‘Long shot’ is still the standard
Lee-Gartner reflects on gold
In the starting gate of the race of her life, Kerrin Lee-Gartner began to melt down. She wasn’t nervous early in the day and she wasn’t nervous for the most menacing downhill course in Olympic history and then it all hit her at once.
“Carl,” she said to trainer Carl Peterson. “I’m nervous, I’m really nervous.”
He made a silly face and starting laughing out loud.
“Of course you are,” he said. “It’s the biggest race of your life. Now go.”
She started laughing, too, beginning on her way to history as the only Canadian to win an Olympic downhill race. That was 26 years ago at the Albertville Olympics and in some ways it seems like yesterday for Lee- Gartner — in other ways it feels like a lifetime ago.
“I didn’t know the history,” said Lee-Gartner, working another Olympics for CBC. “I assumed the Crazy Canucks had won everything. I assumed Nancy Greene had won everything. I didn’t pay attention to history. I’m surprised another Canadian hasn’t won since. Edi Podivinsky came close in the next Olympics. I thought Erik Guay would win. You realize looking back how aligned the stars were.”
The course at Meribel was considered dangerous at the time, so dangerous it has never been run again.
“Racers were vomiting in the starting gate,” said Lee- Gartner. “There was a lot of reasons to be scared. People had broken backs, broken legs, torn knees on that course. For some reason, I was fully prepared to embrace that.
“I was a long shot. I wasn’t a favourite. But I was so in the bubble of my little girl dream of winning. I was in my deepest place of belief.”