Serwa, who was also competing at the time and would go on to win a silver medal at the Sochi Games and gold at Pyeongchang, thinks Stan’s big heart held him back. “Stan is such a nice guy and he took that niceness into his sport,” she says. “He was always afraid of hurting other people. He wouldn’t want to make a move on somebody to pass them if it might throw them off or land them in the fence. He was more worried about hurting someone else than hurting himself.” So, in 2012 after his second World Cup season that ended with a torn groin and lower abdominal muscle, Stan left the team—and his Olympic dream—behind. He was publicly gracious when he retired from racing, but he had hated his time on the team and was stepping into uncertainty. A social animal, he’d been ostracized by the teammates he’d set out to help. Eventually the mistreatment consumed him clouded an Olympic dream that had always appeared so clear. It was a tough initiation to the elite level of his sport, teaching Stan that a person can only absorb so many body blows before being knocked out or leaving the ring entirely. Stan chose the latter. It was time to search for untracked lines. Refocused on freeskiing, Stan, who is also a licensed carpenter, offered himself up as free talent for Whistler Black-comb’s marketing department. He wasn’t picky about what he did. “They have such a good audience, it was a no-brainer to do everything I could with them,” Stan says. He pitched the idea of doing a GoPro edit of skiing Spanky’s Ladder and they spun that into a bigger campaign, called the GoPro Any Day Lines. He made mainstream head-lines in the Vancouver Sun : “Stan Rey throws massive backflip on Spanky’s Ladder.” Stan’s first big break came in the lineup at Blackcomb Mountain’s Glacier Express quad. A high school friend, Jay Trusler, was filming Into the Mind with Sherpas Cinema and invited Stan to join for the day. “I did a few backflips off a cliff and that kind of kick-started my career,” Stan says. Another old high school friend, Blair Richmond, was work-ing with Switchback Entertainment and had mentioned his name. Stan was on the call list when Salomon Freeski decided to make Moment’s Notice , a film about what might happen if your buddy called to ask, “It’s storming over in Japan. Can you drop everything and leave tomorrow?” “My name shouldn’t really have been in there. I was just sponsored by our local Salomon rep at the time,” Stan says. “But when Josh Daiek didn’t pick up the phone, they called the next person on the list and that was me.” That trip is still a career highlight, the best snow condi-tions he’s ever skied. It didn’t hurt that he left an impression, tossing double backflips and showing a tight Salomon team that he was down to go big. When he got home, he bought a snowmobile and linked up with such skiers as Cody Townsend, Mark Abma and Chris Rubens—skiers he’d looked up to for the better part of a decade. “We call him Stanimal, he goes so hard,” says Alexi God-bout, fellow Salomon athlete and Stan’s co-producer with the Blank Collective. “When we look at a face, no matter how flat the landing is or how big the air, he’s always going to pick the biggest line.” STAN HAD FINALLY FOUND his place in the ski world, but when his sister got into a car accident in 2015, it shook his foundation. Stan put his life on the line every day, yet now his sister was suddenly fighting for her own. Olivia—32 years old and the eldest of the Rey siblings—was driving on a crash-prone stretch of highway between Van-couver and Whistler during a torrential downpour when her Honda Civic flipped into oncoming traffic. Olivia’s best friend died in the crash and Olivia sustained a C6 and C7 spinal cord injury that caused quadriplegia. “Stan was not in a good place,” Godbout says. “We had to pick him up quite a bit, take his hand.” Stan started driving the same highway from Whistler to Vancouver multiple times a week to sit with her. “My brother was the person who was present,” says Olivia about her time in the hospital. “He’s such a sensitive man and always has been.” But Stan’s empathy wore him down. “Out of the three of us kids, she was the one taking the least amount of risk. And it ended up happening to her,” he says. “I felt guilty because of that and it took me awhile to get over it. You pretty much get your life stripped away from you, and you’ve got to start from scratch.” It was the darkest winter of the family’s life. For weeks, they didn’t know if Olivia would be able to breathe on her own. Yet he let a camera crew tag along. Even when he didn’t know what to do, or how to process his guilt or his grief, even when he couldn’t rally the energy to ski, Stan did what he does instinctively: He showed up, on camera and off, loving the people he loves, and letting others help him and lift him up or drag him out on skis. Starring in his first major freeskiing film, titled The Highway , by showcasing the lowest point of his life was hardly an orthodox way to build a profile as a pro athlete. But it revealed Stan’s unyielding zest for life and his faith in getting back up even when he felt like he’d been knocked flat. Godbout had spent his season making the film Blank with KC Deane. The next winter, Godbout and Stan filmed a follow-up Blank project and Blank Collective Films was born. “It was a good way to create value for ourselves and for our sponsors,” Stan says. “And it also got us into ski movies.” For the past six years, Blank Collective Films has created another channel of opportunity for big mountain skiers looking for an outlet to showcase their talents. They’ve included a crew of up-and-comers such as Sam Kuch, Barclay DesJardins, Cole Richardson and Jordy Kidner, who Stan believes might be the next big thing in the big mountains. It’s also helped launch Stan and his high-octane act into living rooms around the world. 044 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 2: Page 44
