Crawford skis into her final Games
Cross-country team led by veteran athlete
CALGARY — Chandra Crawford made a blunt declaration Tuesday.
“It’s going to be my last Olympics,” said the likable and honest Canmore, Alta., native, who is headlining the five-member women’s Canadian cross-country ski squad in Sochi. “And it’s exactly what I want for it. The up-and-comers are so fast, the team is so strong.
“Maybe the men’s and women’s team will make history and win some medals this time around.”
Maybe it was the easily excitable atmosphere of the Altadore Elementary school gymnasium in Calgary — the site of the 2014 Canadian Olympic cross-country ski team announcement — where Crawford had highfived a line of kids in their new Hudson’s Bay Olympic mittens.
But the 29-year-old definitely did not sound like an athlete teetering on the verge of retirement.
Her career has come full circle — a fresh-faced rookie, gaining early success on the world cup circuit and winning an Olympic gold medal at Turin in 2006, and now leading a young women’s team full of promise.
Accompanying her will be Daria Gaiazova of Banff, Emily Nishikawa of Whitehorse, Yukon., Perianne Jones of Almonte, Ont., and Heidi Widmer of Banff.
“I’m feeling really cool about that,” Crawford said. “It’s just a mirror image of what it was like in ’06 when I was the wide-eyed, young newcomer to the team when I got to go to the Olympics with Becky Scott, Sara Renner, Milaine Theriault ... (it’s) a really exciting team.”
And Sochi, she said, is a new slate.
Trying to improve ahead of the 2010 Winter Games, she wound up having to undergo surgery on both of her lower legs in the year leading up to the Olympics.
It was supposed to relieve the pain and pressure of compartment syndrome, a condition that suppresses nerves and blood vessels. Disappointingly, she wound up 26th in Vancouver.
Then, last February, she left the Canadian team before the racing season was over in Europe. Burned out, she returned home and trained on her own.
Now, however, she feels ready physically and is mentally recharged.
As for the rest of the women’s side, Widmer, 22, managed to qualify for her first Olympic Games at the team’s trials on Saturday.
“It comes down to so many things,” said team head coach Justin Wadsworth. “The skis. The weather. Your body and how its feeling. The course. Other competitors.
“Our women’s team has a past Olympic gold medallist and someone who has won a lot of World Cup races in Chandra ... they can do it. They’ve all won medals. I really like our women’s team right now.”
Devon Kershaw and Ivan Babikov lead a favoured men’s team which is also sending Alex Harvey of StFerreol-les-Neiges, Que., Lenny Valjas of Toronto, Graeme Killick of Fort McMurray and Jesse Cockney of Canmore.
The men’s team has never medalled at an Olympics.
Cockney is a 24-year-old Inuvialuit who now resides in Canmore. Both Babikov and Kershaw, still in Europe, offered their well wishes in a video message.
“There is lots of medal potential there,” Wadsworth said. “So we’ll see how things pan out.”