‘Man of mystery’ nears finish line
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— Manny Osborne-Paradis, the Canadian downhiller, was spinning a yarn about his old friend Jan Hudec.
At a World Cup ski race years ago, the story goes, Hudec was late going to the hill.
“He came running into my room. And he’s like, ‘I can’t find my helmet,’ ” Osborne-Paradis said. “I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ Who loses their helmet? Everybody travels with spares. But not this guy.”
So Hudec grabbed a helmet Osborne-Paradis had autographed as gift-ready memorabilia — a helmet that was so big it required Hudec to wear a tuque underneath to make it fit. And with that, he rushed to the start and finished on the World Cup podium.
“A lot of guys, it would have completely thrown them off. But with Jan, it didn’t matter at all,” OsborneParadis said. “He’s a man of mystery for how he performs. But you wouldn’t read his methodology in any books. Nobody’s teaching the way he’s competing.”
As Max Gartner, the former Alpine Canada president, said of Hudec: “Somehow, he embraces chaos and finds focus.”
As Hudec stared down what he says will be his final Olympic race at age 36 this week, he wasn’t expecting to conjure a gem from nowhere. While Norway’s greats dominated Thursday’s men’s downhill — Aksel Lund Svindal and Kjetil Jansrud finishing first and second, respectively, to claim gold and silver, with Switzerland’s Beat Feuz earning bronze — Hudec was an also-ran, finishing 45th. Osborne-Paradis, meanwhile, was Canada’s top finisher at 14th.
Hudec, who won bronze in Sochi — Canada’s first Olympic alpine medal in 20 years — isn’t even racing for Canada anymore; after a falling out with the national federation, he’s been skiing for the Czech Republic, his country of birth, since 2016. And he called his mere presence here a “miracle.” Failing to qualify based on his chronically health-hampered World Cup results, Hudec arrived at his third Olympics as a last-minute injury replacement. He’s scheduled to race Friday’s super-G before bidding adieu.
“It’s the closing of the chapter of my life — the ski life,” Hudec said. “I committed to the Olympics, so I didn’t want to quit. I didn’t want to walk away without trying.”
Still, while the likes of Svindal and Jansrud were fighting for every hundredth of a second — each man claiming his fourth career Olympic medal in the process — Hudec acknowledged he spent his downhill run “fighting to survive.”
“I definitely felt unprepared . . . or maybe incapable,” he said.
It’s possible Hudec, who was famously bedridden with a herniated disc only weeks before he stood on that Sochi podium, has finally weathered his lifetime limit of bodily hurt. A training accident shortly after the 2014 Olympics began a downward spiral of health issues that led up to a 2015 knee injury from which he has never really recovered. Up until that point, Hudec treated knee surgeries like most of us treat trips to the dentist — routine events to be dreaded but overcome. He figures he’d had 11 knee surgeries before 2015.
“It was basically just my job to recover from injury,” he said.
But this time, the damage to his right knee was piling up. He needed three more surgeries to address a laundry list of problems. He likened those bits of maintenance as BandAids on a gushing wound.
“Fixing it isn’t even an option anymore,” Hudec said of his right knee. He’s been told joint-replacement surgery will ultimately be the only solution for a pain-free retirement.
Hudec said he has already pondered what he’ll do next. He’s a father to two sons, Oakland, 11, and Elias, 3. Enjoying his role as a mentor to young Czech teammates, he said he’s considering coaching. He’s also aligned with an investment fund focused on the cannabis business.
“Although, for the record, I’ve never smoked a joint in my life,” Hudec said.
At least that rules out one possible explanation for forgetting his helmet on a World Cup race day. Hudec laughed at the mention of OsborneParadis’ anecdote, then shrugged as he explained his mysterious method of conjuring top performances from turmoil.
“The chaos helped me. It got the adrenalin pumping. I was more focused for the race,” he said.
And now, he’s focused on an existence beyond the finish line.
“I turned over every stone. This Olympics is that last stone I’m turning over,” he said. “I might have overdone the stone-turning, actually. I turned over so many stones, I pulled my back.”
Hudec laughed. And with that, he slung his skis over his shoulder, and trudged a path through the snow.