There's an A-frame at the base of Creekside that was once the weekend home of Dr. Jim Osborne, the very first on-mountain doctor for Whistler Mountain going back to 1966. Just a few hundred feet above it is the finish line where Dr. Osborne's grandson Manny will attempt to make history in less than a week in the men's downhill and super G events.
It might have been part of some grand plan, except until recently there was no plan at all. Dr. Osborne did take Manuel Osborne-Paradis skiing for the first time at the age of three, but it was strictly recreational as Manny is the first and only member of the clan to ever crash a gate on purpose.
Even Manny is not entirely sure how he got to this point, winning World Cup events and racing in the Olympics on his home hill.
"I think it just seeped in over the years," he said. "I made the B.C. Ski Team and at that point I was really excited to make the team, and all of a sudden I wanted to make the national development team. Then there was a time on the B.C. team where I wasn't doing as well as I wanted, but then I made the development team and half a year later I was on the World Cup tour. Before I knew it I was racing in the World Cup.
"It happened so suddenly, and I kept moving up even when I wasn't expecting to. It just kind of happened."
His mother Jane Osborne couldn't be prouder or more amazed looking back at Manny's rise to the top.
"In the beginning it was just Dad and myself, we took him up and we got him started. A few years later he was in the Whistler Ski Scamps. I think there was a real camaraderie in the Scamps that carried him over into the Whistler Mountain Ski Club - it became his social life, those were the buddies he hung out with."
Again, there was no plan for Manny. Not yet.
"Manuel is also a very here-and-now person and we all kind of got caught up in the cogs of ski racing," Jane said. "I remember he had to make a conscious decision when he was a J1, age 15 or 16 with a chance of making the B.C. Ski Team, because he really wanted to downhill mountain bike and he had to make a choice. It was one or the other, both of them going downhill - he could never do anything safe."
The young Manny always had an edge that Jane found disconcerting at times, but a family friend told her that if Manny wanted to be like the world's fastest ski racer - and when Manny was growing up it was Austria's Hermann Maier - you had to be a little crazy.
Not that she ever had much proof of his craziness. "If there was any trouble he was always around it, but it was never his fault," Jane recalls. "Somehow we were never too worried about him. I once told him, 'You're never going to graduate school on good looks and charm alone,' but somehow he did it. I'm not sure how he did, but I'm sure he made a few teachers question their profession."
Now, watching Osborne-Paradis hit speeds over 140 km/h in World Cup events, Jane says she has to remind herself who is in control.
"Manny always calculates when he does something," she says. "He definitely has guts. One of his earliest ski teachers said, 'You can't teach guts,' but there's definitely more to it than that. He has a natural freeness in himself to go for it. He knows the risk and I have to remind myself of that. I'm nervous every time he comes down the course because I know in a blink of an eye something can happen. The first thing I want to see is that he comes down safely, then I look to see how he did."
Denis Embacher taught three out of Whistler's four alpine Olympians when they were in the J4 ski school program - the year before kids move up to the Whistler Mountain Ski Club and start to race. He taught Osborne-Paradis as well as siblings Britt and Mike Janyk. Robbie Dixon was with the Blackcomb ski school at the time, when Whistler and Blackcomb were separate operations.
He remembers Manny as "very energetic - I guess I can put it like that," he says. "Nowadays they would say ADD. It wasn't a problem, he was just very passionate about learning and getting better. At the time he wasn't the star, but he was in the top 10 when he raced. I don't think it was talent that took him this far, it's hard work, it's passion, it's dedication. He's always been good at fixing goals."
Two memories of Osborne-Paradis stick out for Embacher. The first was that Manny loved to jump and always tried to beat Embacher's distance. "He would come close, even though he was only half my weight at the time," Embacher recalls. "That's one thing you can really see on the World Cup, he's so comfortable in the air."
Another memory was Manny's enthusiasm for skiing.
"In the mornings we would meet at 9:30 at the top, and he'd have already done four or five runs," said Embacher. "He used to bug the liftees at the bottom, asking 'Can I go now? Can I go now?' until he wore them down. He was always trying to do more than everybody else. He liked a challenge and freeskiing, which is why he's in a different category. Even when he gets time off skiing I bet he goes skiing."
Jordan Williams worked with Osborne-Paradis at the Whistler Mountain Ski Club until he was named to the B.C. Ski Team and headed to Invermere.
"It's tough to know what kids are going to move on at that age, but Manny was very unique in a certain way," said Williams, who is now coaching the B.C. Ski Team.
"He was always a joker and a player and he wasn't always there on time for dryland - he was usually out on his bike instead of doing what we told him... but when it came time to race he was always able to show up and do really well. He's always had a lot of confidence, and maybe a stronger vision of self than most kids his age."
While he may have cruised when he was younger, Williams said he noticed a big change in Manny after he moved to Invermere and trained under Dusan Grasjic.
"That's where he found out how to work hard physically and mentally, where he learned to prepare for races," says Williams. "He always had great instincts and he was always having fun while pushing himself, but until then he was always the guy who'd rather ski off course going too fast than slow down to make the corner. He's definitely figured out by now that you can do both."
Osborne-Paradis has matured. He goes into every race with a plan and spends his free time during the race season thinking about the next race - a small sacrifice, he jokes, considering he gets to spend the other nine months of the year thinking about nothing.
"I do have a game plan for every course so I can put together a more thoughtful run, I guess - the type of run where you know where you can push the limits in certain ways and relax in others," he says.
The sport has gotten faster in the few years that Osborne-Paradis has been with the team, with athletes pushing 150 km/h on some courses.
"I think the courses are in better shape than they were a few years ago, and the equipment is better," he said. "I think that's where having a bit of experience and knowing the courses comes into play, because the younger guys get tired before the end. When I get to the finish line I feel like I can keep going."
And what's it like to go 150 km/h on skis - a speed most people never reach except during takeoff?
"I used to get scared when the wind got really loud in my helmet," Manny says. "It's like sticking your head out of a car window and it's so loud you can't hear anything. That's what I used to experience and I didn't really like that."
He's learned ways to block the sound since those early days.
"Now, (getting used to speed) is the whole point of training. To get confident at that speed and have it feel normal. If you take a few weeks off it does creep up on you the first time back on skis, but I've been doing this a while now and know how to deal with the speed pretty well."
While Manny tries to keep the Olympics - in his old backyard no less - in perspective with his real career of ski racing on the World Cup circuit, he says it does feel different.
"You can't really put your finger on what's so different about it, you're racing the same guys and everything, but it is different," he said. "There's more attention, more cameras, more fans. And it's cool to be involved in something like that. For me it's always been more fun to look out and see the crowds than look in.
"It's still my home hill, I still have a FIS card with the Whistler Mountain Ski Club. I think of it as my course, and obviously I want to do well. But at the same time it's still ski racing. I know I have to think of the basics, what's going to do well, how to go fast, and just hope everything goes to plan."
