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare cancer of the lymphatic system.

Parrot scored a 90.96, giving him the edge over Su Yiming from China, who nabbed the silver medal, and Parrot's fellow Canadian Mark McMorris, who took bronze.

Speaking to BBC Sport following his win, Parrot said, "I laid down the best run of my entire life."

"I'm so proud of every feature, how I was able to clear them, and I'm really stoked with my score," the athlete added.

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The gold is Parrot's second Olympic medal in the slopestyle event after he took home the silver during the PyeongChang Games in 2018.

That win came ahead of his cancer diagnosis in December of that year — and after completing 12 rounds of chemotherapy, Parrot announced he was cancer-free in July 2019.

"So much went by in those last four years," Parrot told BBC Sport on Monday. "The last time I was at the Olympics, in PyeongChang, I got a silver medal, and then I had to go through cancer. It was a nightmare — it's so hard to describe what I've been through."

"You have no cardio, you have no energy, you have no muscles," he continued. "To be back out here, at the Olympics, on a podium again but with a gold medal, it feels amazing."

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Parrot, who is a spokesperson for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada, recently released a documentary film titled MAX — Life as a Gold Medal, which chronicles his journey.

"I had a camera filming me 24/7 for over eight months," he told Olympics.com ahead of his appearance in Beijing. "It was a big mystery because we were filming every day, every week, every month, and we didn't know when the end was going to be."

"Once you've battled cancer," Parrot added, "you have to gain back all of your muscles, all of your energy because chemo puts you really down at zero percent. So it was a big eight months for me battling cancer and battling myself to get back in shape."

And he credits his teammates for helping him get to where he is today: "I would have never gone through all of that with all, all of my team surrounding me. That helped me so much. So I'm really grateful for that."

To learn more about Team USA, visit TeamUSA.org. Watch the Winter Olympics, now, and the Paralympics, beginning March 4, on NBC.