Canada’s elite athletes defy Father Time
For years, one of the top Canadian stories at the start of ski season has been some variation of Erik Guay being able to win if only he can remain healthy.
But as time marched on, and his knee surgeries piled up, it became increasingly difficult to picture him on a podium.
That’s why last month’s world championships — where he won gold in super-G at 35; he’s the oldest skier to ever win at worlds – and silver in downhill was such an incredible achievement.
Interestingly, he’s not the only Canadian this year to produce outstanding results in advanced athletic years.
There’s alpine teammate Manny Osborne-Paradis, who also won a medal at the world championships and had his best World Cup results in years; Sam Edney, who went to three Olympics before winning a men’s World Cup luge medal and made Canadian history last month in winning one at the 2018 Olympic test event; and moguls skier Philippe Marquis, who gets stronger with each passing year.
The Star talked to each to see where their success is coming from now and what kept them searching for it through years of injury and self-doubt: Manny Osborne-Paradis He started racing down the slopes in Whistler as a kid and won his first world championship medal — a bronze in super-G — on his 33rd birthday, a month ago in St. Mortiz.
In between were some good results, including an excellent season in 2009, he had knee surgery in 2011and there were many days when he alone believed his best was yet to come.
“I care about Manuel Osborne-Paradis, but the system cares about who is getting results,” he said, summing up his challenges since 2011.
“It was very hard. When I came back from injury I was ranked outside the top 100 in the world, I had terrible start numbers, it was just on and on; it’s been a tough go. I had a couple podiums one year, I had a bunch of fourths one year. They were good results but there wasn’t anything that was consistent enough to get people excited about working with me or believing in my system.”
This year, he decided to forge his own path instead of agreeing to a regime he didn’t believe worked for him.
“I said, ‘You know, I think I’m old enough to know the way I want to do it is actually the right way for me.’ ”
So he changed his skis from Rossignol to Head and left the alpine team’s main training base in Calgary to move home to Invermere, B.C. Both were potentially risky moves — it takes time to adjust to new equipment and the WinSport Canadian Sport Institute at Canada Olympic Park is a one-stop shop for athlete services.
“You never know you’re right until after you jump off the deep end,” he said. Sam Edney He races down an icy track holding fast to an open sled by little more than the g-forces in the fastest of all the sliding sports. He’s 32, and he’s competed in the relatively obscure sport of luge more than half his life.
But for all those years — he’s trained and competed for Canada in three Olympics — it’s been only recently he has found international success.
Edney started racing World Cups in 2003 and, more than a decade later, at the end of 2014 he stepped on his first men’s podium; he won the race in his hometown of Calgary. His second podium came last month in South Korea at the all-important test event for the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics and that bronze came after some of the darkest days of his career.
After his win in 2014, Edney decided that if he was going to stay in the sport for his fourth Olympics he had to take a year off to heal both mind and body.
He spent the 2015-16 season finish- ing his business degree to ease the transition to his post-luge life, which will now come in his mid-30s, and give his body time to heal the nagging injuries that were holding him back.
So the early races this season were about getting back to form. He told himself that the world championships in January, on a track in Austria where he’s done well before, would be his big breakthrough.
That didn’t happen, as he finished a shocking 28th.
“That was the moment that I really had to question what I was doing and why I was coming back,” Edney said.
Getting bronze at the World Cup in Pyeongchang — the first time a Canadian male has ever reached a luge podium outside North America — answered those questions for him. “That’s the race I needed.” No one has told Edney he should move on, but he knows some people think he should.
“You can tell, some people wonder why I’m still competing or when I’ll retire but for me . . . I know that I can be with the top guys every time I get onto my sled.” Philippe Marquis He’ll be 28 in May, making him the oldest moguls skier ranked in the top 10, but he’s also having the best results of his decade-long career on the World Cup circuit.
Marquis has been fourth overall the last two seasons, compared to the seventh and eighth he was the two seasons prior to the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
“Fourth is kind of a bittersweet story . . . it would have been nice to be top three but the World Cup circuit is over, it’s a thing of the past,” said the Quebec City skier. He only looks ahead. “Every week I ask myself if I can still carry on and that’s what pushes me and motivates me. As I grow older I feel I have to prove to myself I can still scare myself and push my limits,” he said.
He’s skiing faster than ever, learning new tricks on snow and getting stronger in the gym — a vital component to his longevity after several shoulder surgeries.
“I’m smarter the way I eat and train and seek advice. Back in the day, I’d be shy or fear the way people would judge me, now I know what I need and I’ll go find it.”
Unlike Edney, who chases the top Russians and German in luge, or Guay and Osborne-Paradis, who chase Norwegians, Italians and Austrians on the alpine slopes, Marquis chases his own teammate, Mikael Kingsbury.
“I know daily what I have to do to be the best because I’m lucky enough to train with the best,” Marquis said.