HOT ON THE TRAIL
Canadian cross-country skier Alex Harvey inches closer to form with specialty still to come,
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— The shirtless Tongan called for a jacket, because he was cold. Of course he was cold. He had just finished the 15-kilometre cross country ski freestyle, and he had finished 114th out of 116 who finished, embracing the other so-called exotics at the end of the race. And as he put it, the media lasted longer than the race.
“(What was hardest) in the race? Everything,” said Pita Taufatofua, famous for not shivering as he paraded bare-chested into the opening of these Games, but shivering now. “You see that hill over there? It looks like it ends, but it never ends. It keeps on going, all the way up.”
Over an hour earlier Canada’s Alex Harvey had finished seventh in what might as well have been a different sport. Harvey is a world champion at the 50K, and he has a chance in that race here. Halfway through this race, he was fourth. It didn’t last.
It was reminiscent of the 30k skiathlon earlier in the Games: Harvey was right there with 1 1/2 kilometres to go, and as he put it, “didn’t have the legs.”
The 50k is still coming, filled with Norwegians and Swedes and the Russians and the Swiss. Harvey seems unworried.
“It’s hard to explain that: It’s just the kind of day,” he said, of the difference between the podium and not. “You wake up and you don’t know ’til you’re racing, and you don’t know until you’re skiing those last three kilometres. You find out in the race. You start out at the speed you know you need, and you hold it. Or not really hold it, but you try to accelerate in the last couple Ks. So I wasn’t dying; I just couldn’t find the extra gear to really start really going.”
Instead it was three-time Swiss champion Dario Cologna, Norwegian Simen Hegstad Krueger, and undercover Russian Denis Spitsov. So, Harvey has faded twice. Disappointing, right?
Except we need to appreciate how extraordinary it is that Harvey has a shot at a podium in this sport, as much as we should appreciate just how extraordinary it was that a Tongan finished and embraced a friend from Colombia who lives in Salt Lake City; a friend from Mexico, German Madrazo, who has 4-year-old triplets; a friend from Morocco, Amir Azzimani, who lives in Paris and says in French the Olympics are about “going further. Not just further on a physical level, but more in spirit.” Those exotics — the term, in a Eurodominated sport, carries more than a touch of the old colonial days — embraced at the line, emotional, after finishing 20 minutes or more out of the race.
“I told him, you run, go too fast for the stadium if people are yelling,” said German Tonga coach Thomas Jacob. “Do your pace. If you don’t do this, you will die on the last round, and nobody wants this.”
“We’ve been racing all together for a year maybe, and we’re really close, the small nations,” said Colombian Sebastian Uprimny. “And this is what the Olympics are about, it’s about competing. But more than any World Cup, you go to a World Cup and it’s only the best nations competing.”
“It was just an honour to come here and compete against the best in the world,” said Taufatofua. “And then there was us.”
Canada used to be the other guys, somewhere between the kings and the footnotes, and then Harvey came along and in 2017, became the first North American man to win the 50k at the worlds. Norway’s waxing budget is, a little famously, close to Canada’s entire budget.
“Equal or even bigger,” said Harvey. “Here they’re not even staying in the village; they’re renting their own hotel, them and biathlon. It’s just over a million dollars, because they have to rent it for the whole month, a whole hotel, with food and everything. And that’s just the Olympic Games . . . for accommodation. There’s no plane ticket, no staff being paid, so it’s not the same budget.”
Harvey has seen his support increase, and says Norway’s riches are an advantage, but “it’s still possible to beat them. We’ve done it at the World Cups and the world championships, so there’s no reason why we can’t do it at the Olympics . . . I just need to have a special day, just like I need to have a special day at the world championships, which I’ve been lucky enough to have four or five times. I know it’s possible.”
The exotics talked about how they were so happy to be part of their club, the minnows, exploring new places. Well, on the last Saturday of the Olympics, Harvey will compete against the beasts and try to do something no North American has done, again.
In cross-country skiing the hill goes all the way up, and Harvey will try to reach the top.