Skier
Jan Hudec
has had seven knee surgeries in nine years, the last one just a few
weeks ago. That doesn’t make him much out of the ordinary in this
injury-laden sport where men fly down icy hills at 150 km/h in, well,
tights. Hudec was actually one of the healthiest of the bunch on the
men’s alpine ski team last year and was the top Canadian overall on the
World Cup circuit placing ninth in downhill and sixth in super-G.
At one point last season, only three of the six “Canadian Cowboys”
were still on the hills. That’s the nickname for those who have had a
podium finish in the most elite of the alpine ski races.
Now, as the team prepares for the first World Cup downhill and
super-G races in Lake Louise, Alta., later this month, they’re back to
full strength — and hoping to keep it that way. It’s a world
championship year in 2013 after all, and these men desperately want to
defend their back-to-back downhill titles. Canada’s
Erik Guay is the defending champion from 2011. His teammate
John Kucera won it in 2009.
“We have a really great team when everyone is healthy,” says Guay.
“We have six guys who can be in the top 15 in the world at any given
time. You want to have all those athletes around you because it raises
your game.”
He’ll need that. As well as defending his world downhill title, Guay
is trying to make Canadian history. With 17 World Cup podiums, he needs
just four more to overtake “Crazy Canuck” Steve Podborski’s record of 20
set almost 30 years ago.
Teammate Kucera is returning after three years off with injuries and three-time World Cup winner
Manuel Osborne-Paradis has been off the slopes for two years with a knee injury and a broken leg.
This is Osborne-Paradis’s first comeback from injury. But for Kucera,
this is an uncomfortably familiar road. “Every time I try to make a
comeback, I reinjure myself.”
In 2009, he badly broke his left leg in a crash on the slopes of Lake
Louise. Then, in 2011, he broke that same leg when his binding failed
and he suddenly found himself with just one ski. Last year, it was a
back injury.
“I’m hoping I’ve got them all done now,” Kucera says.
Paul Kristofic, vice-president of sport for Alpine Canada, hopes so,
too. Injuries have always been a part of speed skiing but efforts are
being made to reduce them.
During the summers, there’s a focus on strength and conditioning to
give racers the best chance of staying healthy and, particularly with
younger skiers, there is coaching to help identify when to take risks to
gain the fractions of a second that win races and where doing so is
more likely to mean a career-ending crash.
Most men’s courses have sections that Kristofic calls “very
unforgiving.” Skier Osborne-Paradis, more colourfully, calls them a
race’s “little demons.”
Racers need to “approach those sections without taking a ton of risk
because the reward will be very little but the consequences extreme,”
says Kristofic.
“It’s a fine line,” says
Ben Thomsen,
who was last season’s breakout star coming second in a World Cup
downhill in Sochi, Russia, in his first year on the national team. “On
race day, you have to risk just enough. You can’t hold back too much.”
Showing tactical maturity may be more important than ever this year
because of equipment changes introduced by the International Ski
Federation (FIS) in an attempt to lower injuries worldwide.
The changes, essentially, make the skis less aggressive, says
Kristofic. Skiers won’t be able to carve as tight a clean turn. If they
try to maintain the tight radius they’re used to, the skis will now
bounce or slide. This reduces some of the tremendous force arcing puts
on the lower body, which routinely leaves racers with knee and back
injuries.
But, already, some racers have said the new skis are much more
difficult to ski on. “Is it really safer?” asks Kristofic. “It’s hard to
tell until we start racing.”
With only 10 downhills and six super-Gs this season, there is
precious little time to recover from any injury. That’s why avoiding
them is key to Canada’s success and Guay’s shot at making history. These
racers have already proven they can get to the podium, so long as
they’re in one piece.