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Jan Hudec’s story of triumph: escaping communism, surviving surgeries and winning Canada’s first alpine medal in 20 years

Andrew Bucholtz

Winning an Olympic medal is incredibly hard, and Canada's record in alpine skiing over the past two decades shows that. Despite numerous talented athletes who found success on the World Cup level and came close at the Games, Canadian alpine skiers hadn't won an Olympic medal since 1994 heading into Sochi. Jan Hudec managed to break that drought in Sunday's super-G, though, burying a lucky loonie next to the finish and then coming through with a blazing time of 1:18:67, tying him with American skier Bode Miller for bronze. It's perhaps perfect that Hudec was the man to do that, as just making it to these Olympics was unbelievably difficult for him; he overcame seven knee surgeries and crippling back pain to shine for Canada, and he wouldn't even have had a chance to do that if not for a perilous defection by his parents while he was a baby. From Sean Fitz-Gerald of The National Post:

Sailing enthusiasts around the world still race the small class of boat that Jan Hudec’s parents used to flee their homeland, floating across the top of the Adriatic Sea with a 10-month-old future Olympian on board. The boat was, and is, known as a Fireball.

Calling it a boat makes it seem grander than it really is; it’s a two-person dinghy designed to ride low in the water. They are made from fibreglass now, but when Jan Sr. and his wife, Vladi, ordered the kit more than 30 years ago — they had to build it themselves — it was made of wood. Leaving would be a risk, but so was staying in Czechoslovakia.

So they ordered it, and Jan Sr. built it, in secret, at his mother’s house. Husband and wife practised on a lake, just to get comfortable. They planned their escape from communism during a vacation in Yugoslavia, where they were allowed to travel.

Two days from the end of their trip, they shoved off, their baby, Jan, in tow. In a story he has been told his whole life, Jan’s mother had to bail water as they crossed to freedom, in Italy. They barely made it to the beach, but they made it. And, eventually, they made it to Canada, the name of which crossed the jacket Jan Hudec was wearing Sunday, as he retold the story inside the Canadian Olympic Committee’s temporary office in Russia.

That story, he said, led him to where he was sitting, and not just literally. Hudec has been struggling with injury for a decade, with seven knee surgeries and a wonky back that left him bedridden in January. He was in pain again last week — and was in pain again as he spoke, sitting on a couch — but he was also an Olympic medal winner.

Here's what Hudec told NBC about just how difficult that journey was:

“After getting caught twice trying to sneak onto trains and across the border from Yugoslavia to Austria and Italy, we ended up sailing across the top part of the Adriatic Sea in a sailboat that my dad built,” Hudec explained. “We fled on a little sailboat that was meant for racing. It was fast, but it was completely impractical especially for the salt water and the huge waves of the Adriatic. We barely made it across. The boat was demolished by the time we made it.”

That's a pretty remarkable background for Hudec, and his accomplishment Sunday is also amazingly remarkable. Alpine skiing's an incredibly difficult field to earn Olympic medals in, given both how many countries field top skiers and how much of a difference the conditions on the day or one slight mistake can make. Heading into these Games, the current group of "Canadian Cowboys" had posted the best World Cup results Canada had seen since the heyday of the "Crazy Canucks" in the 1970s and 1980s, with Erik Guay even breaking Crazy Canuck Steve Podborski's Canadian record for World Cup podium finishes this year but they hadn't been able to come through in the Olympics. Guay came very close in both Turin and Vancouver, recording a fourth-place in the downhill in 2006 and a pair of fifth-places in 2010, and he, Hudec and Manuel Osborne-Paradis all carried medal potential heading into these Games, but things didn't go their way in the downhill, and it looked like another Olympics would pass without a Canadian alpine skiing medal. That's when Hudec stepped up, though, and as Podborski told Reuters' Martyn Herman, that's incredible considering his injuries:

"He did a fantastic job today," Podborski said. "His back is really gimpy, he took a bunch of days off, he missed some races and his knees are a mess. Other than that he's great.

"Super-G is like a lottery. You only get one shot and you have to be brilliant and today Jan was."

It's been an amazing journey for Hudec, who's overcome a whole roller coaster of ups and downs since starting his World Cup career in 2003. He won silver in the world championships in downhill in the spring of 2007 and claimed his first World Cup gold that winter, but then blew out his knee. He came back in 2009 before getting hurt again, and then saw injuries take away most of his 2010 and 2011 seasons. The Canadian team even dropped him from funding for a while, forcing him to raise $15,000 himself for training. 2012 marked a real resurgence for Hudec, though, including his second World Cup victory in downhill and his first World Cup podium in the super-G, and despite the injury problems, he was in strong form heading into these Olympics, earning Canada's first World Cup podium of the year with a super-G silver in December and adding another pair of top-10 results (one in downhill, one in super-G). As Osborne-Paradis told Reuters, Hudec's triumph reflects well on Canada's ski program, but his teammates are also thrilled for him personally given what he's overcome:

That's why there was so much goodwill flowing his way on Sunday, not least from team mate Manuel Osborne-Paradis.

"11 out of 10," he said when asked how pleased he was for Hudec. "I'm pissed about my race but his medal it's trumping how mad I am. I was already jumping up and down in the start gate because of his result.

"It's so cool to see a Canadian on the podium. It's nice that someone has done it on the right day at the right time.

"Oh man, it's cool to see such a nice guy get a reward like this as it's once in a lifetime."

We'll see if it proves to be once in a lifetime for Hudec. He's 32, so this might well be his last Olympics, but you never know; Miller is 36, and although these Games saw him become the oldest alpine skier to medal, that barrier's down now. Regardless of Hudec does from here, though, this is a singular accomplishment for him and for Canada. It's incredible to see, and it should be celebrated, both for the medal and for the man who won it.