Leman beats crash course to win gold in tough race
Veteran Canadian finally enjoys some glory in Games competition
The day that Brady Leman became an Olympic gold medallist was much like his ski cross career.
A late addition to the Canadian team for Vancouver 2010 at 23 years old, Leman crashed in training and broke his leg the day before the race. Four years later in Sochi, he survived the war of attrition that is ski cross to make the final, only to finish fourth. The three Frenchmen who beat him that day were later accused of cheating by freezing their pants. (Seriously. That happened.)
Leman knew the Winter Games only for struggle and heartbreak.
His third Olympics started much the same way. Leman, 31, of Calgary, crashed hard in a training run on the treacherous course at Phoenix Snow Park and had to be, he said, “taped back together” by the team’s medical staff. In his first qualifying run,
he lost a pole, had what he called a terrible start, but managed to hang on for a respectable finish.
And then, as racers crashed all over the course — most spectacularly Montreal’s Chris Del Bosco, who misjudged a jump, was sent soaring airborne and windmilled his arms before landing hard in a fall that sent him to hospital — Leman found himself back in an Olympic ski cross final again.
It would, surprise, include a big crash, but this time it was Leman who would still be on his skis at the end of it. Olympic Athlete from Russia Sergey Ridzik clipped Toronto’s Kevin Drury in mid-air, and the two went down in a pile. Leman was focused on holding his speed through a tricky feature of five bumps, and when he came out the other side of it, “the next thing I knew I had nobody in front of me.” Leman didn’t know that two of the other four finalists were tangled in a heap, but with the sun behind him on a bright afternoon, he could see the shadow of one racer — Marc Bischofberger of Switzerland — staying close to him.
“He was right there,” Leman said. “I was just telling myself, ‘Go go go go go — you can’t let up until the finish line,’ and I don’t think I let up until 10 metres after it.”
When it was over, when Leman had survived the final — and, really, survival seems like exactly the right word for it — he held up both fists and shouted.
He had overcome the struggles here, just like he had to bounce back from tough setbacks in those other Olympics.
“It’s always something,” he said of the adversity that is baked into ski cross. But it is a feature, not a bug.
“You have to stay focused on what’s ahead, and that’s part of the reason why I love this sport, because it’s so difficult,” Leman said. “Nothing ’s easy. There’s never an easy race day.”
That much was on plain display. Del Bosco, though he was stable and alert after his frightening crash, was taken to hospital and treated for what team officials suspected was a pelvic injury.
Drury had the third-best qualifying time and won both his quarterfinal and semifinal heats, but his medal chances were ended with his crash in the final. His left ski came off in the tangle with Ridzik, giving him an automatic DNF. The Russian, with his skis still on, was able to climb back up and finish the
I was just telling myself, ‘Go go go go go — you can’t let up until the finish line,’ and I don’t think
I let up until 10 metres after it.
course for an uncontested bronze.
Drury, 29, said he was proud and happy with a fourth-place finish in the Olympics. “I’m actually not even bummed yet,” he said. Within a minute, though, emotions caught up with him and he was wiping away a few tears at having skied so well on the biggest race day of his life only to come up just short of the podium.
“Every heat is a roller-coaster,” said Team Canada ski cross coach Stanley Hayer. “This course is all gravity.”
Having three Canadians make the semifinals — Dave Duncan of London, Ont., joined his teammates there, but couldn’t get through to the final — was a big day for his team, Hayer said.
“We’ve had a couple of fourths on the men’s side, this was proving to be a little bit of an elusive medal, but Brady really stepped up there,” Hayer said. “That’s the colour we wanted.”
Leman admitted that as the races unfolded, his mind wandered now and then to Sochi.
“But any time that happened, I would just remind myself, just be here in Korea now,” he said.
“Sochi doesn’t matter, I’m not going to change that I was fourth at the last Games. I can stay focused on my race and what I can do to make sure I wasn’t going to be fourth at another one.”
Still, it didn’t come easy, which is probably to be expected when your previous Olympics involved opponents allegedly freezing their pants to reduce drag. After the crash in training and the tough start, Leman said he tried to push all of that out of his mind.
“I just kind of had to let go of everything a little bit and just race,” Leman said. “Kind of turn the brain off a little bit in the race, which seemed to work out, I guess.”