Win Might Be Just The Tonic For Britt Janyk

PHIL WALTER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE STAR

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A skier who hopes to win big at home come the Winter Games in February got a small victory about as far away from home as she can get today.

The wins can never come too early when you’re battling to get your confidence back. So Canadian alpine skier Britt Janyk’s victory in a women’s super giant slalom in New Zealand is a good step forward in this Olympic campaign.

Sure, the only other competitive ski nation at Winter Games NZ were the Swedes – their ace Anja Paerson didn’t finish the race.

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Britt Janyk tastes victory again.

But after a World Cup season when Janyk didn’t manage a top-10 finish, the Whistler skier will take what she can get.

The progress of Canada’s Speed Queens – made up of Janyk, Emily Brydon and Kelly VanderBeek -- will be important leading to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. They need to establish they’re back in the game.

After finishing on the podium every weekend of speed racing but one in the 2007-08 World Cup season, they were shut out last year, the best result being a fifth by Brydon in a downhill in Austria.

No one plummeted more than Janyk, who after placing third in the downhill standings the year before and saying she was aiming to win the Crystal Globe in the event, couldn’t manage a top-10 finish and was 26th overall.

The 2007-08 season wasn’t a fluke with one or two good results. She was in the top-10 in all eight downhills, winning one and finishing third in another. The talent is definitely there.

Janyk admitted at the end of the season that a big factor was that “my head just wasn’t there.”

Hopefully, this is an early sign that her head is back into it. This will certainly make things more pleasant because as she said in an interview when we visited the team earlier this summer: “If you’re winning and doing well, it’s easy to have fun and it’s easy to be enjoying it.”

TOUGH TO BEAT: Not like he needed any more confidence, but American snowboard kingpin Shaun White dusted off the competition to win a World Cup snowboard event in Cardrona, New Zealand.

Oliver Kraus, who follows the tour for the International Ski Federation, writes that the defending Olympic champion started with a “Lien Air”, followed by “Backside 900” and “Frontside 720” before cappinghis performance with a “Cab Double Cork 1080” and a final “Frontside 1080.” We'll take his word for it.

Pronounced White: “I think that Double Corks are the future of the sport.”

Hard to argue with the guy.  You can check out a Double Cork here on YouTube.

Brad Martin of Ancaster, Ont., was sixth in the men’s final, while Mercedes Nicoll of Whistler was eighth in the women’s, won by defending world champion Jiayu Liu of China.

Alpine Training Camp Finally Over … Let the Surfing Begin

Canadian downhill ace Manuel Osborne-Paradis is looking forward to some surfing in Maui.

REUTERS FILE PHOTO

Seems likely Manuel Osborne-Paradis is a pretty good surfer.

Teammate Erik Guay can’t wait to spend more time with his newborn daughter.

And world downhill champion John Kucera’s plan is to just chill out, away from snow and the telephone. Now, they’re finally going to get that chance.

The Canadian alpine skiers and their teammates postponed any holiday plans to do some serious training for the last two weeks on the same courses in Whistler where Olympic gold will be at stake in less than a year’s time.

For the men’s team, it meant a chance to race on the Dave Murray Olympic Men’s Downhill on a layout designed by the same International Ski Federation (FIS) official who will set the course for the 2010 Winter Games.

“Something like this is huge,” said Kucera, surprise winner on the men’s world championships downhill in February. “Not many athletes get to compete on home soil in the Olympics, but it’s incredible to have the opportunity to train on the hill and get miles on the track that you’re going to be racing on … Those little of advantages in our sport, that tenth of a second could be the difference between fifth and first.”

Osborne-Paradis, who won the first World Cup race of his career on a downhill course in Kvitfjell, Norway, that’s similar to the terrain in Whistler, also definitely believes that familiarity can breed success, although it doesn’t guarantee it.

“It’s definitely going to be the best skier that wins, but now we can show up to the first training run with a little bit more of an edge and have all four guys who will be competing definitely clearly in charge and all four guys that will be able to podium and win at the Olympics,” he said..

“Whereas if we hadn’t had training, maybe there would be some people who don’t come into it with as much confidence.”

It was the second camp of the year for the men there this season and the third straight year Alpine Canada has staged special training for the national team at the Olympic site.

Another big advantage about the extra training is that the ski technicians not only had a lot of time to try out different skis in different conditions, but they got a head start on ski testing for the start of the next World Cup season.

“We’re just coming off the race mode so we’re able to test the best possible variety of skis right now,” said Guay, whose daughter Logann Elizabeth was born in January.

Whistler is notorious for its fickle weather conditions, something that Kucera believes could play into Canada’s hands because they’ve had a chance to experience it all in their past three years of training there.

“I think honestly for us one of the better things that could happen is the weather is bad here because we do have so much experience running in those conditions.”

Kucera Has World Downhill Title … But No New Sponsors

It was a year in which he became a world downhill champion, but Canada’s Johnny Kucera wasn’t super impressed with himself.

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John Kucera won this big one but said it was a mediocre year.

“I guess the best way to describe it is it was a mediocre year with some really awesome days,” said Kucera, who’s currently in Whistler with his teammates training on the Olympic alpine courses.

It might sound self deprecating, but that’s the way Kucera feels. And he’s not the type of guy to sugarcoat things.

“For sure, I put it together on the biggest day of the year and the world championships were obviously a big focus of the season and that’s where I wanted to have my strongest performance – and that’s going to be the same focus heading up to next year and to the Olympic Games,” said the personable Calgary native.

“But I think what a lot of people miss sometimes is there’s a whole World Cup tour around it. My other goals are I’d like to be challenging for an overall championship in World Cup points.

“To do something like that, you have to be consistently strong from the start to the finish. You can’t just do it on one or two big days. So I think next year what I’d like to do is really find that consistency in strong skiing right from the beginning and carry it through the Olympics.”

His victory at the worlds made a big splash at the time, but hasn’t altered the laid back Albertan’s life in any way.

“Nothing’s really changed for me, but I think the perception around me has changed a little bit,” said Kucera. “I notice people take more notice of me and sometimes people spot me on the street, especially in Europe. It’s kind of cool having that new atmosphere around me now, but it doesn’t affect me personally. I’m still the same guy I was the day before the world championships.”

Kucera hasn’t drawn any endorsement offers, even being a world downhill champion in the country that will host the Winter Olympics. In fact, he doesn’t even have an agent.

“Nobody’s approached me with anything. Maybe, you can get the word out,” says Kucera, with a good chuckle.

Perdita On Track: One sure indication that Toronto hurdler Perdita Felicien is getting back to the serious business of track and field – she was in Vancouver last week to get treatment from her ace chiropractor, Dr. Wilbour Kelsick, a guy who’s tirelessly devoted himself to Canada’s athletes for years. Felicien is planning to race three times in three weeks in April.(Read about it here.)

Season To Forget Leaves Speed Queens Mad And Hungry

Skier Britt Janyk doesn’t need to be reminded that the World Cup season that ended today for Canada’s Speed Queens was definitely one to forget.

AP PHOTO

Britt Janyk: A little pissed off.

“We’re coming out of this season frustrated and a little pissed off and we’re going to be hungry. That’s a good thing,” said Janyk via telephone from Are, Sweden, where she was 15th in a women’s super-G.

They’ve got plenty of reason to be upset. This is a team that had a podium result on every weekend of World Cup speed racing last season but one – and Janyk was fourth in Whistler that week – but this year could not score a single podium. The best result was Emily Brydon’s fifth in a downhill in Altenmarkt, Austria in December.

Head coach Heinzpeter Platter said there were a number of factors that figured in their demise and that the coaching staff is pouring over everything from this Olympic cycle in search for answers. One thing that hurt the team is that many courses this season were much more technical and the team’s strength is on traditional downhills.

“Our girls were sick this year a lot, too,” said Platter. “Maybe they were over-trained, but we really have to sit down and talk. This season, maybe we were too confident after last season that things would continue this way. We were struggling, there were no podiums the first races. We weren’t panicking, but we were not happy. And when you’re not happy, you try harder. And when you try harder, maybe things are going worse.”

To understand how far Canada’s Speed Queens plummeted this season, one need only look at the Janyk’s travails.

The skier who will compete next February on her home hill in Whistler entered the campaign reckoning she could compete for the overall World Cup downhill crown. And there was no reason to doubt her.

She’d had a breakthrough 2007-08 campaign after having to pay her own way back on the team the season before, scoring eight top-10 finishes, including her first victory in Aspen – and was ranked third in the downhill standings.

This season, Janyk had only one top 10 finish, an eighth in a super-G in St. Moritz in December. Her best downhill result was an 11th and she wound up 26th overall in the World Cup downhill standings.

“It was a tough season, but I’d definitely rather be going through it now than next year,” Janyk said. “It’s not an easy sport, but that’s why I love it so much is because of the challenge. You think you have it all figured out and then all of a sudden you take a big left-handed turn. As a group, I think we’ve done that a little bit.”

Kelly VanderBeek of Kitchener was the top Canadian in World Cup downhill points at 15th, while Emily Brydon of Fernie, B.C., was 16th. Janyk was 17th in the super-G standings, while Brydon was 20th and VanderBeek was 21st.

The rise of the team last year was a great story, one worthy of the attention it garnered. These were skiers who each had their own struggles and, in the case of Janyk and Brydon in particular, had been written off in many quarters. It was a masterful coaching job and a group of skiers who really came together to support one another.

They will need plenty of both again to write another comeback story next season.

“I think the fact we’re all still working well together is going to help us pull out of this quicker,” said Janyk.