Kershaw exults in swift Nordic renaissance
Like many Canadian kids, Devon Kershaw grew up with every intention of playing in the National Hockey League.
Always one to shoot high, Kershaw specifically had designs on wearing the captain’s ‘C’ for his beloved Montreal Canadiens.
So Kershaw, 29, instinctively reached for a hockey analogy this week when asked to explain to his countryman the meteoric rise of the Canadian men’s cross-country ski team.
Both the Canadian men and women are set to race right here at home starting Thursday at the Alberta World Cup in Canmore.
”I can’t use NHL metaphors, because they’re too busy arguing and trying to get out of their 14-year, $100 million contracts they’re signing,” Kershaw says. “So it would be like in world junior hockey, a country like Norway that gets lit up 15-0 by every other country in the tournament. And then in 10 short years, Norway wins the whole world junior tournament. It just doesn’t happen, right?
“I can assure you it does, because we did it in cross-country skiing.”
From the birth of World Cup competition to the year 2006, a grand total of one Canadian man graced the World Cup podium in cross-country skiing — Pierre Harvey, of Rimouski, Que., won three golds and one bronze in the 1980s.
And that was it, until Kershaw made national headlines after the 2006 Winter Olympics by winning bronze at a World Cup event in Sweden.
“We were bad,” Kershaw says. “You have to admit, we just weren’t great.”
Still, Kershaw remembers the sting of reading an article that described his team as such just prior to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
“It was just a one paragraph thing that described our men’s cross-country ski team as the world’s most anonymous cross-country ski team,” Kershaw says.
“That kind of hurt me a little bit, but it also motivated me. I was like, ‘why?’ I mean we have snow everywhere.”
On the women’s side, Beckie Scott blazed the cross-country trail by winning a gold medal in the combined pursuit at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. She followed that up with 10(!) World Cup medals in the 2005/06 season.
A Canadian pioneer on skinny skis, Scott also won silver with Canmore’s Sara Renner in the team sprint the 2006 Turin Games.
But the men? Different story entirely until Kershaw finally graced the podium in March 2006.
Fast forward six years to the 2011/12 season. The Canadians captured a whopping 14 medals on the World Cup circuit — with 12 coming from the men.
With two golds, one silver and three bronze, Kershaw finished second overall in the World Cup distance race standings. Alex Harvey, the son of Pierre, placed sixth overall. Len Valjas won three medals to close out the season.
So much for anonymity for our men on skinny skis.
“As a group, people really do expect more from us,” says Canadian coach Justin Wadsworth. “It’s a new landscape for us.”
Although he would surely blush, Kershaw rates as the superstar of that new landscape.
“I don’t think I’m having a positive impact — it’s the collective group,” Kershaw says, deflecting credit to his coaches, teammates and support staff. “It’s not me. I haven’t done a thing. I just go put on a bib on and try my best.
“It’s the whole community around cross-country skiing in Canada. I can feel it.”
Behold the scene last weekend in at the inaugural World Cup competition in old Quebec City. Nearly 10,000 people lined the streets to cheer on their new Nordic heroes.
From the outside, the race looked liked it belonged in the heart of Norway where cross-country skiing is the national sport. Not in Canada.
“I was blown away in Quebec,” Kershaw says. “We were absolutely bombarded with attention.”
The scene shifts Thursday to the Canmore Nordic Centre, home to the Canadian cross-country ski team in the Alberta Rockies.
Kershaw, for one, urges hockeystarved folks in the Calgary area to come out and witness the spectacle for themselves.
“You should go out to the mountains every weekend, because they’re beautiful and inspiring,” he says of his adopted hometown. “And if you’re having a bad day or a bad week, just go take a walk by the Bow River and sit on a bench.
“This weekend, we have the best skiers in the world competing here. Come cheer on the best skiers in the world in such a majestic setting.”
For the first time in decades, Canada can count itself as one of the best skiing nations in the world.
And, given the history, that’s saying something.