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Parachuting into the snowboard World Cup: Of medals and storms and local riders’ success

I’d forgotten what real winter tasted like. Sure, the moisture-laden form we experience here three months of the year fools some people into believing we’re genuinely tough winter folk. And I can see how it happens.
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It's Cold Out There snowboarding on the east coast is certainly a much colder experience.

I’d forgotten what real winter tasted like. Sure, the moisture-laden form we experience here three months of the year fools some people into believing we’re genuinely tough winter folk. And I can see how it happens. After all, I’ve become one of those myself.

But it took me only two weeks of travel Back East to be disabused of that notion. No question about it. We’re pansies. Compared to what those people suffer through — and exult in — we’re poseurs. Not even that. We’re wimps. I mean, I’d forgotten what it meant to have to don long underwear and ski goggles just to go to the grocery store.

And I merde you not. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

“Why don’t you come on the road with us for a couple of World Cup events,” suggested Jim Miller. The head coach of the Canadian Snowboard Team, Miller had a squad of talented young riders, a two-week stand in North America, and a need for a bilingual storyteller to introduce them to an unsuspecting public.

“Oh, and I can’t pay you much,” Miller continued. He smiled — just a hint of irony tweaking his features. “You see, we don’t really have a communications budget.” And that was the clincher. Like many in this community, I’m a sucker for that old “doing your bit for Canadian sports” ploy…

So that’s how I found myself in Lake Placid, site of the 1980 Games, bunking down at the U.S. Olympic Training Centre, a near gulag-like facility where all residents have to sign away their lives — and do so weeks in advance — in order to be allowed to pass through its doors. OK. So I’m exaggerating a little. It was more like a military prison.

But back to winter. Whiteface Mountain, originally called “Cloudsplitter” by the local First Residents, thrusts up from the very heart of New York’s Adirondack Mountains. It’s got an impressive vertical and an offpiste zone that offers some seriously exposed turns. But when the wind blows and the temperature drops at Whiteface, you can feel the cold invade your bones like a swarm of ice bees on the rampage.

The snowboardcross was first on the list of World Cup events here. I can’t remember whether it was the first day of training or the second — it’s an ice-blur to me. All I remember is standing by side of the course feeling so cold that I thought I might crack and shatter. I couldn’t move, could barely think. This too will pass, I kept reminding myself. They told me it was -25 Fahrenheit that morning, but the wind whistling up the hill dropped the chill factor well below the sanity level. I was wearing every piece of winter clothing I’d brought on the trip. But it was still not adequate…

“You should have been here last year,” drawled an American coach, noting my discomfort. “It was minus 40 at least. Serious frostbite weather. This is nothing.”

Meanwhile those daring young jocks on their flying snowboard machines were putting on a show that was mighty impressive. Designed by Whistlerite Jeff Ihaksi — considered by many in the sport to be THE master builder right now — the Whiteface course was a work of art. Gap jumps, kickers, massive banked turns (Jeff’s particular specialty), and a variety of complex terrain features: they all came together to create a vertical puzzle that tested the mettle of the world’s best ’cross riders.

Forget the cold. Forget the discomfort. This was serious sport. And I suffered to my wimpy western core while the athletes fine-tuned their race lines. Watch with me:

Maelle Ricker soaring over a big floater jump like she was born to fly — arms outspread, knees flexed and eyes focused far head like an eagle on the hunt. Drew Neilson and Tom Velisek playing cat-and-mouse at 60 k’s an hour, head-cams on their helmets to “help us figure out some things we don’t see with conventional video,” they told me. And all the others too: the French, the Americans, the Austrians and the Swiss. They were a blur of high-energy motion. Still, the Canadians were the ones setting the pace most runs.

It was fast. It was furious. It was scary as hell. And this, I reminded myself, was only practice…

When race day came, the weather mellowed out a bit, the sun provided a hint of warmth and the Canadians came through in a big way. Silver and bronze for Ricker and Domique Maltais; same outcome for Neilson and Velisek. Yippee. I finally had something to write about — particularly after the Canucks hauled in more hardware the next day during the inaugural team event. Damn the demonstration status of the latter, I thought, six World Cup medals in one weekend was dope. But I digress…

Our next stop was in Quebec City for the Snowboard Jamboree at Stoneham. And no, I didn’t make up that title. That’s what they really call the three-event World Cup contest.

I knew something was up the moment we crossed the St Lawrence and entered the 400-year old city. The snowbanks were so high on the side of the streets that they obscured the houses behind them. Having grown up here, I dimly remembered such images from my youth. But I honestly thought that time had exaggerated their size. Not so.

And the next day Maman Nature showed me what produces such imposing snowbanks. Overnight, a storm had snuck in over the river and had pinned us inside our hotel with nowhere to go. No practice. No riding. No driving the 40 minutes to Stoneham just to take a look. Indeed, the whole of Quebec City was shut down. And for a town that prides itself on its equanimity before a winter storm, this was a serious statement.

That afternoon, I decided to brave the elements and go for a walk in the Old City. The only thing I can say about my preparations is that they were wickedly insufficient. Once again I bundled up in everything I had. Be-goggled, be-scarfed and long-underweared top and bottom, I boldly ventured outside the hotel and was immediately engulfed by what can only be described as a tornado of snow. I couldn’t see. Could barely breathe. And unless I tilted my body aggressively forward, I could get no purchase against the tongues of wind licking hungrily at my flanks.

My walk lasted about 10 minutes — the time it took for me to find a coffee shop in which to escape the storm, rest for a moment and prepare for the battle back to the hotel. Did I already say west-coasters are wimps?

The next day dawned bright and cold. And the next day after that. As usual, the snowboardcross was first on the Jamboree event schedule. And once again Ricker and Jacobellis took it to the mat, with the American winning by a head (literally) as she crashed into the finish line inches ahead of a hard-charging Maelle. Still, Canada had earned yet another medal and I had an ongoing story arc for my releases…

That night I heard on the news that Quebec’s 29 th major storm of the winter was about to hit. And hit hard. Inwardly I scoffed. Every time weather forecasters predict the biggest this or the biggest that, it never happens. Right?

Wrong. Fortunately for the riders competing in the parallel GS the next day, the storm held off till after the 10 th and final round. And once again, there was a Canadian angle: battling from either end of the elimination ladder, alpine snowboard king Jasey-Jay Anderson and heir-apparent Mat Morrison met in the bronze-medal match-up. To the delight of his growing legion of fans, the younger man (by a decade!) prevailed. Another trip to the podium for the team. Two days, two more World Cup medals. Nice.

Remember New Orleans and the big hurricane? Well, the next 10 hours in Quebec City reminded me of that storm — only a lot colder. The city shut down once again. A state of emergency was declared across the province. That evening, we sat in the hotel bar on the ground floor watching the double-glazed windows bulge in and out while pedestrians outside were knocked down by the 100-k gusts and pushed along the ice-slick sidewalk like human tumbleweeds in a winter desert.

I don’t know how they got the halfpipe event off the next day. But they did. While the rest of the region dug itself out of the “storm of the decade”, Canadian freestylers did their part to boost the team’s overall medal haul and help me with my work.

It doesn’t get much better than Sarah Conrad’s story. Celebrating her 23 rd birthday, the Squamish resident captured the first medal of her World Cup career with a pipe performance that delighted the crowd of hardy fans. Minutes later, the new rising star on the men’s circuit, Brad Martin (who also recently moved to Squamish), almost made it two gold medal rides in a week — only to be narrowly out-pointed by American Greg Betz on the last run of the day. By then, the sun had come out again.

And that was that for my trip. Two weeks of competition, three major winter storms, 10 Canadian World Cup medals and a very fine showing by Sea-to-Sky riders. Now if I could only get warm again I’d be happy…