Jack Crawford and Brodie Seger’s World Breakout Championship results this year suggest that the rebuilding of the Canadian men’s downhill team could be accelerated.
Seger, 25, and Crawford, 24, see these results as a stepping stone into a season of the Olympic Games that begins with the World Cup Downhill in Lake Louise, Alta, on Friday.
A second downhill is on Saturday, followed by the Super-G on Sunday.
The resignations of world champion Erik Guay and world championship medalists Manuel Osborne-Paradis and Dustin Cook in recent years have given way to a men’s downhill squad with an average age of 24 years that ventures into the same heights.
At just four months old, Toronto’s Crawford and Seger of Whistler, BC, are in the process of downhill racing. With their technical talent, however, they challenge the best skiers in the world in the Super-G.
“Jack and I are similar in that we’ve always been a bit more technical speed skier,” explained Seger. “We could sometimes have more problems on the sliding downhill sections, on flatter terrain.”
Seger drove with a metal plate in his reconstructed shoulder and finished fourth in the Super-G at the World Championship in Cortina, Italy in February. The Canadian landed four hundredths of a second behind the podium.
A Super G medal in Cortina, co-host of the 2026 Winter Games, was Crawford’s goal.
Crawford was defeated in this tender and recovered the following day with fourth place in the alpine combined, the combined time from a Super G run and a slalom. He set the fastest time in the Super G stage.
“It only gives us confidence,” said Crawford. “It shows us what we are actually capable of.
“After the World Champions, I definitely think Brodie thinks the same about finishing fourth… it hurts a bit, but when it comes to confidence it really helps to show that we’re not that far away and that the podium is just around the corner is. “the corner.”
Last year’s World Cup in Lake Louise was canceled due to COVID-19, which denied Canada’s young skiers the opportunity to ski on domestic snow.
Seger fell and blew his shoulder on the first descent of the season in Val-d’Isere, France.
A hook plate surgically implanted in his shoulder made skiing and sleeping uncomfortable, but he was fixated on racing in Cortina.
“Having never been through this whole injury process and coming back into the game, I was more determined than anything to come back strong right away,” said Seger.
“This return to racing was a great learning experience. I was fully focused on what I had to do to get back there. I wasn’t in the middle of the season and was worried about results, my ranking or something like that. It was only one step at a time, what do I have to do in this rehab? “
The first three Super G starters in Cortina did not finish. Crawford pulled the number 4 car, made it to the ground and radioed Seger up the hill with instructions on how to navigate the most difficult section.
“It was an extremely difficult position for him to start so early, to be in that position for the first time in his career and to deal with all kinds of chatter over the radio,” said Seger.
“The report he was able to give us back after his run was key and it definitely felt like a team effort that day.”
Crawford says he felt more relaxed when he went into alpine combined the next day.
“It was a scenario where my stress level and everything was just low and I was confident,” he said. “I just drove like I did in pre-race practice and that set me up for a pretty good day.”
The men’s speed trainer, John Kucera, the downhill world champion from 2009, wants to be further improved by both racing drivers in the Super-G and in the downhill this season.
“Brodie and Jack have good starting positions in the Super-G, so they are competitive,” said the Calgarian.
“We’re now a group aiming for top 15, top 10 results. We’re no longer here to sneak into the points. We still have to reduce that a bit on the descent. “
The Cortina track was unfamiliar to international racing drivers, which will also be the case at the Winter Olympics in Beijing next February.
“We’re all going to go to China blindly and then nobody really has the advantage,” said Kucera. “When you have a young group, in some ways it’s almost better to go in with no expectations.
“We know that it should be a difficult and technical hill, which plays a little more in our hand than a large, open slide.”
Jeffrey Read of Canmore, Alta., Cameron Alexander of North Vancouver, BC, and Broderick Thompson of Whistler, BC join Seger and Crawford on Friday’s starting list in Lake Louise.
Veteran racing driver Ben Thomsen from Invermere, BC, was not named to the Alpine Canada squad this season, but will compete in the Downhill.
The third downhill training run on Thursday was canceled “in order to preserve the slope conditions”, announced the FIS.
Heavy snowfall began to cover the ski area in Banff National Park on Thursday, with 25 centimeters set to accumulate by Friday.
—Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press
To ski
