Olympian Ross Rebagliati on Pot, Fame, and Smoking Joints With Keith Richards.
‘I had Senators say ‘You shouldn’t be using your medal for stuff like this’, and I’m like, ‘Don’t start telling me what I need to do with with my gold medal.’
It’s been twenty years since Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati tore-up the slopes in Nagano, earning gold and global infamy in one unforgettable run.
In the time since, the former Olympian’s been satirized, vilified, and barred from entering the United States, due to his connection to cannabis. In a wide-ranging, 45-minute interview, we spoke with Rebagliati about his struggles with fame, getting into the cannabis business, and how much he smokes a day.
GRANDSTAND CENTRAL: It’s been twenty years since you won Gold in Nagano. What still stands out from that experience?
Ross Rebagliati: I still remember coming to the finish line and watching my first-place time stay at the top of the leaderboard. That was something that all kids dream of doing.
GSC: And what about the period immediately after the Games?
Rebagliati: That unfolded unbelievably. The notoriety and the support that I got from Hollywood and from the entertainment side of things like David Letterman, my appearances on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Saturday Night Live and all those people that did those skits on me, even though they were, you know, not so much making fun of me, but just making light of the whole situation, was definitely a compliment. Robin Williams did a bit on me in ‘Live on Broadway’. Meeting Aykroyd and the supermodels in Soho, and spending time with Wayne Gretzky. I smoked a joint with Keith Richards, backstage at a concert. These are people you don’t get to hang out with normally, and it gives you a different perspective.
I have to ask, what was it like smoking with Keith Richards?
Just to be at that Stones concert already was crazy. I was hanging out with the Roots guys, and they were friends with the Stones and Mick Jagger and everybody, so we were all invited backstage before the show, and you can’t even comprehend it. Afterwards, I was sitting in the front row, you know, stoned, watching Keith who just smoked a joint with me. And he’s stoned just like me, and he’s up on stage about to start his set, and I mean, we had smoked the same joint. Those are the things that if you’re lucky, you get to be a part of. But you can’t choose to do things like that. It just happens.
And after the notoriety died down?
Well, none of that died down. That was the hard part and I wasn’t in a place in my life, financially, psychologically, or even physically to continue the adrenaline rush. It was day in, day out, 24 hours a day. I had a hard time shopping. I couldn’t get vegetables without being recognized. And don’t get me wrong, I love meeting people, that was all positive. But when you’re seen a certain way in the media and you’ve got the president of the IOC calling you a liar and Dick Pound isn’t standing up for you and even in the clip (in TSN doc ‘Higher Ground’) he still wouldn’t support me.
So you feel like you weren’t supported enough after Nagano?
On one hand, it was an amazing experience and I was getting a ton of support, and on the other, it was a nightmare. That clash really tore me up for a long time. You can’t work. You don’t have a career. You don’t have an education. You don’t know how to do anything except how to tune your board — by the way I tuned my own board for the Olympic Games. On the outside, I had to put on a brave face to maintain whatever opportunities came my way. If I had broken down and just couldn’t deal with it, then I wouldn’t even be talking to you right now.
So what did you do for work?
I got back into construction and building houses. I already had experience buying and flipping houses through the 90's to pay for my racing. We weren’t sponsored by the government or subsidized back then. There was no national team until right before Nagano. So afterwards, I fell back on that contractor experience and went to work on construction sites and operating heavy machinery. I did that for 10 years until about 2008 and then I started working for some real estate projects in the Okanagan and promoting them in Sports Illustrated and other places. We had Don Trump come out here and he was interested in our in our project, so it’s fun for me to see him now in that way.
Speaking of Trump, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions just launched a new wave in the war on drugs, reversing the Obama memo and falsely linking pot to the opioid crisis with claims that weed is a ‘gateway drug’. What do you think about that reasoning?
It starts with parenting. It’s not about packaging, not about anything else. If you’re open and honest with your kids, they’re going to make the right choices. Keeping cannabis a secret is basically setting them up for failure. Everyone goes ‘Ohhhhh, you can’t smoke weed around your kids’, but it’s okay to drink around your kids? I’m not saying blow smoke in their faces. There’s a lot of ways to use cannabis, right? Everyone jumps to the worst case scenario in their heads, and they go ‘Ohhhh they’re freaking hot boxing the kitchen’ but literally I grew up with my grandparents smoking cigarettes at the dinner table. We grew up around these big buses and trucks blowing diesel into our faces while we’re walking down the street.
So how you do remove some of the stigmas associated with recreational marijuana?
You know, I don’t even want to call it recreational because the only reason they call it recreational is because it started from a medical side of things, but you know, are bananas recreational? Like really? (Laughing) Just because you like bananas, does that mean that it’s a recreational banana?
I don’t get why people have decided that it’s medical or recreational. To me, it’s mental wellness. I will say, it was a great way to get cannabis through the legal system though, starting with medicinal marijuana so people could see the safety of it and scientifically prove the benefits of it. Once people educated themselves, they go ‘Oh, this is something I should try because apparently it’s good for you’. If you look at it only from a recreational standpoint, you just automatically assume ‘Oh it’s not good for you, but you’re allowed to do it’.
Speaking of it being good for you, you’ve called cannabis a performance-enhancing drug, and advocate for athletes to use it. Why is that?
When it comes to international, high-profile competitions, it’s about keeping yourself together psychologically. Everyone at that level is good at what they do. Everyone’s got the best equipment. It really it boils down to who’s got it upstairs, who can handle the pressure and cannabis can help with that.
What would you recommend athletes use?
I would go with CBD. In competition, there aren’t a lot of sports or venues where you’d be comfortable using THC because of its psychoactive nature. You already have heightened awareness and the adrenaline is pumping and you don’t need THC at that point. CBD is a great way to calm yourself down, and the more relaxed you are, the better your body works. For example, in ski racing or snowboarding, your legs are the suspension. And if your shocks are stiff because you’re nervous and your muscles tense up, those little bumps are going to throw you off track. If you’re relaxed and calm, then your legs are relaxed and your suspensions are working, then you can just suck those bumps up. So that’s what athletes are looking for.
CBD is also a great way to medicate your muscles for anti-inflammatory purposes and to calm yourself down in a natural way that it doesn’t intoxicate you or impair your judgements. For example, we all remember the US hockey team throwing television sets out the hotel room windows in Nagano. I guarantee if they were smoking joints, that would’ve been the last thing they thought of doing.
So you think athletes should be free to use it in training and recovery?
I think you should let athletes be proud to be using it instead of steroids and opiates and getting addicted to a substance they don’t have control over. Give them the power back. Let them decide for themselves what they want to do with their own bodies. Athletes are very in tune with themselves and they know their own bodies better than anyone else. These bureaucrats don’t know about their bodies. Look at them, you can just tell by looking at them. They don’t know anything about being healthy in general. There might be that odd guy that’s healthy in politics. In general, they’re not experts, this is something that you can see with your own eyes. At the end of the day, if you’re able to maintain a healthy lifestyle and it’s sustainable day in, day out, then you’re going to be better, faster, stronger.
Speaking of lifestyle, how much do you smoke a day?
It’s unlimited how much I can take-in in a day. My joints are probably around a gram a joint, and I’m smoking anywhere between 5–10 joints a day. My tolerance level is at a point where I can’t even get high from smoking anymore, it just keeps me on an even keel. It also depends on if I’m with friends or if I’m skiing or if I’m by myself for the whole day. It’s almost like coffee. You may have 3–4 cups of coffee in the morning, and then your buddy goes, ‘you want to meet for coffee’? and you’re like, sure, and don’t think anything of it.
When did you decide you were going to get involved in pot professionally?
It was like 2012 or whatever and I just decided at that point that I wasn’t going to lollygag around anymore and I was going to start a super brand and a cannabis super brand and really get behind it and blow it up and make sure that I’m part of the movement to legitimize cannabis use amongst athletes and people in general. So that’s what I did.
How did you get started?
Well, it wasn’t easy to get into the cannabis industry. I had several failed attempts. Then I came across my business partner, who was a venture capitalist, and had experience starting companies. He knew the guts of it. I had the vision and understood the marketing and sponsorship, and he understood the business end. So finally, we were able to get something together and a logo that we like and a brand and a mantra, you know, ‘be the best you can be’. We really attacked the stereotype, by coming at it from a standpoint of health and wellness and being active and part of your community and family-oriented.
How did people react to this?
I’ve had many conversations with people in the Canadian Senate, and they’re like, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t be using your medal for stuff like this’, and I’m like, ‘Look, we know you like drinking, ok? So don’t start telling me what I need to do with with my gold medal.’
And what were those early years like for Ross’ Gold?
Harper started the new LP program, and the licensed producers were popping up here and there and we felt like there were so many restrictions on them as far as advertising was concerned that our brand would be perfectly postioned. So we licensed our brand to the LPS that weren’t allowed to do any marketing and we would do all the marketing for the brand and they would just supply us with the product. We felt like it was a good model. And as it turned out, the LPS were more or less thinking that they were the brands and that we were the competition. Now five-and-a-half years later we’re seeing legalization, and it’s coming out of that medical realm and everything is going to be mainstream.
You’ve talked about narrative and how other people see you. What do you want your legacy to be?
I’d like my legacy to be that I was somebody who didn’t give up, somebody who was able to compete at the highest level, and somebody who is part of the cannabis movement. That’s what we’re trying to do with Ross’ Gold and I think that would be a good way to have my legacy play out. I’m very fortunate to have gone through everything that I went through. It’s made me a stronger person and gave me a real perspective on the world, and you can’t know the things that I know without haven’t gone through the things I’ve gone through.
