Son of legendary Canadian downhiller tackles business at DU and the slalom on slopes.
Son of legendary Canadian downhiller tackles business at DU and slalom on slopes
College athletes need to be adept at multitasking, but by the time Erik Read graduates from the University of Denver next year, he should be able to teach a seminar on the subject. Read is a junior who races on DU’s ski team. He won the slalom at the NCAA championships last year and finished third in giant slalom as the Pioneers won their 23rd team title.
But the son of legendary Canadian downhiller Ken Read also is Canada’s top slalom and giant slalom racer on the World Cup. Since November, he has competed in 16 World Cup races in seven European countries while keeping up on his college work in business finance. Last Sunday, he raced the slalom at the world championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland, flew back to Denver on Monday, took a midterm exam and gave a class presentation early in the week, then competed in the NCAA West regionals Friday and Saturday at Beaver Creek.
This week, he flies to Europe again for two more World Cup races, but he’ll be back next week for the NCAA championships in New Hampshire. The week after that, he will compete in the World Cup finals in Aspen if he qualifies, which he probably will.
His father was one of the “Crazy Canucks,” five Canadian downhillers who became famous for their seemingly reckless tactics in the sport’s most dangerous discipline from 1976-84 by patterning themselves after Austrian great Franz Klammer. In 1980, Ken Read became the first Canadian to win the world’s most dangerous and prestigious downhill, the Hahnenkamm in Kitzbuehel, Austria. Only one other North American had won it in the previous 37 Hahnenkamms — Buddy Werner of Steamboat Springs in 1959.
In 2006, Ken and the other Crazy Canucks were inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in Toronto. The only crazy thing about Erik’s career so far is his schedule.
Last month, in Zagreb, Croatia, he scored a career-best in slalom on the World Cup (13th), and his dad was there to see it because he was taking part in a celebration marking the 50th season of the World Cup. A week later Erik competed for DU in the Utah Invitational. The week after that, back in Europe, he achieved another career best in World Cup slalom (seventh) at Kitzbuehel. His dad saw that one too.
Erik doesn’t hear what the announcers are saying about his lineage when making his way down World Cup courses (his mother, Lynda, also raced for Canada), but he knows what they’re saying.
“They always bring up my dad,” said Erik, 25. “But they’re super complimentary in my skiing, and that I’m trying to do it in a different way because he was a speed skier, I’m a tech skier.”
At first, the term “Crazy Canucks” was one of derision, used by Europeans to disparage the risk-taking North Americans — Read, Steve Podborski, Dave Irwin, Dave Murray and Jungle Jim Hunter — for having the temerity to believe they could be competitive with the European rulers of the sport. Read and his teammates started with some good results in the 1975-76 season — seemingly out of nowhere — and some big crashes too.
Then, in the downhill at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics — a race made famous by Klammer’s hair-raising, riskeverything gold medal run — three of the Crazy Canucks finished in the top 10 with Read leading the way in fifth. At first the Canadians didn’t like their nickname, coined by World Cup cofounder Serge Lang.
“It was saying, ‘These guys are just putting it to the edge, and sometimes going over it,’ ” Ken recalled. “But it was always our contention that we were just patterning ourselves off of Franz Klammer, and Franz Klammer skied to the edge. There was never a sense that we were going beyond. There were crashes, but we gained experience and we learned that you had to stay on your feet. It then shifted slightly. It was a phrase of affection rather than what maybe started off as slightly derogatory.”
Winning the Hahnenkamm downhill bestows ski racing immortality like no other title. Gondola cars on the mountain bear the name of every winner. Four months before the 1980 Hahnenkamm, during a September preseason training camp on a high glacier in Austria, Read and Podborski took advantage of a bad weather day by driving to Kitzbuehel and hiking up the downhill course to study it. A couple weeks later they did it again with other teammates.
When they returned to Kitzbuehel in January for the Hahnenkamm, Read benefited from having a greater understanding of the course thanks to those preseason inspections. He also got a critical piece of advice on race day from a coach on how to nail the course’s most difficult turn at the notorious Steilhang (“steep slope” in German). In the race he hit it perfectly and won. Irwin was fifth and Klammer — a four-time Hahnenkamm winner — was sixth. Read became a legend.
“It was the combination of pulling together the sense of place — by the hike up the mountain — and that particular piece of advice and nailing the Steilhang,” Ken said. “The rest of it was just the culmination of six years of racing on the circuit that put me into the driver’s seat for the race. I think it was Serge Lang that said, ‘You’re only the second non-European to win this race. It was Buddy Werner in 1959 and you.’ You kind of went, ‘Whoa.’ ”
Canadian teammates won it the next three years: Podborski (1981-82) and Todd Brooker (1983).
With DU on the quarter system, Erik takes full class loads (four courses) in fall and spring. During the winter when he’s mostly in Europe, he takes three courses to maintain his collegiate eligibility. By rule, only one can be an online class, so he’s in the classroom whenever he’s in Denver, catching up as he did last week.
“I just had to do a group presentation and I hadn’t even met all of my group members,” Erik said. “It’s a very unique situation. You have to be very careful which classes you take over the winter. Most of the classes I take in the spring and the fall, I would fail in the winter if I took them. It’s probably the most stressful time, trying to plan out a winter quarter and what will work.”
There is plenty of downtime on the World Cup for studying, though.
“You just have to manage it and really be proactive,” Erik said. “When you’re on the road, you’re having to teach yourself everything. It takes a lot of mental energy, mental focus, but it’s also a chance to take your mind off skiing.”
Erik will qualify for the World Cup finals in Aspen (March 13-19) if he is ranked in the top 25 in slalom or GS, and with two races left he’s right there: 24th in slalom, 27th in GS. After attending spring and summer quarters, he will have one more left to graduate, but that will wait until spring of 2018 because he wants to spend next fall and winter fully focused on preparing for the 2018 Olympics. Becoming an Olympian like his dad has been a goal since he was a child.
“Prior to this year I only had the odd result in the top 30,” Erik said. “This year I’ve had four top 10s, and it feels like I’m finally at a point where I belong on the World Cup circuit and I can compete, day in and day out.”