‘Numbers game’ for Canadians
With only 30 freestyle spots, and deep pool of skiing talent competition is intense
MONT-TREMBLANT, QUE.— When Canada’s moguls skiers jumped and raced their way down the bumpy slope, they weren’t just competing against the world’s best in the Mont-Tremblant World Cup, they were vying for Olympic spots against fellow Canadians in entirely different events.
The same was true of the Canadian aerial skiers competing in Lake Placid, N.Y., the slopestyle and half-pipe skiers in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., and the ski cross racers in Kananaskis, Alta.
They are all different disciplines with different standards of athletic excellence but this weekend is everyone’s last chance to earn the exact same thing: a spot on Canada’s freestyle ski team for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games.
The International Olympic Committee’s quota system limits Canada to 30 athletes in the five freestyle ski disciplines, no matter how good they are.
And in these events, Canadians are very good.
The freestyle team won nine medals at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, including four double podiums in men’s and women’s moguls, women’s ski slopestyle and women’s ski cross. Mike Riddle picked up the final medal in half-pipe skiing.
All of those medallists, except moguls gold medallist Alex Bilodeau who retired, are expected to be back on the slopes at the Games next month in South Korea. But none of them were guaranteed that based on their past success; each of them had to earn their spots over a two-year selection period.
“It’s a numbers game — our selection has no discretion,” said David Mirota, Freestyle Canada’s vicepresident.
The official team announcement will be made on Monday.
Mirota keeps a constantly updated spreadsheet to keep track of all the athletes’ results to figure out who has qualified, who has not and who is on the bubble.
“We’re comparing apples to oranges to zucchinis; a group of fruits and a vegetable,” he said.
(For those wondering, it’s ski cross that’s the zucchini as it is the only event that is a race rather than a judged sport.)
Over the years, Freestyle Canada has developed a three-tiered system to decide who gets to go to the Olympics.
The first is how the best athletes qualified, by hitting the podium in key events last season. This is how moguls star Mikael Kingsbury, who is so dominant he has won 13 of the last 14 World Cups, and Canada’s top women’s moguls skier Andi Naude made the team.
The next tier is for athletes with a podium and at least another topeight result, showing their podium wasn’t a fluke. The final one basically keeps the door open for those coming back from injury or allows space for a rapidly developing next-genera-
“Our objective is to medal in every discipline, we know it will be harder in some than others.” DAVID MIROTA FREESTYLE CANADA VICE-PRESIDENT
tion athlete.
The first tier is what every athlete wants.
“If they qualify the year before the Games, they can show up (this season) with new tricks, test the judges and get out of their comfort zone (while) not worrying about selection for the team,” Mirota said. “
“Having this pre-qualifier under my belt,” Naude said, “that really relieved all of the stress of getting results, results, results and just let me focus on skiing.
“I just missed (qualifying for Sochi) by one spot and I was ranked ninth in the world. To miss it by that much was heartbreaking but I think, in the end, it made me that much better a skier . . . I knew this was going to be my Olympics.”
Mirota knows how stressful qualifying for the Games. “People can say it’s hard on the athlete — they spend so much energy getting on the team — but we believe that we’re so strong that this is part of the training to get ready for the Games.”
Other countries do it differently. The French are all discretion; the Americans have to qualify in the Olympic season, a short window of less than two months.
“Basically, you get one injury or a concussion and you’re out, you’re done,” Mirota said. “With us, you have time to bounce back.”
Injuries, unfortunately, are a constant risk in skiing and that was brought home in a terrible fashion Saturday at the ski cross World Cup at Nakiska.
Georgia Simmerling, Canada’s topranked racer who had easily qualified for the Games with her strong results from last season, crashed on the very last feature of her last race and broke her leg. Simmerling, who won a bronze medal in team pursuit track cycling at the Rio Summer Games, was hoping to become of the few athletes to medal in both the Summer and Winter Games. Now another skier will be named in her place; the end of one skier’s Olympic dream can be the revival for another.
In the last Olympic cycle, within the span of a week, moguls skier Phil Marquis was told he was almost certainly going, definitely not going, and then, going again.
He originally lost his Olympic spot to a combination of strong results by athletes in ski cross and then regained it after a half-pipe skier blew out her knee just weeks before the Games.
And all of this is just to get to the Games. Once there, the athletes will be expected to deliver medals, just as they did last time.
“Our objective is to medal in every discipline, we know it will be harder in some than others,” Mirota said.
“The Olympics are one event with so many variables. We obsess with trying to control every variable but, at the end of the day, it’s one competition.”