The thing that makes the Olympics such an interesting and dynamic entity in competitive sport is that it's often not the best that wins, but the one who for one day is able to provide the performance of his or her life. - Feb. 13, 2010
When it comes to ski-jumping, the Canadians are by and large out-classed and out-gunned by the field of competitors. Despite having four competitors registered to represent the country in today's long hill event, the highest ranked Canadian was no higher than 8th last in a field of 61 competitors.In short, we're not very good.
Part of it has to do with the fact that there is only one Olympic ski-jumping facility in all of Canada. In fact, it is a remnant of the 1988 Calgary Winter Games, and by some accounts is beginning to show some of its age. This creates a fairly shallow pool of talent as there are less people who are able to access it and learn on it. And honestly, I don't know many people who'd want to learn ski-jumping over any of the other sports that doesn't involve a mandatory relocation to Alberta.
Today was the qualification run for the Long Hill event up at Whistler Olympic Park. This meant an early morning deployment for us ski-jumping press assistants into the chilled but clear morning. We had to be present for trial runs that began before the competition. And though most of the media chose not to observe the test runs with us, there was a massive crowd of spectators that day at the venue, almost 6600 strong. For a run that wasn't even going to go to a medal round, that was impressive.
The stands were full and the crowds were loud today at Ski-Jumping
How the ski jumping competition works is that the start list runs in reverse order of the World Cup rankings in the event. Therefore, the weakest ski jumpers will always jump first, while the strongest ski jumpers will always jump last. However, given that the top ten competitors all pre-qualified into the second qualification event, they weren't even relevent that day. Regardless of this, all of the competitors in the event jumped in the qualification round.
The first day's qualification round eliminates eleven athletes with the lowest overall score following the jump. And for that reason, there was little optimism regarding the Canadian team on their prospects of advancing. We needed to be at least 39th out of 50 athletes to guarentee a spot in the following day's second run event. But with our best ski jumper ranking 53rd out of 61, the general expectation was that Canada would again fail to qualify to jump another day. After all, they failed to qualify by a metre and a half in the Normal Hill event.
But then Stefan Read of Canada took to the bar during qualification. He was ranked 59th in the field, and so therefore there wasn't too many expectations on his performance.
You never will get the full effect of ski-jumping on television. You never get a true sense of just how high and far they need to go in order to achieve a high ranking. The sense of perception is absolutely lost in the close-ups.
But today, when everyone expected a short-run, short-lived attempt at legitimacy, Stefan Read made the jump of his life. And has he flew down the hill, people began to realize that maybe, just maybe, he has made it far enough.
He landed and the crowd erupted. He had reached 120.0M with that jump, an incredible length for any Canadian, let alone him. His reaction to his score was muted, but already you could see the huge smile on his face.
He knew he made the jump of his life. And he knew he had a chance.
But there were 58 ski jumpers behind him. And there was a chance that less than eleven skiers would put down worse marks than he did. Now came the waiting game, and the Canadian coaches held their breath as the 57th ranked ski jumper took to the bar.
Score after score was being posted, and I began ticking them off one by one based on whether they had a better or worse score than Read. All those that came after were all suposedly stronger jumpers than Read, but when you jump for the stars, you often go past even your best expectations.
As person after person dropped below him, Read got closer and closer to qualifying. At last, at around bib number 25, all the Canadian officials and coaches had identical grins on their faces. The last jumper had failed to beat Read's score of 120.0M.
And so, against many odds, Read, once the third-lowest ranked ski-jumper at these Olympics became Mr. best-in-Canada. He had officially qualified to represent Canada in tomorrow's second qualification run. As one coach told me later, "One of our boys qualified, so yeah, we're really happy."
A spectacular and very fortunate shot of the mountain-scape surrounding
Callahan Valley.
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