Kim Lamarre

Lac-Beauport, Quebec, Canada | Active: FIS record listed as not active | Discipline: freeski slopestyle | Verified: 2014 Olympic bronze, two Olympic starts, X Games Europe bronze, X Games Aspen bronze | Current: ski coach and Radio-Canada Sports analyst listed on public profile

Rosa Khutor After The First Fall

Rosa Khutor was soft under the February sun, the slopestyle course losing its morning bite as skis cut slow tracks into the landings. Kim Lamarre had fallen on run one, then pushed out of the gate with one chance left.

The first Olympic women’s ski slopestyle final was already tilted toward Canada. Dara Howell had opened with 94.20, Devin Logan sat in the silver position, and Anna Segal was holding bronze while the final skiers came down. Lamarre needed a full run, not a salvage lap. She linked the rails, stayed composed through the jumps, and crossed the line to a score of 85.00. The number moved her into third and gave Canada gold and bronze in a discipline that had never before existed at the Winter Games.

The Bronze That Made Canada Double Up

Sochi 2014 gave Lamarre the defining line of her career. The women’s ski slopestyle podium finished with Dara Howell first on 94.20, Devin Logan second on 85.40, and Lamarre third on 85.00. The margin between silver and bronze was tight enough to show how little room existed after one fall.

The medal had a wider Canadian meaning because the event was new. Women’s freeskiing had fought for Olympic inclusion through X Games, World Cups, films, injuries, and advocacy from riders such as Sarah Burke. Lamarre entered that first Olympic final as part of a Canadian team that also included Howell, Yuki Tsubota, and Kaya Turski. Turski, one of the favorites, missed the final after a difficult qualification, which left Howell and Lamarre to carry the double-podium result.

Lac-Beauport, Propaganda, And JP Auclair

Lamarre’s path began in Quebec, not in a polished Olympic development machine. Team Canada lists her residence as Lac-Beauport and says she started skiing at age two. At seven, she picked up snowboarding after her mother brought one home from work at a snowboard factory.

The freeski turn came later. Team Canada records that Lamarre watched Propaganda at age thirteen and realized skiing in snow parks was possible. That detail matters because early-2000s freeskiing was still forming its identity through films, magazine images, local parks, and skiers who looked outside moguls and racing. As a teenager, Lamarre was mentored by JP Auclair, one of Quebec’s central freeski figures and a skier whose influence reached from street segments to backcountry creativity.

That background placed Lamarre in a distinctly Quebec lineage. Lac-Beauport, local hills, homemade ambition, and Auclair’s example created a route into slopestyle before the discipline had the Olympic structure that later athletes inherited.

Tignes After The First Knee Tear

Lamarre reached the Winter X Games for the first time in 2009, then had to rebuild after tearing her ACL. Team Canada records her return to competition in 2011, when she won bronze at Winter X Games Europe in Tignes and finished fourth at the FIS World Championships.

Tignes gave that comeback a strong Alpine setting. The French resort sits high in the Tarentaise, where March weather can switch from bright spring glare to icy wind in one afternoon. The 2011 X Games Europe women’s ski slopestyle podium placed Keri Herman second and Lamarre third, giving her a visible result in the pre-Olympic European X Games circuit.

The fourth place at the 2011 World Championships also mattered. Park City hosted that championship before Olympic slopestyle existed, so the result belonged to the sport’s foundation period. Lamarre was close to a FIS medal while the discipline was still learning how to fit into federation structures.

The First Canadian Slopestyle Team

Canada named Lamarre to its inaugural national ski slopestyle team for 2011-12. That roster belonged to a transition period: X Games stars, AFP rankings, Dew Tour starts, and national federations were being pulled into the same Olympic corridor.

The women’s Canadian field was deep. Kaya Turski had X Games dominance and technical rail authority. Dara Howell was rising fast from Ontario. Yuki Tsubota brought power and jump confidence. Lamarre’s role was different. She had experience, injury history, and a calm style that did not rely on being the loudest skier in the start area.

That first team also showed the uneven reality of early slopestyle support. Riders still had to manage funding, travel, coaching, medical recovery, and sponsor gaps while the sport moved toward Sochi. Lamarre’s later Olympic medal looks cleaner on a results page than the path that produced it.

Breckenridge Without A Full Safety Net

Successive ACL tears cost Lamarre most of two seasons, and Team Canada notes that she was left off the Canadian team for 2013-14. She continued anyway, funding her own training and travel. That winter changed the story.

In December 2013, she finished second at Dew Tour in Breckenridge. The Colorado course sat under early-season pressure, with firm man-made snow, cold air, and a field of riders chasing Olympic selection. The result gave Lamarre a direct argument for Sochi at the moment when national decisions were being made.

One month later, she took bronze at Winter X Games Aspen 2014. Kaya Turski won with 91.33, Maggie Voisin finished second with 90.00, and Lamarre scored 85.00 for third. Buttermilk gave her a second proof point: not only a domestic comeback, but an X Games medal immediately before the Olympic debut.

How Lamarre Skied The Course

Lamarre’s slopestyle skiing was built on control rather than spectacle. Her best runs used rail stability, clean takeoffs, compact spins, switch comfort, safety grabs, mute grabs, 360s, 540s, and full-course speed management. She was not the rider pushing the biggest spin in every final.

That mattered in women’s slopestyle at the time. The sport was still balancing rail difficulty, jump progression, and consistency. Turski pushed technical rail skiing. Howell brought amplitude and strong jump execution. Logan carried a smooth American line through features. Lamarre’s skiing sat in the middle: practical, balanced, and durable enough to survive imperfect landings.

Her Sochi bronze was a good example. The run did not need to outscore Howell’s gold-medal pace. It needed to hold under pressure after a first-run fall. Lamarre’s value came from keeping the run alive when the medal position was moving with every skier.

Sochi Shared With Howell And Logan

The Sochi podium is often remembered through Canada’s gold-bronze split, but Logan’s silver is central to the event’s texture. The American scored 85.40, only four-tenths ahead of Lamarre, while Anna Segal of Australia finished fourth with 77.00. That small gap made Lamarre’s second run decisive.

The final also carried a difficult physical context. The Rosa Khutor course had soft snow, and the day included crashes, including Yuki Tsubota’s hard fall. Olympedia’s account notes warm temperatures and slushy conditions, which made landings less predictable. Slopestyle looked bright on television, but the athletes were managing speed, impact, and changing snow while trying to make the first Olympic final credible.

For Lamarre, the medal was not only personal recovery. It placed her inside a Canadian Olympic story alongside Howell, while also linking her to the generation that pushed women’s freeskiing from X Games visibility into Olympic permanence.

PyeongChang And The Last Olympic Start

Lamarre returned for PyeongChang 2018, four years older and carrying the status of a defending Olympic bronze medalist. The result was harsher. She finished twenty-second in women’s slopestyle qualification and did not reach the final.

Reports from the qualification described an overshoot on the final jump, a reminder that Olympic slopestyle can punish even experienced riders when speed, snow, and landing shape fall out of rhythm. The PyeongChang field had also changed. Sarah Höfflin, Mathilde Gremaud, Isabel Atkin, Maggie Voisin, Johanne Killi, Tiril Sjåstad Christiansen, and Emma Dahlström represented a newer competitive depth.

That result closed the Olympic chapter without rewriting the first one. Lamarre’s career is not defined by PyeongChang qualification. It is defined by the fact that she returned to the Games after years of injury and remained part of the Canadian team through the sport’s second Olympic cycle.

Poker, Broadcasting, And Ski Coaching After The Bib

Team Canada’s profile gives one of the more unusual side notes in Lamarre’s biography: she became interested in poker while recovering from knee injury, studying the game with the goal of becoming a professional player. FIS also lists poker among her hobbies.

The detail fits the athlete more than it first appears. Slopestyle and poker both reward risk management, emotional control, patience, and the ability to make decisions with incomplete information. Lamarre’s public Instagram profile now lists Olympics, X Games, poker player, analysis and description with Radio-Canada Sports, and ski coaching.

That post-competition role keeps her close to the sport without forcing a false active-athlete label. She can explain tricks, context, and pressure in French-language coverage because she lived the first Olympic version of the event from inside the start gate.

Line Skis, Knee Braces, And Early Slopestyle Gear

Lamarre’s FIS profile does not list current ski, boot, or pole manufacturers, so her equipment story should not be turned into a sponsor claim. The safer angle is the era. Early Olympic slopestyle gear had to serve rails, jumps, icy landings, soft Olympic snow, and repeated knee stress.

Competition images from Sochi show the practical silhouette of that period: twin-tip skis, low-profile park stance, helmet and goggles, impact-ready outerwear, and the kind of setup built for switch landings and rail hits. Women’s slopestyle was not yet separated into highly specialized Olympic equipment narratives. Athletes needed durable skis, responsive bindings, and boots that could absorb course pressure without killing feel.

The knee history is part of the equipment conversation. After multiple ACL injuries, the body becomes its own technical system. Landings, takeoffs, stance width, and how a skier absorbs compression all change. Lamarre’s bronze came from a skier managing not only rails and jumps, but years of repaired knees.

How Lamarre Changed The Canadian Women’s Path

Lamarre’s influence is not measured by a long list of World Cup wins. It lives in a more specific place: the early Canadian women’s slopestyle pathway. She showed that a skier could be injured, left outside a national-team setup, self-fund a winter, medal at Dew Tour and X Games, then stand on the Olympic podium weeks later.

That story changed the emotional range of Canadian freeskiing. Turski represented technical dominance. Howell represented Olympic gold. Tsubota represented power and resilience. Lamarre represented the hard comeback, the quieter route, and the proof that the third podium spot could belong to the skier who refused to leave the course after the first fall.

For skipowd.tv, the footage path is clear: Tignes 2011 for the post-ACL X Games Europe medal, Breckenridge 2013 for the self-funded Olympic push, Aspen 2014 for the X Games bronze, Sochi 2014 for the historic Olympic run, and PyeongChang 2018 for the final Games chapter. The current factual endpoint is coaching, Radio-Canada analysis, and a legacy built around the day Canada placed two women on the first Olympic slopestyle podium.