Best friends bring it to the podium
WOMEN’S SKI CROSS
It was a perfectly skicross moment.
Italy’s Debora Pixner was in second place in her finals heat, with just one jump and then a tuck to the finish to go. But she lost balance in the air, landed awkwardly and then fell on her back on the landing ramp before the finish line. She tumbled and slid — and still finished in second place in the heat, good enough to advance. There was even a photo finish, with Pixner’s limbs splaying in all directions as a Russian, in perfect tuck, tried to catch her at the finish line.
It was a chaotic ski- cross day, which is to say it was a typical ski- cross day. And standing alone at the end of it were two Canadians: Kelsey Serwa and Brittany Phelan, roommates, close friends and now Olympic gold and silver medallists.
“Everything today went perfect,” Serwa, 28 said. “It went according to plan. I executed, and for it to end up with an Olympic gold, and my teammate Brit and best bud to be silver, is absolutely incredible.”
Phelan, 25, who was an alpine racer at Sochi but switched to ski cross two years ago — and who credits Serwa with being her mentor in the sport — gave a fairly similar accounting of the day’s events.
“It’s absolutely amazing,” she said. “To finish second behind my best friend and someone who has taught me everything, it couldn’t have gone better.”
The result caps a remarkable run for Canada in ski cross. The men’s races also had two Canadians in the four- skier final, with Brady Leman taking gold and Kevin Drury finishing off the podium after a crash.
Canada won gold and silver on the women’s side at Sochi 2014, with Marielle Thompson of Whistler, B. C., edging Serwa, and this week Thompson, Serwa and Phelan had the top three qualifying times. For a sport that mixes elements of alpine racing with NASCAR, how is it that Canada has done so well?
Serwa credited a team approach: Good skis, good ski technicians, coaches who say the right things at the right times, a sports psychologist who even helps on race days, right down to having friends and family in South Korea to watch. “All those little things that push you down the hill,” she said.
And while all that stuff certainly helps, there is something about the way the Canadians race that seems perfectly suited to the insanity. Serwa called it focusing on only the things you can control, pushing hard, and hoping it worked out.
“Today for us was just one of those days where we went out there, we didn’t hold anything back, and it feels so good,” she said.
It does not always work out. Thompson, in the middle of a comeback in which she ruptured both ligaments in her right knee just four months ago, took her first competitive runs since the injury on the Phoenix course, and promptly earned the top qualifying spot. But in the first finals heat, she clipped the ski of Sweden’s Lisa Andersson and fell down. Her chance to repeat as gold medallist was over in an instant. She said afterward she was disappointed in the result but proud she came all the way back, adding that in this sport, things happen.
“You just have to accept things as they come,” Thompson said.
The fourth Canadian on the women’s team, India Sherret of Cranbrook, B. C., crashed hard in her heat and was being treated on Friday at hospital.
But a ski- cross racer also has to accept that as long as they are still upright, they still have a chance. The race is only one minute and 15 seconds, but that brief time can be packed with opportunities. Phelan was in fourth place about halfway down in the medal race.
“I knew I was running out of time, and I just kept looking for the opening,” she said. “You try to look through the chaos that is happening in front of you and find the opening, and, yeah, I found my chance and took it.”
She slipped past Fanny Smith of Switzerland and Sandra Naeslund of Sweden and was quickly just trailing Serwa.
“It was absolutely insane,” Phelan said. “You have to stay focused until the finish line, but once over that last jump I was, like, ‘ Oh my God, we did it.’ ”
Serwa said she wasn’t sure they would do it until they had. The course had good drafting spots, and she thought someone could pass her. “You gotta believe that they are right there, right behind you, pressuring you on every turn,” Serwa said. But she stayed low until that last jump.
Then the Olympic gold medallist turned around to see who was behind her.
“To see Brit there, it’s the best ever,” she said. The two wrapped each other in a hug once past the finish line.