Cook back for another taste of super-G glory
World silver medallist set to race for first time since wrecked knee stalled career
After years of struggling on the national ski team, Dustin Cook finally got his big breakthrough and started piling up results, including Canada’s first world championship super-G medal in 2015.
Then, a year ago, he crashed hard. His skis went one way and his right knee went the other way. The reconstructive knee surgery and rehabilitation that followed meant Cook spent all of last season watching World Cup races from the family couch.
“He’d sit there commentating on how everyone was skiing and you could tell it was killing him to lie there and watch,” said his dad Paul Cook, recalling those winter weekends in Lac-Sainte-Marie, Que.
But, hard as it was to watch the races that he had expected to be in, it didn’t compare to the pain of watching his right leg muscles waste away from lack of use.
“That was the hardest part, mentally, because I worked so hard ... it took me 20 years to build the muscle up and it’s gone in two weeks, just disappeared. It’s crazy,” the 27-yearold said.
Before his breakout season, which included that silver at the world championships and bronze and gold World Cup medals, Cook had thought seriously of quitting skiing entirely. He had never finished top10 in a World Cup race and was starting to wonder if he ever would.
“It was obviously really tough and it got tougher as time went on,” he said. “I was just fed up with skiing super well in training and knowing that I’m fast enough and then not putting it together (on race day). It was very frustrating.”
That all changed on Feb. 5, 2015 with the silver at the world championships in Beaver Creek, Colo., and, perhaps even more importantly, with the World Cup medals that quickly followed to show that he really had arrived and wasn’t just a one-hit wonder.
His one season of success had made all the years of hard work and frustration that came before instantly worth it all. So, when he found himself limbs and skis at odd angles, smashing through race gates, before coming to a stop in incredible pain on the side of a mountain, days before the 2015-16 season opener in Austria, he never even contemplated that his career might be over.
“Not even remotely close to the chance of that ... everything is easier when you’re on top,” Cook said, smiling. “I’m really lucky to have had that success first and now I know that I can get back there for sure.”
It’s taken longer to find out where he stands in super-G, his best event, than expected. He’s been ready to race for weeks but the first two downhill and super-G World Cups of the season, Lake Louise, Alta., Nov 26-27 and Beaver Creek, Dec 2-3, were cancelled for lack of snow. Now, he plans to race in Val d’Isère, France, Dec 2-4, in World Cup events rescheduled from Beaver Creek.
Last year, it was Cook’s dad who got the call right after his crash.
“He left me a voicemail at work: ‘dad, please call me.’ You know when you just know, you have an instinct? I knew he had done his knee,” said Paul Cook, who could tell his son exactly what to expect of the process since he’d blown his own knee in a masters race four years ago.
“I knew in my heart of hearts that one day this was going to happen.”
Alpine skiers don’t ski on snow so much as ice and the force they put into their skis in the turns and the high speed crashes are why the team’s orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Robert Litchfield, has said that human knees just aren’t designed for elite skiing. Canada’s most successful alpine skier, Erik Guay, has had six knee surgeries and two-time American Olympic gold medallist Ted Ligety, who had ACL surgery last season, quipped that his Olympic odds had just gone up.
“You’re more likely to win an Olympic gold medal in skiing if you have had an ACL (surgery), so I am joining a better statistical group now,” Ligety told The Associated Press between runs at October’s season opener in Solden, Austria.
Cook heard plenty of black humour along those lines during his rehab.
“Everyone said that at the beginning, ‘oh you’re part of the club now.’ I was really happy not being part of that club. But I definitely feel stronger now than I was, I know I’m stronger … I was in the gym for eight months straight and we never get that kind of time if you’re actually racing.”
Even with all that, his right leg still hasn’t returned to its old size. But his strength is back and so is his confidence and love of the sport.
“I forgot how much fun skiing was, I never forgot it was fun but how much fun and the first day back on snow I was like, ‘ This is awesome,’” he said, of his return to the slopes at the end of June.
“I’ve skied more than anybody on the team.”
Soon, he’ll find out it that pays off.