West Vancouver’s multi-sport star is back to being a one-sport woman.
Georgia Simmerling, an amateur sport icon in Canada for her prowess in both skiing and cycling, announced her retirement from ski cross racing today. Simmerling spent 11 years with Alpine Canada, four years as an alpine racer and seven on the ski cross team.
Over the past decade Simmerling has put together a stunning resume that included alpine racing at the 2010 Olympic Games in Whistler and ski cross at the 2014 Games in Sochi. She then made an unprecedented switch to track cycling and made history in 2016, becoming the first Canadian athlete to compete in three different Olympics in three different sports. In Rio Simmerling claimed her first Olympic medal, winning bronze in track cycling team pursuit.
Simmerling was all set to compete in her fourth Olympic Games this year in South Korea but her ski cross dreams were dashed in a nasty crash in her final World Cup race before the Games. Simmerling broke both her legs after falling hard in the semifinals of an event held at Nakiska in Alberta.
“Ski cross is a high-risk sport and as an athlete you need to accept those risks,” Simmerling wrote in a message on her personal blog. “I struggled to accept what my reality became in the weeks leading up to the Games and instead had to watch my teammates compete from afar.”
Her skiing career may have been cut short but Simmerling packed a lot into it, including battling several scary injuries – she broke three vertebrae in a crash in 2012 – and earning nine medals on the World Cup ski cross circuit. Competing on home soil in 2010 was one of the biggest highlights of that time.
"Representing Canada at my home Olympics in Vancouver was something I’ll never forgot," she said. "Walking through BC Place in front of 60,000 fans cheering for Canada was incredible.”
Simmerling, however, has vowed to continue her cycling career with the aim of getting back on track for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
“I am definitely not done with sport,” she said. “I cannot wait to continue to heal, rebuild my body back from what feels like below ground zero and eventually rejoin my summer teammates.”
