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As you may have observed, ski cross is one of the wildest and most dangerous sports in the Olympics.
Sort of a mashup of alpine skiing and BMX cycling, it involves athletes racing four at a time down an obstacle course laced with jumps, rollers and banked turns, with only the top two advancing to the next round of the tournament. Intentional contact is not allowed, but with everyone jockeying for position in such tight quarters, the inevitable bumping of bodies and skis leads to a lot of scary crashes and devastating injuries.
And yet, Canada has found consistent success amid this chaos, capturing a world-leading four gold and seven overall medals since ski cross became part of the Olympics in 2010 in Vancouver. Almost all of these have come in the women’s event, where Ashleigh McIvor (2010), Marielle Thompson (2014) and Kelsey Serwa (2018) won the first three Olympic golds and helped Canada rack up six of the 12 medals awarded to date. Brady Leman won the men’s gold in 2018.
Based on recent results, Canada’s success is likely to continue at this February’s Olympics in Italy.
In a bit of a twist, the top contender this time is on the men’s side. Reece Howden, a 27-year-old from Cultus Lake, B.C., won a record seven times on the World Cup circuit last season to capture the third Crystal Globe championship of his career and his second in three years. Yesterday, Howden bounced back from a disappointing season opener in France (he finished fifth and 25th in his two starts there) to win in Switzerland for his record-breaking 19th career World Cup victory.
Reece Howden of Cultus Lake, B.C., won his 19th World Cup gold medal in Arosa, Switzerland, passing France’s Jean-Frederic Chapuis to become the winningest male ski cross racer in FIS World Cup history.
The only question is whether Howden can deliver on the sport’s biggest stage. He was eliminated in the quarterfinals at the 2022 Olympics and has not won an individual medal in his four appearances at the world championships, including a first-round exit last March.
Along with Howden, a new (old) Canadian contender emerged last week in France as 37-year-old Kevin Drury earned his first World Cup win in five years. The Torontonian finished fourth at the 2018 Olympics, took bronze at the 2019 world championships and, the following season, became the first Canadian man to win a ski cross Crystal Globe. He finished seventh in the World Cup standings last season on the strength of five bronze medals.
Jared Schmidt (one bronze) was the only other Canadian man to reach the podium last season.
As usual, Canada’s talent runs deeper on the women’s side. Four of the top eight in the World Cup standings last season were Canadians — led by India Sherret, who finished a career-high third in the points chase after winning two golds, a silver and a bronze. Unfortunately, Sherret crashed during last week’s season opener in France and did not compete yesterday in Switzerland. It’s unclear when she’ll be ready to return.
That was another cruel reminder of how quickly fortunes can change in this sport. Last season, Canada’s top women’s ski crosser, Marielle Thompson, was closing in on her fifth career World Cup title, and second in a row, when she tore a knee ligament in a crash in late February. Thompson, who had five golds and a bronze when she went down, fell to sixth in the standings.
The good news, if you can call it that, is Thompson has plenty of experience when it comes to recovering from knee injuries in time for the Olympics. In the fall of 2017, she tore the ACL and MCL in her right knee just three months before the Games, but somehow still made it to Pyeongchang to defend her title, only to get knocked out in the first elimination round. She tore the same ACL 10 months before the 2022 Games in Beijing, but returned to capture the silver medal.
Toronto’s Kevin Drury came back from last place to win Friday’s World Cup ski cross big final race in Val Thorens, France.
This time, Thompson is trying to come back from a torn LCL in that same right knee. The 33-year-old from Whistler, B.C., got back on snow in mid-November and, after missing the World Cup opener in France, returned to competition yesterday in Switzerland and made it through qualifying before being eliminated in the first round of head-to-head racing for a 20th-place finish.
Here’s hoping Thompson and Sherret are healthy for the Olympics. If not, Courtney Hoffos could step into the role of Canada’s top women’s medal contender after placing seventh in the World Cup standings last year with three silvers and a pair of bronze while also winning silver at the world championships. Hoffos kicked off the current season with a silver last week, but she crashed in the semifinals yesterday and was unable to race in the “small” final for the top four skiers who didn’t advance to the medal race. There was no further word on her condition.
At the Olympics, the battle for the women’s gold will be extremely tough against Switzerland’s Fanny Smith, who won her fourth World Cup overall title last season, and Sweden’s Sandra Naeslund, who’s back on top after back-to-back season-ending injuries derailed one of the most dominant runs in Olympic sports.
Naeslund won an incredible 17 consecutive World Cup events from December 2021 to February 2023 while also capturing Olympic gold in 2022 and back-to-back world titles in ’21 and ’23. But a mid-season knee injury cost her a shot at her third consecutive World Cup Crystal Globe in 2024 before a broken leg last December sidelined her for virtually the entire season.
A year later, Naeslund is very much back as the Olympic gold-medal favourite after winning the first three events of the season. She started with a pair of victories last week in France on the same hill where she broke her leg, then prevailed again yesterday in Switzerland for her record-extending 42nd career World Cup win.
The ski cross World Cup tour continues this week in Innichen, Italy. After qualifying on Friday, there will be men’s and women’s competitions on both Saturday and Sunday, starting at 6 a.m. ET. Watch them live on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem.
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