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Jan Hudec earns Alpine Canada’s first World Cup podium spot of the year, which bodes well

andrew bucholtz

Canadian alpine skier Jan Hudec's making a lot of news lately. On Thursday, Hudec became one of the first skiers to wear an air bag on a World Cup course during downhill training at Val Gardena, Italy, and he followed that up Friday by finishing second in the super-G competition. The silver he picked up was his fifth career World Cup medal, but his first since February 2012. It also was the Canadian team's first World Cup medal this season and their first under coach Martin Rufener, who joined the program this summer. There had been close calls before, including Manuel Osborne-Paradis missing the podium in the Beaver Creek, Colorado downhill by .04 seconds earlier this month, but Hudec proved that the Canadian team can actually pick up results Friday. That, along with promising recent form from Hudec, Erik Guay (who finished sixth Friday) and Osborne-Paradis (who crashed), suggests this team could be in good shape to produce medals for Canada at the 2014 Sochi Olympics in February, which would be a dramatic change from the alpine results in the last few Olympics.

While Canada's alpine skiers have done well on the World Cup circuit, medals at the Olympics have been tougher to come by. The team struggled so badly in 2002 at Salt Lake City that the coaching staff was fired in the middle of the Olympics, and while Alpine Canada made substantial progress under former Crazy Canuck Ken Read's June 2002-July 2008 tenure as president, including boosting Canada's World Cup ranking from 14th to sixth, Canada was still shut out of the medals at the 2006 Turin Olympics, with the country's best finishes fourth-place showings from Guay and Francois Bourque (in the Super-G and the giant slalom respectively). 2010 was about the same, with Guay picking up a pair of fifth-place finishes in the Super-G and the downhill. Those are still impressive results, to be sure, but in a medal-hungry country, there are plenty who'd like to see more. The 32-year-old Hudec recognizes that. Here's what he told The Canadian Press after his win Friday:

"This is just huge," said Hudec. "It's confirmation that I've been doing the right things and just going with it and being patient.

"I knew my time in the sport wasn't up and I wouldn't have carried on skiing if I didn't believe I could do this. I feel pretty blessed that I got to be the first guy on the podium this year but it's just a matter of time before Erik and Manny are there, too. We have a great history here and there's no reason we can't do something special in the downhill (Saturday)."

And Rufener, the team's coach, said this result shows that Hudec, Guay and Osborne-Paradis, who have all already prequalified for Sochi, are
up there with the world's best:

"It shows us that we are there," Rufener said. "We needed that to confirm we are on the right track. It's great to see." ... "For Erik it's great to be sixth," Rufener said. "Manny went out but he's ready for (Saturday's) downhill. Those three guys are right there knocking on the door."

Indeed they are. If they keep delivering results like this, the Canadian Cowboys might just bust that door down...