Team USA's Jake Pates is an inspiration for mental health message after retirement, stunning comeback

Feb 13, 2026 - 23:30

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Team USA's Jake Pates is an inspiration for mental health message after retirement, stunning comeback originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

It doesn't matter whether Team USA snowboarder Jake Pates wins a medal on Friday in the halfpipe competition.

He's already an inspiration.

Pates' story is a remarkable one.

He actually retired from the sport in 2020. He had made it to the 2018 Olympics as a teenage phenom, but a concussion he sustained in 2019, and then lied about, set him back in a big way.

“When I did go back out, I was just all over the place with symptoms,” Pates told Olympics.com. “Headache, dizziness, nausea, all the above. At the time, I never understood the impact that serious brain injuries could become.”

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By 2020, he retired for what he described as mental health reasons.

“My reason for retirement was rooted in that loss of belief (in myself),” Pates told USA Today. “But it also had to do a lot with the presence of mental health issues that I was dealing with. Things like doubt, just negative spiraling, ruminating, depression. I had so much going on, so much anxiety.”

He decided to make a comeback for these Games, though.

And then he shocked everyone by making it to the final in the men's halfpipe competition.

Once you're in the final, anything can happen.

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Pates isn't focused too much on that, though. At his press conference after the qualifying round, he actually took the microphone and asked the media if he could say one more thing.

“I think it's really important to try to find the gratefulness in life and believe in yourself,” Pates said, via USA Today. “I've been someone who's gone through a lot, I think, in my own way… When you do have those tough moments, if you do lose hope and you do lose belief in yourself, you can find it again and you will find it again. You've just got to keep pushing.”

Pates found a way to keep himself going, and now he's back on the biggest stage of his sport.