ZHANGJIAKOU, China — Heavily favoured to win medals in men's ski cross at the Beijing Olympics, Canada was kept off the podium on Friday.
Calgary’s Brady Leman, the 2018 Olympic champion in the discipline, was the top Canadian, finishing sixth in Beijing. The 35-year-old was disappointed that his Olympic career will likely end without a second medal around his neck.
"I'm bummed. I'm tired. I'm relieved that it's over. I'm proud of how I skied," said Leman, watching the podium ceremony from afar. "Disappointed, for sure, as well. A lot of emotions going on."
Switzerland took gold and silver, with Ryan Regez coming in first and Alex Fiva behind him. Russia's Sergey Ridzik earned bronze.
Leman had been in a semifinal with Fiva and Ridzik, even briefly taking a lead before immediately falling back into fourth. The veteran skier couldn't catch up to the crowd before the finish line, sending him to the small final and ending Canada's hopes for a podium on the day.
"It really is a game of inches and centimetres out there and sometimes you come out on the right side and sometimes you come out on the wrong side," said Leman. "Unfortunately, that was the wrong side in an Olympic semifinal."
A heavy medal favourite heading into the event, Canada saw three of its four skiers — Reece Howden of Cultus Lake, B.C., Toronto's Kevin Drury and Ottawa's Jared Schmidt — ousted in the quarterfinals. Howden earned the Crystal Globe as the overall World Cup men's ski cross champion in 2020-21. Drury won the Crystal Globe in 2019-20.
Both Schmidt and Drury were philosophical about Canada missing out on winning a medal, even though the national men's ski cross roster is so deep.
"I'm not really disappointed. Anything can happen right?" said Schmidt, who earned bronze at two World Cup events in 2021. "Like any one of us four guys could be on the podium on any given day.
"I think we all just go out there and we try and ski our best and today maybe was just kind of wrong place, right time."
Drury echoed that sentiment.
"It's part of the sport, right? You can be over and above the rest of the world and you get taken out in the first round, right?" said Drury. "It's part of our sport."
A bigger concern for Drury is the way course designers are shortening ski-cross courses, especially at the Olympics. He said that the shorter courses don't play to Canada's competitive strengths.
"It's too easy. It's too easy. There's not enough straight sections. Like any mistake you get here the person behind you doesn't have enough room to pass because there's another turn," said Drury. "So you just end up with more contact and more contact and more contact.
"That's not how we want to race. We want to have clean races. We want to have the best guy coming down in first, not the best blocker, if that makes sense."
Leman said the Beijing Games are likely his last Olympics but he's "keeping the door open a crack" to returning. But like Drury, he's concerned with how course design is changing and said that evolution could push him out of ski cross.
"The sport is so hard and they're making the courses easier it seems every year. That just brings the field tighter and tighter together," said Leman. "There's less features to separate guys. The margins become smaller and smaller, so it's not getting any easier.
"I'm not getting any younger, but I'm still fast and I still think I can win. So I'm gonna need a couple years to decompress."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 18, 2022.
John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press
