Twelve years, 11 months and nine days, give or take a couple of Feb. 29ths.
That’s how long it has been since Canada won a gold medal in men’s downhill skiing on the World Cup circuit.
Congratulations to Erik Guay, who conquered the icy terrain in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (sounds so much better than Bunny Hill, doesn’t it?) Saturday to break a long, long drought in the premier event of men’s skiing.
The downhill is to skiing what the 100-metre dash is to track and field, the glamour event that will always be the bellwether of the health of the rest of the program.
The health of our men’s skiing program, which paled for so many years in comparison to our women skiers, is finally sound again. You need look no further than the results of the race that Guay won Saturday for proof: our surprise silver medallist in the recent world championships, Jan Hudec, finished fifth and Manny Osborne-Paradis, who might be the best of the new crop of male skiers in the long term, was seventh.
This is the second meet in a row where we had three skiers in the top 12.
The team is doing most of this without the leadership of veteran Thomas Grandi, who just rejoined the tour after his wife Sara Renner, a fair cross country skier herself, gave birth to their first child.
Why the improvement in results for the Canadian team, who had their best showing ever at the world championships?
A lot of it stems from Ken Read, the president of the national ski federation who has brought the same will to win to management of the team that he did as a competitor with the Crazy Canucks.
Once again, we have a core of tough racers who seem to be competing against each other for success as much as against those racers with the different uniforms.
When he was appointed in 2002 after the disastrous Salt Lake City Olympics , Read — who looks the same as he did when he raced, but for the grey hair — said, “We have been amongst the best and we can be amongst the best again in winter sport. The goal is to restore Canada as a snow-sport power. We want to have athletes that will win, and we want them to win frequently, and we want to have a number of them in each discipline who will have the chance to be on the podium.”
Don’t look now, but that is exactly what seems to be happening, although our women have faltered a little of late.
In every role he has held, Read has been a fierce competitor. Even when he was Brian Williams’ TV sidekick on the CBC broadcasts of the skiing circuit, Read’s disappointment at mediocrity and his insistence on nothing less than the best shone through. You could tell things would be different if he ever got the chance to be in charge.
Ken is now in charge and you can Read standards, quality, commitment and resources in places where there used to be giant gaps in our program.
When he took over, Read said his goal was quite simple, to make Canada the best ski team in the world by the time the Olympics take place in Vancouver in 2010. That seemed like a joke just a couple of years ago but now it seems a possibility. (Maybe we can send the Austrian team to the wrong mountain by mistake).
At least if we don’t achieve that goal, it won’t be because we didn’t give it a try. And it certainly won’t be because we lacked the will to demand the best of ourselves. Ken Read will see to that.