Canadian ski racer John Kucera’s Olympic dreams ended in a cruel tangle of limbs and broken bones last month.
Until the spectacular crash in the season-opening World Cup super-G on Nov. 29, the stars had seemed aligned for this hard-working member of the “Canadian Cowboys.”
He had established his Olympic medal credentials by winning downhill gold at the world championships and embraced the pressures of racing on home snow by recording his top World Cup results, including a super-G win, at Lake Louise.
PHOTO: EPA
In an instant the 25-year-old’s career took a dramatic downward turn. He snapped the tibia and fibula of his left leg as he cartwheeled into the safety fencing at more than 100kph and his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compete at a home Olympics had gone forever.
The previous day, American TJ Lanning had left Whitehorn Mountain in similar fashion, strapped on to a stretcher dangling below a helicopter with a fractured neck vertebra and a dislocated knee.
In Beaver Creek a week later one of France’s top medal hopes, World Cup slalom champion Jean-Baptiste Grange, bid adieu to the Vancouver Games when he tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his right knee during a giant slalom.
Devastating crashes are an occupational hazard in a sport where helicopters are parked close to finish areas ready to evacuate injured racers to emergency medical centers.
The high number of injuries so far this season has worried the sport’s governing body, the International Ski Federation (FIS), who have scheduled special meetings with coaches and racers to discuss the problem.
“We are definitely following the injury situation very closely and are trying to better understand it all the time,” Atle Skaardal, the FIS chief race director on the women’s circuit, said in a statement this week.
Skaardal said the FIS had researchers looking into why accidents happened, but added: “Unfortunately, it is a fact that ski racing is a risky sport and we will never have zero injuries.”
In an Olympic year injuries seem particularly harsh, as four years of hard work and dreams can be wiped out in a flash by the smallest of miscalculations.
World Cup champion Aksel Lund Svindal, who returned to racing after suffering serious injuries in a downhill crash two years ago, lamented the high injury rate this season.
“Racers have sustained the following: seven torn ACLs, four [other] knee ligaments, one [broken] arm, one broken leg, one broken neck, one concussion, one dislocated knee, one dislocated shoulder. Is that okay?” the Norwegian wrote on his blog.
Canadian team chief Max Gartner said racers learned to accept the risks.
“It’s very cruel but that’s the nature of the sport,” Gartner said. “They are pushing it to the limit in order to be in there challenging for the wins. They know the risks and they learn to deal with it.
“If you want to be a top racer you have to come to terms that you are in a really risky sport and you have to put it all on the line. They have all shown they are pretty tough and they deal with it and move on. That’s the cruel part of it, the racing just keeps going on.”
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