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travel / adventure zone
| The Adventure Zone |
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| Photo © VANOC/COVAN |
Crazy Canuck Comeback
Ski cross makes its debut at the 2010 Winter Games
By Tracy C. Read
Think Moto Cross without the motorbikes. Think freestyle snowboarding, with skis instead of boards. Think about a wild downhill ride where four skiers sweat to out-turn, out-manoeuvre and outlast their fellow competitors in a risk-filled run that’s over in a New York minute. It’s called ski cross, and in 2010, it’s the only new medal event at the Vancouver Winter Games.
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| Photo © Canada Ski Cross |
In this sport, it’s all down to who’s first through the gates at the bottom of a twisting, turning hybrid course that melds the natural terrain of alpine skiing with the artificial jumps, rollers and banks of snowboard-cross events. After a timed qualification run, competitors are seeded in a series of quarter, semi and final four-person heats, in which only two of the four racers move ahead to face the other front-runners until a winner is declared.
But, as anyone who has watched a ski-cross event will testify, just making it through the finish gates is challenge enough. “You want crashes?” asks sportswriter Alan Abrahamson in his Universalsports.com blog. “You like a sport where the winner might well be the last one standing?” That’s ski cross. While it’s not meant to be a contact sport, when four bodies explode down a hill at speeds over 70 km/h, mixing up body parts with your opponents—or flying off the slope entirely — is not always avoidable.
The seven exceptional Canadians named to the women’s and men’s inaugural ski-cross teams on January 25 fit the very definition of a ski-cross athlete. Fearless and determined, fit and flexible, they’ve been waiting for this opportunity since November 2006, when the International Olympic Committee made the decision to include their sport in the 2010 Games.
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| Photo © Canada Ski Cross |
“We're not afraid of anything, we're all tough, the women are like men and the men are like, I don't know, you can't tell the difference,” men’s team member Stanley Hayer, recently told a reporter. “We're all the same going down the hill, we're nuts.” At 36, the group’s oldest and arguably most experienced ski crosser, Hayer exemplifies their fighting spirit. “When fear stares you down, spit in its eye,” is 27-year-old team member Dave Duncan’s mantra, while in the view of Kelsey Serwa, 20, “Pain is just the weakness leaving your body.”
With teammates Ashleigh McIvor, 26, Julia Murray, 21 (daughter of the late Crazy Canuck, Dave Murray), Danielle Poleschuk, 24, and Chris Del Bosco, 27, the ski-cross component of Canada’s Olympic freestyle ski team is poised to grab gold on Cypress Mountain in February. Says McIvor, “We really feel like they are our Games, and that is our course.”
For more information, visit www.ski-cross.ca
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