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Chris Kent – Keeping the dream alive

It was the spring of 1979. The Crazy Canucks were the toast of the ski racing world. For a young teenager from Calgary, the idea of racing internationally with the likes of Mur and Pod and Irwin and Read was almost too fantastic to believe.
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It was the spring of 1979. The Crazy Canucks were the toast of the ski racing world. For a young teenager from Calgary, the idea of racing internationally with the likes of Mur and Pod and Irwin and Read was almost too fantastic to believe.

"I'd had a pretty good showing at the Canadian Championships that year," recounts Chris Kent with a grin. "And I guess they were looking for new talent to develop. So the team decided to drag me along to Lake Placid for the pre-Olympic World Cup." He pauses for a moment. The grin gets even bigger. "I was only 17, you know. And even though I had grown up at Lake Louise and knew Ken [Read] pretty well, it was still a heck of a big deal for me to be traveling and racing with such a legendary group of racers..."

Thirty years have come and gone since Kent first raced for Canada. Meanwhile, the Whistler sports-entrepreneur has become one of the most decorated skiers in the country's history. Indeed, there are few events that Chris hasn't managed to master in the last three decades - from head-to-head pro races and grueling endurance tests (he owns a number of world records, including the most vertical feet skied in 24 hours) to early big-mountain events and even a bump contest or two. He virtually owned the Couloir Extreme crown in its heyday and he's been a perennial top finisher in the Peak-to-Valley race. As for his Arctic Man adventures, well, that's fodder for a whole article.

But the memories of that first trip with the Canadian Team still burn bright for the 47-year-old. "The Americans were hosting their nationals a week before the World Cup," he explains. And laughs. "My first day on the course was a total disaster. I was on the upper section of the downhill on Whiteface Mountain and the track was harder and icier than anything I'd ever seen before. We were on our 'inspection skis' and my edges weren't holding worth a damn." Suddenly Kent started to feel his skis go. What to do?

"I was on one of the steepest sections of the course," he explains. "And now I was skidding sideways down the mountain. I was going slow, but I was definitely losing control of my skis." Desperate for a way out of this awkward situation, the young racer tried to steer his skis towards the edge of the run where there might be some softer snow to slow his skid. Mistake. His ski tips got caught in the loose snow and twisted him around. He flailed mightily but there was no chance to recover. He went down. Hard.

And who should be there to break his fall? "Phil Mahre was standing right below me," he says. At the time, the American racer was one of the biggest stars on the World Cup circuit. "It was hugely embarrassing," admits Kent. "I ran straight into him, knocked him to the ground and we both slid down the course and landed in a heap in the net."

Welcome to the big time. Bam! Welcome to icy courses. Bang! "That was my intro to world-class racing," he says, a grin plastered across his face. "And no matter how many times I tell that story, it always gets a laugh..."

Chris admits that in retrospect, getting pulled out of domestic competition for a shot at the big time was way premature. "I hadn't even won a race yet," he says. "Far better for me to continue on the Pontiac Cup circuit and learn how it felt to reach the top step of the podium. But I was young. And when the national team called in those days, well, it wasn't something that you turned down." He stops speaking. Sighs. "There are things I definitely regret about those years..."

At first, it all seemed to be going the young ski racer's way. "Getting to compete with my heroes in Lake Placid was a big breakthrough for me," he says. "Suddenly I realized that these guys were all human - just like me. It made me feel pretty comfortable with what I was doing." Nothing to worry about, he figured. As long as he stayed healthy...

Named officially to the national team in the fall of 1979, Kent suffered his first knee injury later that January. "So I went home and rehabilitated," he says. The partially torn ligament didn't appear to be a big deal at the time. And as events would prove, the 18 year old was still on track to take over from his older teammates. "I skied really well in New Zealand later that summer," he recounts. "I even won a race down there - beat all the Crazy Canucks for the first time in my life!"

Heady days for the young Calgarian. Kent made the cover of Ski Racing Magazine . Experts started hailing him as a prodigy. And coaches started pushing each other out of the way to jump on his bandwagon. Everything was going his way. "We arrived in Val D'Isere for the first World Cup race of the '80-'81 season," he remembers, "and we were greeted with really lousy weather. The Europeans all wanted to go home - they moaned and complained about being stuck there with nothing to do. But we had no choice so we decided to make the best of it."

They succeeded. While the top step of the podium eluded the Canucks' onslaught on race day, they virtually swept the next six positions (five of the top seven). Kent skied to a fourth place finish there, a blink away from the podium. "We were on fire," he says. "It's still the best team finish in Canadian ski racing history." Another happy grin. "And I was right in the mix." Not bad for a kid who just celebrated his 19 th birthday...

Sadly the Val D'Isere race would remain the high point in Chris Kent's World Cup career. For the next week in Italy, well, let's listen to his take on it.

"Racers had just begun to jump the Camel Bumps that year," he recalls of Val Gardena's legendary triple-jump combination halfway down the course. "And not everyone was convinced it was the way to go." Having grown up around the Nordic jump at Banff's Mt Norquay, Kent was nearly convinced that he too could clear the Saslong's fearsome trio in one leap. Nearly. "I didn't sleep at all the night of the race," he admits. "I couldn't decide. Finally I decided to play it safe and ride the Camel Bumps like I had in practice."

Race day dawned cold and fast. Kent approached the Camel Bumps like a bat out of hell. But he still went for the press. "By the time I hit the second bump I knew I was in trouble," he says. No question. His airborne trajectory took him right to the lip of the third. "Suddenly my skis were over my head," he says. And guffaws. "I don't know how I did it, but I somehow managed to get my skis back under me. I never fell. But with all that leverage on my knees - well, something had to go..."

Everything went - ligament, meniscus, muscles - his previously-damaged knee was a mess. "But at the time I didn't know that," he says. "My plan was to go home, rehab my knee and get back to racing as soon as possible." But on his return to competition two months later in St Anton, the team doctors refused to allow him to compete. He was operated on that spring, and though he says he did everything he could to get back into the swing of things, he never fully recovered...

"I spent the next five years frustrated," he admits. "Even though I could do well in training, I could never impose myself at the top level again."

Fortunately, says Chris, he was always more a skier than a racer. "I'm very turned on by the culture of skiing," explains the lifelong snoweater. "Growing up around Calgary and Banff, I was surrounded by bigger-than-life ski personalities." He laughs. "I mean, when your first coach is a guy like Mike Wiegele, you can't help but love ski culture...

"You know, it's all about people with big smiles. When I was growing up all the older skiers around me still had a twinkle in their eye and deep laugh lines on their faces." He stops. Sighs deeply. "That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. The culture has changed. And I don't think it's changed for the better." It's a combination of things, he says, a bigger urban influence, a lack of mountain awareness, too much reliance on technology. "These days, the 'look' seems to be more important than the 'experience.' And for me, that's not what skiing is about at all."

He smiles but there's little mirth in it. "The ski industry has become business-centric instead of culture-centric," he says. "And that's totally backwards. The magic of the sport is being crushed." He pauses. "Something of great value got lost between 1990 and 2009... and I think that's part of the angst you feel around Whistler these days."

He cites a bumper sticker he saw recently - "Only little fat kids ski" - as a sign of the times. "So what's that about?" he asks. "It's such a stupid statement. Why create divisions where they don't exist? Skis, snowboards - it doesn't matter what you have on our feet, we're all part of the same mountain culture."

A 20-year resident of Whistler - "I was coaching the Ontario Team and our last race of the 1989 season was here. I never left. I love this place!" - Chris admits his professional pursuits have always been about one thing: "How do I keep my ski addiction alive?"

And it seems to be working. With a lucrative CTV contract in place for the 2010 Games - "I'll be commentating the skicross events and I'm a researcher for the alpine events," he tells me proudly - the young athlete who had shown so much World Cup potential as a teenager is still in the thick of it. "I couldn't imagine doing anything else," he concludes. "Skiing is still my life."