HIS BIGGEST JUMP
Brady Leman puts Sochi disappointment behind with gold in men’s ski cross,
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— Ski cross has been an Olympic event three times and each time Brady Leman has been there.
He left the 2010 Vancouver Games with a broken leg and 2014 Sochi Games with a fourth-place finish, behind three Frenchmen who may or may not have been wearing illegal pants.
So when he crossed the line at the 2018 Games in South Korea knowing that he’d just won the gold medal — Canada’s first ever in the men’s event — he emphatically punched the air with both his fists. It was a moment of pure victory. The 31-year-old from Calgary had come out on top in this Olympic final and everything he had to go through to get there.
That’s a lot. And not just the struggles from past Games, there were plenty of fresh ones because, even when things go well, ski cross is an unpredictable battle of attrition.
“That’s part of why I love this sport — it’s so difficult,” Leman said after his win. “Nothing is easy — there’s never an easy race day.”
Leman crashed hard in training and had to be “put back together” by the medical team, even before he started Wednesday’s qualifying run and the four heats he had to ski through for the win. He lost a ski pole in the qualifying run; struggled to get a good start in his heats where four skiers race head-to-head out of a dropped gate; and, prior to his quarter-final, there was a long course hold. He knew why. They all knew why. One of their own had gone down badly in the heat before.
It was, in fact, his teammate Chris Del Bosco who flew up, rather than forward, off a jump, lost control and crash-landed incredibly hard. The 35-year-old was taken off the hill on a stretcher and to the hospital with a suspected pelvis injury. And when Leman made it to the final he was met there with another teammate, Toronto’s Kevin Drury, giving Canada two racers in the final four.
At one point, they were second and third, then Leman got out ahead and Drury fell back to fourth but was fighting hard to get back into the medals.
That’s when he went down in a crash with the Russian athlete Sergey Ridzik, and because Drury’s left ski popped off, according to the rules, his race was over.
Ridzik’s skis had stayed on so he was able to climb up the hill they crashed on like a cross-country skier and finish the race to claim the bronze. Leman knew something had happened behind him but wasn’t sure what. He could see a shadow in the snow so he knew someone was close behind him.
“I was just telling myself: Go, go, go — you can’t let up.”
He didn’t and it was Swiss skier Marc Bischofberger who settled for silver.
Athletes are trained to focus on the present, not what has happened or what might happen, so anytime the last Olympics came into his head, Leman pushed it away.
“After the way the last two Games have gone, not super successful, it makes this that much better,” he said, grinning. For the whole men’s team, really. Canada’s ski cross women have won the gold medals, and a silver, at the last two Olympics while the men have come fourth, twice. Leman was fourth in Sochi and Del Bosco was fourth in Vancouver.
“Two Canadians in the final speaks to the strength of our Canadian team,” said Dave Duncan, who finished a career high eighth here. “For Brady, sweet redemption.” Leman was an alpine racer from a young age, a background most ski cross athletes share.
“I was always getting in trouble for hitting jumps and when ski cross got named to the Olympics it just seemed a good fit for me,” Leman said, recalling his early days in an interview before the Games.
“As soon as I had an opportunity to join the Canadian team I took it and never looked back.”
He was so committed to this NASCAR-like racing over a course of jumps and banked turns that he turned down Alpine Canada funding and American university scholarships for ski racing to pursue ski cross at his own expense. That first season cost him $20,000, but he was hooked on the sport.
“He doesn’t give up, that guy,” said head coach Stanley Hayer.
That, it seems, is just what’s required in ski cross.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen, that’s the beauty of the sport,” Hayer said. “There’s no judging . . . first one down wins and the guy with the most guts wins.”