WEST VANCOUVER, British Columbia  The night before the Australian snowboarder Torah Bright won the gold medal in the halfpipe, her parents hid in the closet.

Bright had told them not to come all this way, to wait until her wedding in June in Salt Lake City. So when she walked into the house her parents privately shared with others not far from here, Peter and Marion slipped into a closet unnoticed until their daughter left.

“ ‘Whatever you want,’ ” Marion Bright said she told her daughter months ago about not coming to the Winter Olympics. “ ‘We won’t rock the boat.’ But we were always coming.”

When Torah Bright lighted up a dark night at Cypress Mountain with a gold medal run and her effervescent smile, she looked into the grandstands at the Aussie contingent cheering her wildly. She spotted some blond hair that looked like her father’s, then her mother waving next to him. Yes, it is them, said her brother and coach, Ben. And Bright burst into tears.