World champion skier Kershaw retires
CANMORE, ALTA. Cross-country skier Devon Kershaw has retired after producing Canadian breakthroughs in the sport.
Kershaw, from Sudbury, Ont., and Alex Harvey became the first Canadian men to win world championship gold in 2011 when they finished first in the team pursuit in Oslo, Norway.
In a sport dominated by Scandinavian men, Kershaw won a career 14 World Cup medals, including three gold, and ranked No. 2 in the overall standings in 2012.
“It has been 15 great years chasing my dreams in a sport that I absolutely love, but I have a wife and a 15-month-old daughter now, and it is just getting harder and harder to be away,” Kershaw said in a statement from Cross Country Canada.
The 35-year-old lives in Norway with his wife, former skier Kristin Stoermer Steira, and daughter Asta.
Kershaw’s World Cup bronze in 2006 — just the second time in history a Canadian man stood on the podium — surprised everyone.
“Nobody believed it was possible for Canadian men to be contenders on the World Cup,” Kershaw said. “The world didn’t believe it, and the Canadian cross-country ski community by and large didn’t believe it.”
Kershaw blazed a trail for Harvey, a skier from Saint-Ferreol-lesNeiges, Que., who won a world title in the men’s 50k last year.
“Devon was like a big brother for me,” Harvey said. “He showed me the path of excellence in our sport from the day I joined the World Cup team. It’s been a great journey for us. Watching Devon dominate the world of cross-country skiing in 2012 really opened the floodgates for me, and it definitely broke the glass ceiling on the overall World Cup podium for a North American man.”
Kershaw came agonizingly close to winning an Olympic medal in 2010, placing fourth in the team sprint with Harvey.
Kershaw also missed the podium in the men’s 50k by less than a second.
Kershaw wants to stay involved in cross-country skiing, whether it be in Canada or Norway, and also intends to go to university.