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Future remains bright for Canadian alpine ski team - 2010/03/27 18:39
CALGARY -- If there's one thing that years of competitive skiing have taught Manny Osborne-Paradis, it's the importance of looking at what's in front of you, not what's behind you.
Take the Winter Olympics, for instance. After years of buildup, years of expectations and years of pressure, the Canadian alpine ski team left Whistler without a single medal - a result that, to put it mildly, was disappointing.
But as the national team puts a wrap on the 2009-10 season at this week's GMC Canadian championships at Nakiska - kicking off Monday morning with the men's and women's downhill competition - the focus remains firmly on the future.
"I think it was over the next day," said Osborne-Paradis of the disappointment (he was 17th in the Olympic downhill and didn't finish the super-G). "I think if you dwell on anything, you're not being professional about it. If I have a bad race, generally I have another race to go to the next day or in two or three days. If you get down on yourself and overthink certain things, you're really not helping anybody out.
"The Olympics was a race, it didn't work out the way we planned it," added the native of North Vancouver, B.C. "But I couldn't pay enough money for the knowledge I took out of the Olympics in terms of how to approach races in the future. When you fail, you have to take whatever you learned from it and use it to your advantage."
In the big picture, the future remains bright. The Canadians finished strong on the World Cup circuit, with Erik Guay of Mont-Tremblant, Que., claiming the season super-G title with an amazing run of races in Europe earlier this month and, on the whole, the national team showed remarkable resilience as teammates kept getting carted off hills with season-ending injuries.
And at the Olympics, pointed out Calgary's Jan Hudec, it wasn't just the Canadians who struggled.
"To the general public, it was probably more upsetting than it was to us because they assume the Olympics are the be-all, end-all of racing, which it really isn't," he said. "It was an amazing opportunity, obviously. I don't want to downplay it. But at the same time, when guys like Didier Cuche (of Switzerland) are dominating the season and dominating the training runs, and he can't even come close to challenging in the race. . . . For us, the scope of the whole season outweighs the couple days of disappointing results we had at the Olympics."
The nationals run all week at Nakiska. The men's super-G and women's combined go Tuesday, the men's combined and women's super-G are Wednesday, the men's giant slalom is Thursday, with the women's GS on Friday and the slalom finals Saturday.
"The nationals are where it started for me, and for the kids to get to race against us, it's really important," said Emily Brydon of Fernie, B.C., who, it's widely speculated, will announce her retirement this week after a splendid career. "And for myself? It's a chance to really enjoy a non-stressful race environment. I'm a competitor, I always want to be on the podium, I always want to win, so I'll go for gold (Monday) and we'll see what happens.
"But it's really hard after an Olympic year and a World Cup year to come back - you really don't have the same motivation and you're not going to take the same risks, and the younger kids can take advantage of that."
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