There was a moment the night before Mike Janyk's final Olympic race that he was sent spinning by a picture of a normally benign, inanimate object: a bridge.
The West Vancouver native had already decided before the Sochi Olympics began that this would be his final season on the World Cup ski circuit but he hadn't yet made that information public. Relaxing in an athlete's lounge set up by the Canadian Olympic Committee on the eve of the Olympic slalom race, Janyk started idly flipping through a coffee table book featuring photos of famous places in Canada.
The book was placed there to give the athletes a little taste of home in a faraway place. Janyk stopped when he hit a picture of that famous North Shore attraction, the Capilano Suspension Bridge.
"I totally broke down," he says. "It just brought me back to all the days growing up in West Van, going to soccer, going to tennis, driving up to Cypress, driving up to Grouse to go train at night after school. It was all those cool memories that you don't think of at the time."
Janyk raced the next day and finished 16th, a slightly disappointing result for the 31-year-old that likely reinforced the decision he'd made to retire. Janyk, in fact, says it wasn't really a decision at all so much as his body and mind coming to a natural realization a few weeks before the Games began.
"I was home, and generally when you're home you decompress, you find that fire and then you head back out. I always thought I would ski for another Olympic cycle, and then it just came to me: now is the time. In doing so I realized
I'd achieved all my dreams that I set out as a ski racer."
Janyk's journey began on the slopes of the North Shore and Whistler mountains where he learned to ski by chasing his older sister Britt - she went on to have an impressive ski career herself and is now also retired with her twoyear-old daughter Nina. Janyk's dreams came into focus under some strange circumstances.
"I was 13 years old, lying in bed with a broken leg," he says. "It was my second broken leg in the same year and I remember thinking that if I could make the national team, if I could ski for Canada in the Olympics, then anything would be possible. At that point I was not nearly the best around."
But soon enough, he was the best around. Janyk started winning local events and by the age of 17 was scoring podium finishes in FIS races against international competition. At age 19 he made his debut on the World Cup circuit in a slalom on the famous Kitzbuehel course in Austria. Starting in 2004 he was a staple on the national team and he hasn't stopped since, hitting the World Cup circuit hard along with three Olympic Games. There were some big triumphs along the way, including a World Cup silver in Colorado in 2006, a World Championship bronze in France in 2009, and nine Canadian championship medals, including four golds.
Following this year's Olympics, Janyk still had one more World Cup race to get through, a slalom on March 9 in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia. By now his retirement decision was public knowledge and with the end in sight, Janyk was having a hard time finding the fire needed to put it all on the line against the world's best.
"When you get in the start gate you've got to be so hungry for it," he says. "I didn't have that hunger once I realized it was time, and so the first run for the last World Cup I was like, 'Oh my God, what am I doing here?' It was really hard, actually. It was really hard to go back in the start gate because for athletes it's a vulnerable place and you've got to be ready to really commit."
Janyk barely made it to the second run - needing to crack the top-30, he finished 29th. He wasn't hopeful that things would be much better the second time down.
"I was dragging myself up to the start again," he says. "Then about two minutes before I started, everything went clear. It was just like total silence. I looked down over the course and I was like, 'I got this.' It was just like nothing - total silence, stillness."
In his last World Cup pass ever, Janyk posted the fastest time, winning the second run. Officially it only bumped him up to 15th overall on the day but for that one final run Janyk was the best in the world.
"It was that feeling of I could do absolutely anything on my skis - that's the reason why we ski," he says. "To finish with that pure sense of the sport was so cool, so special.. .. Afterwards I said thank God it was a moment of intuition to retire, because no logic or reason would make anyone want to walk away from this feeling."
It's not completely over yet as Janyk will be on something of a farewell tour the next couple of weeks on two mountains that are dear to him. This Wednesday he'll take part in the slalom at the Canadian Championships in Whistler, the place Janyk has called home on-and-off since his family moved there from West Vancouver when he was 13.
Janyk also confirmed that he'll take part in the Keurig Cup Spring Series slalom on Grouse Mountain March 31. It'll be a return to the sight of a key moment in his career - he scored a pair of wins on Grouse the last time he raced there, way back in 1998.
"That's when I started skiing fast. Before that I was never the best. Then I won two in Panorama, came to Grouse and won those two and basically never looked back from there."
He'll have plenty of time to look back now, and do many other things that weren't possible when he was on the circuit.
"When I was going after my dreams as a ski racer I never saw them as sacrifices because I was going after what I loved to do but now I can see the things that I missed out on - getting to cruise around B.C. and skiing for fun, going to a friend's wedding - all these kinds of things you don't get to do when you're travelling all the time and training. I'm looking forward to normal life."
That life will still include work with the Mike and Manny Camp, an organization he started along with fellow North Shore racer Manuel Osborne-Paradis that helps provide ski opportunities for kids who would not normally be able to afford it.
"That's something that I'm most passionate about and am going to keep growing."
Having lived his dreams on the slopes, Janyk is now looking for new ones off of them. When the North Shore News caught up with him he was hard at work babysitting little Nina. The conversation came to a slightly abrupt end.
"Is that poop?" he asks his little niece. "She did poop."
It's not exactly the same as the Zen of ripping off the perfect ski run, but Janyk sounds like he's loving every moment of it.
"It still feels right," he says about retirement. "I'm looking forward to the next part."
