Naude gets back up in medal chase
Fearless moguls skier one of few women to risk back flip with a full twist
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— Not much scares Andi Naude.
She was just 16 years old when she first left her Penticton, B.C., home to travel the world with the national moguls team and teammates who all spoke French, a language she didn’t have command of. She has never been afraid to ski so fast down a moguls course that it looks reckless to the uninformed eye, nor has she ever been shy about going bigger than other women on the jumps.
“She’s fearless,” women’s head coach Michel Hamelin said.
The only thing that she was missing was confidence that her runs were strong enough to hit the podium. That took four years to build.
Naude was the skier who just missed making the 2014 Sochi Olympics and now, at 22, she is the top ranked woman on the Canadian team in Pyeongchang, which includes Olympic gold- and silvermedal-winning sisters Justine and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe and threetime Olympian Audrey Robichaud.
In their first races Friday morning, Naude, Justine Dufour-Lapointe and Robichaud advanced directly to Sunday night’s final. Chloe DufourLapointe will get another shot to make the final during the second qualifying round earlier that day.
Naude’s success this season — she comes here ranked second in the world — has come from being fearless with a jump so difficult that few women even attempt it and sticking with it, through years of hard falls and tears.
The jump is a back flip with a full twist and it carries a higher degree of difficulty than the jumps the other top-ranked women in the World Cup field are currently doing. When she lands it well, it gives her a scoring advantage in this event, which is both judged and timed.
But she has also gotten a confidence boost from that jump that goes well beyond its scoring potential and that stays with her even if the conditions on a particular course prove too difficult to use it.
“People come to her at the bottom of the course and say, ‘Whoa, good job, back full,’ ” Hamelin said. “It’s always good to do something that other girls don’t do.”
Naude knows there’s an extra risk to the jump, particularly on a tough course like this one where her takeoffs and landings must be perfect, but she’s worked hard to learn it and she wants to be in the position to use it here to win a medal.
“The course is definitely a bit more of a challenge than what we skied all year but I think that’s awesome for the Games . . . I think you’ll have to fight to ski good runs and that makes a really good show,” Naude said.
The back full has come and gone over the years in the women’s field, with some athletes enticed by its high scoring potential. But few have stuck with it.
“I’m thrilled to be able to do back full here and to throw it in qualifications even . . . that’s just a dream come true,” Naude said after advancing to the final easily. “Wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“There is so much risk,” said Steve Omischl, a three-time Olympic aerialist and the team’s air coach. “Nobody ever performed it well and consistently on the women’s side.
“The sport is such that if you mess up the exit on that top air it’s pretty much over. You’re not going to do well if you miss two turns or you look sloppy . . . That’s why Andi is kind of special.”
She first started training with the jump on snow in 2014, not long after missing Canada’s Sochi team by a single spot. “It was a heartbreak but in the end it made me that much better a skier,” said Naude ,who was ranked ninth in the world then.
Her coaches told her it could take four years to get the back full ready for these Olympics and the first two years were particularly tough. She was in the shadow of her teammates, the Dufour-Lapointe sisters, and more often than not just off the podium. She also suffered through some hard crashes.
“There were a lot of up and downs and standing back up again,” Hame- lin said.
Telling a young skier that a payoff may come so far in the future isn’t often a successful strategy. With many skiers, plans and targets for training camps are often missed, he said.
“For her, it is every day. Every day she stuck with the process. The word for her is perseverance.”
Naude doesn’t disagree with that assessment.
“I’ve managed to stand up after every smackdown that I’ve had, so I’m hoping that all the training that I did and the confidence that I have now will pay off,” she said ahead of the Games. “I’m sure it will but we’ll have to see.”