Six weeks ago, Canadian alpine stars Jan Hudec and Erik Guay underwent arthroscopic knee surgery.
John Kucera had hardly skied in three years after breaking his leg, Manuel Osborne-Paradis was also coming back from a broken leg and Ben Thomson had less than a year’s worth of World Cup skiing experience.
That was plenty of reason to worry for the Canadian ski team on the eve of the first downhill race of the season in Lake Louise.
But as they’ve done before, the Canadians perservered, led by Guay’s sixth-place finish in Saturday’s (Nov. 24) downhill race.
“If I look at where I was six weeks ago, I’m absolutely ecstatic with the progress I’ve made since,” said Guay.
Norway’s Aksel Svindal was the class of the field, stopping the clock at 1:48.31, well ahead of Austrian Max Franz (1:48.95).
Guay has worked with his brother to change his ski technique over the winter, honing his turns and finding speed on his approach.
“I’ve worked on staying over the outside ski. If I have pressure (on the ski) early on, I’m releasing the ski under the gate, gaining speed along the way. It’s a tricky thing to do,” Guay said.
He said he needs more volume before he’s more comfortable with the technique.
“Right now, when it get’s tight, I revert to my old ways. You have to have a lot of volume so it feels natural.”
The end result was on par with where he wanted to be this weekend.
“If I skied the way I had in training, I’d be on the podium. But you have to keep everything in perspective. At first it was questionable I’d even be here, so this is above expectations from a few weeks ago. It’s on par for my expectations from earlier this week,” Guay said.
Hudec thought he was much better than his 17th-place finish suggested.
“I honestly thought I’d be a little bit closer. I was almost ready to start cheering when I crossed the line. It was a good thing I looked at the clock or that would have been a little embarrassing,” Hudec said, noting he couldn’t believe how fast Svindal and Franz were on the day.
Taking it easy this week, Hudec had no training runs before the race, which may have cost him.
“I’ve been struggling going with the knee. I skipped the training runs on Wednesday and Thursday and they cancelled training on Friday, so I knew I was taking a bit of a risk,” Hudec said.
A race day horse, Hudec is accustomed to not skiing before big events. Last year, he only had two weeks of on-snow training before finishing 11th at Lake Louise.
“That’s my style. It’s not a good excuse to be slow,” he joked.
His knee held up during the race, although he said he’ll likely have to “dial up the old pharmaceuticals” for recovery.
“Rubbin’s racin’ as they say, but I ended up slower than I wanted.”
Paradis’ comeback run allowed him to lay down a 22nd-place (1:50.39) run, while Thomsen struggled to survive after he hit a rock with his ski at the top of the course. The rock broke his edge, and he navigated his way down without proper turning abilities, but still finished 45th (1:51.71). Kucera finished 36th in his first true World Cup downhill in three years. He struggled with nerves leading up to the race, but felt he executed his game plan on race day. Jeffrey Frisch, one of Hudec’s Pandahaus-sponsored skiers, finished 48th.
