Jan Hudec thinks he’s an idiot, but that’s not going to stop him from representing Canada at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi.
Hudec was in the midst of laying down a podium-worthy performance in Sunday’s (Dec. 1) world cup super-G race at Lake Louise, leading the race heading into the fish net turns when he made a costly mistake. By the time he reached the bottom of the run, he was wrapping his knuckles on his helmet in frustration.
“That was like the old-fashioned ‘I’m an idiot,’ ” Hudec said. “But even though I’m not on the podium like I know I could have been, I’m pretty happy with my performance.”
It was good enough for 10th on the day and means he’s qualified to ski for Canada at the 2014 Winter Olympics, which kept him in good spirits.
Approaching the fish net turns at top speed midway through the super-G course at Lake Louise, Hudec hesitated for a split second to choose his line. Instead of grabbing the path-to-victory aggressive line, he settled on one he picked in inspection.
“The reason I was hitting my head is I didn’t trust myself to take a tighter line than what I inspected. I knew it was rough on the outside of the fish nets gate… at the last second, I came in with quite a bit of speed and I really didn’t trust myself and ended out in the weeds. As soon as my left ski started rattling, I couldn’t stop it. I lost my entire line.”
He recovered and made up a ton of speed on the lower section of the course and finished .94 seconds behind winner Aksel Svindal of Norway.
“Even though I’m not quite there, I was skiing toward a podium finish and I made a huge mistake,” Hudec said. “All in all – an awesome performance. I’m really happy about that. It’s frustrating today because you know, coulda, woulda, shoulda, but at the same time I know that if I would have just cleaned up that one turn, I might have been on the podium.”
Working with The Athlete Factory in Calgary, Hudec revamped his training schedule this summer, providing more rest for his chronically bad back and knees and is in his best shape in a while.
“It’s taken a lot of work and patience and having the courage to go out and try new things. At the end of last year it was like I had nothing to lose,” Hudec said. “Today I got some good points. It was a great way to start the season going into (the next world cup stop) in Beaver Creek.”
Manual Osborne-Paradis finished 12th in the super-G, also earning his spot on the Olympic team. Both he and Hudec were relieved to get the job done early, as teammate Erik Guay qualified on the Saturday. Osborne-Paradis started well back with the 45th start position, but powered through with a remarkable run to finish 12th.
“I didn’t actually think I’d be top-12 today, that’s for sure. That was a good surprise,” Osborne-Paradis said. “I got stuck with a really late start number and I knew the weather was coming in, so I just dug deep. It’s good to walk away from here with that Olympic spot.
Svindal was triumphant in the Lake Louise super-G for the third year in a row. He flirted with first place on the top half of the course, appeared to drop out of the running midway through, before gaining half a second on his competitors in the last section of the course. Austrians Matthias Mayer and Georg Streitberger finished second and third respectively.
Other Canadian finishers included Erik Guay (18th), Morgan Pridy (41st), Ben Thomsen (45th), Conrad Pridy (52nd), Jeffrey Frisch (53rd) and Dustin Cook (58th).
