Maxence Parrot, snowboarder from Bromont and Olympic winter games and Winter X Games medalist, is preparing for the Beijing 2022 Olympics all while launching his new documentary “Max – Life as a Gold Medal.” The documentary follows Parrot’s personal journey following his Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis in 2018 with all proceeds going towards of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada for research, for which he has served as spokesperson for the past three years. After beating cancer in 2019, Parrot immediately got back to his passion and lived up to his reputation as a top ranking snowboarder.
“It’s not easy to talk about and to put yourself in front of the world in those hard moments, actually the toughest moment of my life, but it’s something I wanted to do mostly for the cause. I want to help raise funds for cancer research through the documentary and help as many people as possible to keep fighting cancer and any challenges in life,” said Parrot.
He also thought about the other people out there going through a similar experience and to encourage them to never give up on the fight.
“The biggest reason I decided to show it to the world was mostly because when I was diagnosed, I received hundreds of messages from people telling me that they were inspired by my journey. I was posting my daily life on social media and they were inspired and some people told me they had someone they knew that was fighting cancer and that they could relate to me. There were even some people that fought cancer and without my journey they said they don’t know how they would have done it and that touched my heart straight away.”
Parrot had to go through 12 treatments within six months and despite the challenge, there was no doubt in his mind that he was going back to snowboarding. “Technically, you know, I had these thoughts when I was feeling down, but mostly I never gave cancer a chance. For me, when I had cancer it was okay, I’m going to treatments as best as possible and even if they worked or not in my mind cancer had nothing against me. I had a lot of determination and motivation and I wanted back to my passion as soon as possible; never getting back to it wasn’t an option for me.”
After finding out he was cancer free in 2019, he started training seven days a week for the Winter X Games in Norway, where he won a gold medal for Big Air competition. “It was really hard at first and after my treatments I had two months to get back into shape before the X Games. I was working out every day, seven days a week and training like crazy on trampoline, in the gym, on the air bag. I had no days off for a full two months.”
While the event left him tired, he is coming back strong for this year’s winter Olympics in Beijing. “I do my best every year and every year I become better physically and mentally. Especially going through such a big challenge, you get more mentally tough and I am able to transfer that into snowboarding as well. There’s a lot of lessons that I can transfer to snowboarding and I feel in shape and ready. The goal is to go for the gold, but I’ll be happy as well that if I don’t get the gold. I won’t have any regrets because I did everything in my power over the last couple of months.”
To view Parrot’s documentary and support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada, visit:
“In 1960s, my cancer only had 10% of surviving and today it’s up to 80% and more. That’s all because of donations to cancer research. It proves the difference it makes in treatment and I want to pay it back.”
