SLOW IN THE SNOW
It’s been all downhill for men’s team.
Injuries, retirements, funding cuts and a feeder system that went hungry for a time after 2010 have left Alpine Canada’s men’s team in a tough spot as it heads into the 2015 FIS world championships this week in Colorado. A medal would be a shock.
“(Lowest point) in a long time,” says Brian Stemmle, the former national team skier who now does race analysis for Sportsnet. “Even they would agree. They suck right now.”
Alpine and the skiers themselves will say that’s too blunt an assessment. It’s just a cyclical downturn, they say, one made worse by the fact aging stars Erik Guay and Jan Hudec are on the shelf.
Just a few years ago things were rosy.
Four medals in three championships — downhill silver by Hudec in 2007, back-to-back downhill titles by John Kucera (2009) and Guay (2011) and Mike Janyk’s slalom bronze in 2009 — plus Guay’s 2010 Crystal Globe in Super G highlighted a productive Canadian Cowboys era.
Guay also posted fifths in downhill and Super G at the 2010 Olympics, missing a bronze in Super G by just 3/100ths of a second. Hudec’s downhill bronze at Sochi in 2014 snapped a 20-year Olympic medal drought.
Those guys, along with threetime World Cup winner Manuel Osborne-Paradis of North Vancouver, were worthy successors to the Crazy Canucks of the 1970s, ’ 80s and ’ 90s.
But as the depleted, underperforming squad gathers in Beaver Creek, Colo., for the 2015 worlds, prospects for even a top 15 from the men look as sketchy as Metro Vancouver’s snow-deprived North Shore ski hills.
“In skiing, you never say never, but we’re a little light (heading into worlds), especially without our heavyweights,” admitted Paul Kristofic, Alpine Canada’s vice-president of sports.
Guay hasn’t competed at all this season while rehabbing from offseason knee surgery and Hudec just had an arthroscopic procedure on one of his knees. Both are 34 and there has to be concerns about how much they have left, especially by the time of the 2018 Olympics.
North Vancouver’s Robbie Dixon, 30, who had 10 top-eight finishes between 2008 and 2011, but who has started just 10 speed races in the last three seasons because of concussion issues and leg injuries, is also sidelined.
Kucera retired after last season, unable to fully recover from two broken legs. And Janyk, a Whistler product who was really Canada’s only threat in the technical events for the past five or six seasons, also retired.
That leaves Osborne-Paradis, who was second in the season- opening downhill at Lake Louise, but who hasn’t done well at Beaver Creek over the years, the enigmatic Ben Thomsen of Invermere and a bunch of supposedly promising slalom and giant slalom skiers who are struggling to make a mark.
“Where are all the up and comers (on the speed side),” asks Stemmle.
“There was only one guy on the starting list for (the famed Hahnenkamm downhill at) Kitzbuhel. Holy smokes.”
In the technical disciplines, it’s a tough, grind-it-out process.
The two most recent World Cup slalom winners were first-time winners at age 30 and 29.
So Erik Read, 23, Phil Brown, 23, and Trevor Philp, 22, may be years away.
In seven slalom World Cups this season, only Read, with a 24th in Are, Sweden, has a top 30 result.
In giant slalom Dustin Cook, who turns 26 in a week, has 21stand 22nd-place finishes, Philp has a 19th and Brown a 21st and 26th.
“They’re still young,” says Kristofic. “It’s a real step-by-step process and it takes a long time to chop away at the rankings, getting into the top 30 and into the top 15. When you’re starting back in the 40s and 50s, it’s especially difficult, in some cases next to impossible. But they’re talented and incredibly hard-working.”
Things are slightly better for Alpine Canada on the women’s side, where Marie-Michele Gagnon, 25, has consistently popped into the top 10 in tech events over the last few years. Erin Mielzynski, 24, won a World Cup slalom in 2012 and has three other top-six finishes since then.
And 26-year-old Larisa Yurkiw, dropped from the squad after 2013, has diligently battled her way back and has seventh-, sixth-, fourth- and second-place finishes in downhill over the last two years.
The depth on the men’s side has been hurt by a couple of things. A drop in corporate sponsorships after 2010 led to an axing of the development team for two years while resources were directed toward medal contenders for Sochi 2014.
And then there was the decision by Max Gartner, the thenathletic director for Alpine Canada and later the president and CEO, to have young skiers focus on the technical disciplines and to not race speed until they were older.
“A whole generation of speed skiers, I wouldn’t say we lost them, but we delayed their development,” says Kristofic. “We’re starting to push the speed side again, but it takes time to rebuild that.”
Canada has a great legacy in downhill and Super G, with the likes of Ken Read, Dave Murray, Steve Podborski, Edi Podivinsky, Rob Boyd and Todd Brooker shining on the World Cup stage and leading the way for the likes of Guay, Kucera, Osborne-Paradis and Hudec.
And those guys were good early, in part because there was a lot of funding dedicated to that group with an eye to the 2010 Olympics. Kucera won a World Cup Super G in 2006 at age 22. Osborne-Paradis earned his first downhill podium, a second, at age 22 and was fifth and third that same year. Guay was also just 22 when he first stepped on a World Cup podium and had nine top-10s by the time he was 24.
“When I grew up, the B.C. ski team skied a ton of speed,” says Osborne-Paradis.
The only other Canadian to reach a World Cup podium in a speed event the last decade has been Thomsen, who came from out of nowhere and shockingly posted a second, fifth and ninth in the winter of 2012 at 24. He then went two years where his finishes were mostly in the 40s and 50s before a 17th-place finish at Kitzbuehel a week ago.
“He struggled with his confidence in the last couple of years, lost the feel for everything, lost the feel for gliding and when and where to take risks,” Kristofic says of a guy who came close to losing his spot on the team.
“But he’s really invested in himself, dug deep to get out of the rut he was in. He’s got a new serviceman who’s giving him incredible support. He’s definitely on his way back.
“Hopefully, he can have a good world championships.”
That’s a big hope. It could be a bleak time in Beaver Creek for a Canadian men’s team at a low ebb.