In terms of famous “introspective walks” in Canadian sports, this one is right up there with the Seawall stroll Roberto Luongo took while searching for his lost confidence.
North Vancouver’s Manuel Osborne-Paradis went for a long walk last week to ponder his future in the crazy world of downhill skiing. The 31-year-old racked up World Cup podium spots at a fast pace as a younger skier but a 2011 crash tore up his knee and derailed his career. He appeared to regain his form at the start of the 2014-15 season, placing second in the opening downhill in Lake Louise for his first World Cup medal in nearly five years, but since then he’s crashed out of five races and bailed another time in training, cracking the top-20 only once.
“Everybody was asking me, ‘Why am I not pushing?’” he recalled during a conference call with reporters Saturday. “I said I’m just happy with the speed that I’m going. I don’t feel like I want to go faster. And as a downhill racer, it’s not good . . . not taking a risk at every gate. That’s not skiing to be the best in the world, that’s just skiing to be a participant.”
Those questions and crashes replayed in his mind as he took a stroll in the days leading up to Saturday’s downhill in Kvitfjell, Norway.
“I was thinking, ‘Your mind is not into the skiing, you’re scared, you’re skiing scared,’” he said. “Let me tell you, when you’re going 140 kilometres an hour and you don’t want to be going 140 kilometres an hour, that is a scary, scary time in your life. . . . I was thinking, is this how my career ends? I have a couple of crashes and I just ski my way out of the top 30?”
At the end of the walk the man known as Manny ended up challenging himself. “Find your courage, find your will to win.”
Challenge accepted. On Saturday Manny laid down a sweet run, finishing second behind Austria’s Hannes Reichelt by just three-tenths of a second to win his 11th career World Cup medal.
“I’m so happy that it worked out and happy to be on the podium,” Osborne-Paradis said. “I want to get good results and I want to be part of the show and it’s fun when you actually are.”
Manny, in fact, registered the fastest speed on the course, clocking in at more than 150 kilometres per hour through one of the radar stations. He made a mistake coming out of the starting gate and was well back at the first interval but his blazing speed shot him up the leaderboard in the lower stages of the race. As he crossed the line, however, he didn’t feel like he’d put down a world-beating time.
“I was kind of in shock at the bottom,” he said. “I didn’t celebrate at all. I was just kind of like, huh, I can’t believe that that was the second-place run, because it felt like all the other runs I’ve had.”
His silver showing did eventually sink in though — winning is always the best way to erase any doubts.
“I’ve been dealing with multiple issues, falling a lot and my body not being 100 per cent,” he said. “It’s just been a couple of races for my mind to realize that my body is 100 per cent and I should be pushing hard. I wrapped my head around it today. I was shocked seeing the video when I came down. I got down and I’m in second and I thought no way. It’s just great.”
Aside from offering great scenery for contemplative walks, Kvitfjell has also been home to some of Manny’s best performances. He won two World Cup downhill medals — gold and bronze — there in 2009 and picked up a silver at a lower tier FIS Super G race in 2013.
“I like the course. You can take the risk,” he said. “It’s not a death-defying race by any stretch. You have to know when to push it and when you can just take it easy. It’s a great course for me.”
