As far as North Vancouver’s high-flying Manuel Osborne-Paradis is concerned, reports of the death of the Canadian alpine ski team have been greatly exaggerated.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from pundits and fans after the team failed to win a medal in Whistler during the 2010 Olympics. In fact, no Canadian has won an Olympic alpine medal since 1994. But they’ve come close on many occasions, says the man known to all as Manny, and when the five-ring circus sets up again less than a month from now in Sochi, Russia, the Canadian Cowboys will be there again pushing the limits to try to get that gold.
“We’ve been so close,” Manny says on the phone from Wengen, Switzerland, where he’s gearing up for this weekend’s World Cup race. He lists off a number of near misses, including a Super G in Turin in 2006 that was scrapped midway because of bad weather. When the race was called off Manny was sitting in second place and teammate John Kucera was third. When they restarted the race another Canadian, Erik Guay, finished fourth, one of his many Olympic near misses.
That’s the life of a racer, says Manny, where a lot of factors come into play and not all of them can be controlled by the men in the skin-tight suits.
“This will be my third Olympics. We’ve had a decade of really being able to push our skiing. There’s been so many podiums between each Olympics — it’s just a matter of time. These are the exact same people we’re competing against every weekend and we can get podiums then. Why can’t it happen at the Olympics? There’s no reason.”
The Canadians, in fact, have done pretty well for themselves considering they’re up against European juggernauts like Austria, Switzerland and France, who together have won more Olympic alpine medals than all other countries combined.
“It’s a tough sport,” says Manny. “We’re not the biggest ski nation, whatsoever. . . . Out of all the second-tier countries, we’re one of the best out there. It’s something to be proud of, but nonetheless that doesn’t bring medals home. That’s our attitude and we know what our job is and what we’re there to achieve: it’s definitely not fifth or fourth place — it’s top three.”
To that end Manny says he’ll go with his usual Olympic strategy of pushing the limits of his skiing to get a top three finish. It’s a slight variation of the mantra adopted by the title character in the seminal car racing movie Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby: If you ain’t first, you’re last.
“People bring up my results at the Olympics but all my results have been very close to the podium and then big mistakes,” Manny says. “Those mistakes are mistakes that I’m making because it’s only top three that matters at the Olympics. If I’m fifth or I’m 20th, it doesn’t matter — it’s not top three.”
Manny knows that if he’s on his game, a top three finish is well within his reach. He owns nine World Cup medals, including three golds, and though he missed a big chunk of time following a serious knee injury suffered in January 2011, he’s back near the top of the pack with five top-10 finishes since he returned to the slopes last season. Manny also knows that he’s not quite on top of his game at this moment, but he’s close. There will be a World Cup race every weekend from now until Sochi, an Olympic crescendo that will allow all of the racers to find their form heading into the big show.
“I haven’t really found that fire to be on the podium week in, week out — but it’s coming,” says Manny. “My races have been good races, but there’s that little winning edge that you get when you’re on top of your game — I haven’t had that feeling. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not to come, and I’ve had great results without it. It’s not like I can’t find it, it’s just about digging deep and persevering.”
Manny says he may not be in peak form at this very moment but with years of experience on his resumé, he’s now an expert at reading his own performances and understanding what’s going wrong and what needs to be fixed.
“I know myself a lot better, I know my skiing a lot better,” he says. “It’s January — this is what racing is all about. This is the spot where you get right into it and it’s great that the Olympics go right after this little session in Europe here. . . . This is a building month for the Olympics, this is where I get it. Generally in my career I start skiing well in the later part of the season.”
Experience has also taught Manny one more lesson: the importance of staying sane during this frantic stretch of events leading up to the Games. He and his teammates will have spent more than a month living out of suitcases by the time the Olympics roll around, adhering to strict training and travel schedules. The skiers live an odd existence in which they’re staying in some of the most beautiful mountain regions of the world but have no time to take it all in because they’ve got to be up early for dryland training or another video session.
“It’s 10:30 p.m. right now, I just got into my hotel room and still have half an hour of things to get ready for tomorrow. It’s a long day,” says Manny. “It becomes very tedious and it’s good to just jump out of that zone of your daily timetable and just go out and do something on your own.”
To ward off cabin fever, Manny has recruited a little posse of B.C. buddies — including brewpub baron Mark James, seaplane mogul Greg McDougall, and Vancouver’s unofficial mayor Trevor Linden — to come over to Europe for a couple of weeks before the Games.
“That’ll be nice. I can hang out with those guys for two weeks . . . just to change up the pace a little bit,” says Manny.
“A lot of it is just making sure to get out of the hotel, go experience things,” he says of what skiers need to do to stay fresh. “It’s about taking those days off and going to see something you haven’t seen before, or at least leaving the hotels for dinner and just enjoying the culture a little bit more and taking it all in. Make it feel a little bit like you have some freedom, like when you’re at home.”
A fresh mind and fresh body will hopefully lead to a fresh Olympic result, says Manny.
“You want to say you’re focused on the Olympics a lot but it is a process to get to the Olympics and it’s something that doesn’t just happen,” he says. “You need to push it at every race and by pushing the envelope at each race you learn what to do at the Olympics. Until I’m in Sochi there’s no point in really focusing on it too much other than we have our long-term plans of making sure we stay relaxed and happy to be on the road . . . just making sure that we feel fresh enough to ski our best and be our best.”
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The men are in Wengen this weekend, Kitzbuehel next weekend and Garmisch Partenkirchen the following weekend for World Cup races. The men’s Olympic downhill is scheduled for Feb. 9 and the Super G is slated for Feb. 16 at the Rosa Khutor Alpine Centre.
