THE HILLS CAN BE DANGEROUS
Poisson’s death in Alberta reminds sport of why so much care goes into skiing safely
Steve Podborski remembers being scared just once, in Kitzbuhel, Austria, which makes perfect sense.
That course, the Streif, on that mountain, the Hahnenkamm, is a two-minute torture test of will and skill, of fallaway turns and flat light — while going at a hellacious speed.
Podborski, one of the legendary Crazy Canucks, would master the World Cup ski circuit’s toughest test time and again. He won downhills there in 1981 and ’82, took silver twice and never finished outside the top 10 in seven starts.
But in January 1978, in Kitzbuhel for the first time, he was intimidated.
“I’d gone and studied the race course and I literally couldn’t imagine making it around this one turn because it’s so extreme. I was reassured by the other guys on the team that in fact I would make it around the turn,” said Podborski, now 60 and president of Parachute, a national charitable organization dedicated to injury prevention.
“But as I stood in the starting gate and was waiting for the helicopters to pull all the guys ahead of me off (the hill), and the helicopters didn’t come because the guys all made it down, I realized it was my turn to go.
“It was a leap of faith. I just said, I’m going to go and I’m going to believe and trust those guys that I can make it. I, in fact, did. That was the only time I really thought, this is a bad idea.”
Downhill skiing was then and still is risky business. On Monday, during a training run at Nakiska, west of Calgary, 35-year-old French downhiller David Poisson crashed through safety netting, hit a tree and died of his injuries on the hill.
Next week, the men’s World Cup circuit will descend on Lake Louise, not far from Nakiska. Racers who were Poisson’s friends, teammates and rivals will step into the start gate knowing the risks as well as they did before his death, and prepared as always to master them.
Some members of Canada’s alpine team posted remembrances and condolences on social media earlier, but were not made available to comment to Postmedia. In their stead, the Crazy Canucks weighed in with sobering perspective.
“It shouldn’t be fatal,” Podborski said. “It’s not meant to be like that, but it can be, so the mental challenge in the starting gate is: Why am I here, will I fall today and will I die? The answer to yourself is typically no, I’ve trained for this, I’ve worked out every day, I’ve done all the things that make me safe.
“In fact, as a ski racer, you’re the ultimate injury prevention specialist because you really want yourself to never be injured, so you really strive for the safe approach that allows you to get to the finish line every time.”
And you don’t think about outcomes at the top of the hill.
“It’s more along the lines of, what am I going to do? I’m going to do this and do that in each turn, and each move is scripted right out and all of them eliminate the possibility of falling and injury,” Podborski said. “So, because you plan it so impeccably, there is little chance for failure and mistakes.”
But things still go wrong. Podborski crashed, ripped knee ligaments and missed the 1976 Olympics. Everybody falls eventually — only the severity is uncertain.
Poisson’s death was the first of a World Cup alpine skier since 2001, when Regine Cavagnoud of France collided with a German ski coach during training at Pitztal, Austria. Her death was preceded by that of Austrian Ulrike Maier, who fell during a race at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1994.
Despite the fact racing is far safer now than when Podborski and Jungle Jim Hunter were tearing it up in the 1980s, Poisson likely won’t be the last World Cup skier to die on a mountain.
“The hard part of being a world-class ski racer is that you have to go right to the limits and then push those limits to win,” Hunter said. “And if you’re distracted by worrying you could get hurt or could die, then good luck — you’re never going to have a good run.
“You can’t live on that thin edge of the wedge. You have to live on the other side, which is: I’m capable, I’m strong, I’m powerful, I can do this.”
Those mental gymnastics are a powerful part of an athlete’s coping arsenal. Rigorous training, sound coaching, a focus on safety and thoughtful scheduling from FIS, the world governing body, fleshes out the preparation.
“It’s no coincidence every World Cup season starts on easy downhills and gets more complicated and more difficult until the middle of January,” Hunter said. “They know if they ran the Hahnenkamm in the first week, they’d have half their racers either not participating or injured.”
The hard part of being a world-class ski racer is that you have to go right to the limits and then push those limits to win.