With Canadians searching for holiday hardware, leave it to The Panda to climb the first podium.
Banff’s Jan Hudec, nicknamed The Panda, won silver on Friday (Dec. 20) in a super-G race in Val Gardena, Italy to capture Canada’s first world cup medal of the alpine ski season.
Hudec, 32, attacked the course early from the 12th starting spot. His result stood until Norweigan ski legend Aksel Lund Svindel laid down an impeccable run.
“This is just huge,” Hudec told Alpine Canada. “It’s confirmation that I’ve been doing the right things and just going with it and being patient. I knew my time in the sport wasn’t up and I wouldn’t have carried on skiing if I didn’t believe I could do this.”
Hudec will ski for Canada at the Sochi Olympics and told the Outlook if his body holds up, he’d like to ski in the 2018 games as well.
After spending much of the summer opening and operating a small optometry shop in Calgary, many doubted if Hudec could train enough to prepare for the season. Now that he has a world cup podium, consider his critics silenced.
“A lot of people were kind of unsure if I was going to be able to do the business and skiing,” Hudec said, who joked there will be a sale whenever he wins. “It was a huge pressure for me, making sure everybody on the ski side was happy, but also running a business properly. It forced me to focus 100 per cent on those two things. Today is confirmation that I was able to do a good job at both.”
Winning the first world cup medal of the season meant a lot to Hudec, who has consistently posted strong results in the early season.
“I feel pretty blessed that I got to be the first guy on the podium this year,” Hudec said. “I skied the same today as I did in the super-G in Lake Louise and Beaver Creek. The only difference was that in Lake Louise I made one huge mistake in the middle and in Beaver Creek I made a couple of small mistakes. I knew if I stayed patient and kept with it, I could do it.”
A day after Hudec’s silver medal performance, Erik Guay scribbled his name in the record books with a win in the men’s downhill at Val Gardena. The result was the 20th world cup podium finish for the 32-year-old speed racer, which ties him with Steve Podborski for the Canadian record.
“It’s an honour and a privilege to tie the record. To be included alongside some of the greatest names in ski racing is something special,” said Guay. “This is something that I haven’t talked about a lot, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I’m really happy to tie the record now.
“I don’t want to stop there – I want to own the record outright. But to tie it here, especially on this hill where we’ve had so much success and a long tradition of Canadians being on the podium, is great.”
Head coach Martin Rufener said the team is in great shape and the results show training has paid off.
“It shows us that we are there,” Rufener said of the men’s speed team. “We needed that to confirm we are on the right track. It’s great to see. We’ve been working the whole year to get on the podium. We knew in the training sessions we had with the Norwegians that we were competitive, but to do it in a race situation and especially in a super-G, when there is no training run, is great.”
Canadians have traditionally skied well in Italy. Guay’s podium is the sixth the Canadians have won since 2008 in Val Gardena and 16th since Ken Read first turned the trick in 1978.
Guay was sixth in Friday’s super-G, followed by Canadians Jeffrey Frisch (33), Robbie Dixon (35), Ben Thomsen (43), Conrad Pridy (45) and Morgan Pridy (47).
In Saturday’s downhill, Manual Osborne-Paradise was sixth while Hudec finished ninth. Conrad Pridy was 39th, Frisch was 45th and Dixon finished 53rd.
