Brady Leman and Marielle Thompson are old Olympic champions, but they breathed a little easier after winning in the Canadian Ski Cross team for Beijing on Friday.
That’s how powerful Canada is in this sport.
Leman, who won gold in Pyeongchang four years ago, knows there is a good chance he will face a teammate in the Olympic final next month.
“That’s what we are at every race,” says Leman from Canmore, Alberta., where the Canadian ski cross team will hold before flying to China. “It’s pretty cool that your teammates are your best competitors, which creates a really good competitive training environment.
“Honestly, the most difficult stress was related to qualifications. It is always a difficult team to form and Canada, we are so strong in all all disciplines of free style. So, keeping an eye on qualifying in the last other years has been pretty stressful to make sure you’re shaking in the right position.”
Thompson, who ran to victory in Sochi, said that the strength of the team used to be interpreted stably in order to be better.
“They know we’re all going to be the best of ourselves when it comes to race day,” she says. “It’s an individual sport, we are sleeping alone. But it’s nice to know that all your teammates must have performed very well to become part of the Olympic teams. It was a difficult team to form, so we are very happy.”
Brittany Phelan, a silver medalist in the women’s event in Pyeongchang, was also named to the Canadian team on Friday.
All three came back from more severe dislocations.
Leman collapsed in the summer of on the inside of a bicycle and suffered five broken ribs, a broken collarbone and a perforated lung for a year. Then, the man of 35 years, has worried, the recent times. In Februar, he suffered a knee prescription at the end of the season, but return to win the silver medal in the first test of the season, the Olympic Test in Beijing.
“It was huge, right after my release, the first race back,” Leman says.
Thompson tore his anterior cruciate ligament for the second time this March.
“I wouldn’t if I could compete honestly at the beginning of winter,” she says.
The 29-year-old player returns to Val Thorens, France, last month. In the first of two, overcome, in bad conditions, she left the course halfway.
“The next day it was an island, Frankfurt am Main and beautiful blue sky,” she said. “I gave everyone and ended up on the podium. On the whole, I have been doing quite well since that day and am only improving. . . the best training is effective to be back on this course and compete with the best. It was also nice to be one-on-one with the best women in the world again.”
Phelan suffered a release at the end of the season in.
“It was a long convalescence to come back here,” she says. “The Olympic Games are something special, they only take place every four years and the whole year before that has to go well.”
Canada has won gold in women’s ski cross at every games since the facility debuted in Vancouver.
Canada enters the Games after a printing performance in Nakiska, Alberta. Last week he won a gold medal and two silver medalists.
As THE recent times cloud hovers over Canadian athletes en route to Beijing, Leman says the adversity he and his teammates have faced over the past two years has made them more adaptable.
“We’ve been traveling for two years, essentially through recent times, so we’ve pretty much allowed ourselves to the changing perimeters and environments, to ride with the punches and to comply with all the regulations,” he says. “So it adds another arrow to the quiver, in the sense that you feel that you can understand it, even what the world throws at you.”
Leman recalls feeling bad for his friends leading up to the Tokyo Olympics last summer and the stress they have to experience because of the recent times.
“I just thought to myself: ” at least it will be much better for some in China this winter,” then: Oh-psych. It’s more delicious,” he says with a laugh. “We see not to be confessing too much, for you can only do a great deal.”
Broderick Thompson, who won bronze in the first Super-G World Championship of the season), and Marie-Michèle Gagnon, Ali Nullmeyer, Jack Crawford, who have all finished in the top five of the World Cups this season, lead the alpine team found known on Friday.
Canada has 11 Olympic medals in alpine skiing, most recently a bronze medal in the men’s Super-G in Sochi.
“It’s always an incredible situation to run on the big stage of the world and proudly represent your country,” said Crawford, who was seen finishing sixth in a World Cup race in Kitzbühel, Austria, on Friday. “The Olympics have always been on my radar and going to Beijing will be because I saw that I really have a chance to get on the podium.”
The alpine exams take place in February. 6-19 at Yanqing Alpine Ski Center. The cross-country skiing events take place in February. 17-18 at Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou.