Crazy Canucks
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The Crazy Canucks were a group of Canadian alpine ski racers who rose to prominence in the World Cup during the 1970s. "Jungle" Jim Hunter, Dave Irwin, Ken Read, Dave Murray and Steve Podborski burst onto the scene of a European-dominated sport and quickly earned themselves a reputation for fast and seemingly reckless skiing - and also for winning. Despite repeated spectacular crashes, the team of athletes raced on to achieve record numbers of World Cup wins.
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[edit] Team Canada
The genesis of the group starts in 1964 when a group led by Dave Jacobs, John Platt and Ernie Gare came up with a plan to completely revolutionize ski training. Up to this point, skiing was dominated by small semi-private teams, often based around a single skier being funded and trained by a small group. The best skiers from any one country would then be selected to represent the nation during the World Cup. Jacobs and Platt, former racers themselves, felt that a team should train together under the direction of a single team of coaches. For funding and support they turned to Gare, who was the athletic director at University of Notre Dame. The University would play host to a program in Nelson, British Columbia of skiers who were offered scholarship at the university.
The first such team consisted of twenty-five skiers from around the country, who met in the summer of 1964 to begin training on Kokanee Glacier. They skied their first races later that winter, starting in Aspen, Colorado, in 1965. The team dominated the races completely, and people in the sport started to take note. One of the team members, Nancy Greene, went on to dominate women's skiing in 1967, winning six races and taking the women's World Cup, then defending the title in 1968 and going on to win the Olympic gold and silver that year. The team dominated skiing in North America for the entire second half of the 1960s.
Women's racing, notably the downhill, was new at the time. The strong European teams had largely ignored the field, considering it a sideshow to some degree. Cracking the men's titles would be considerably more difficult.
[edit] The Crazy Canucks
In 1969 the team decided to focus almost entirely on the downhill, which was at the time becoming the focus of the entire skiing world. Many of the existing members were dropped, and younger skiers with a bit of thrill seeking were brought in to fill the ranks. The team also moved from Nelson to Montreal in 1970.
Carrying the team over was one of the original members, Scott Henderson, who took over the head coach position. "Jungle" Jim Hunter was one of the few originals that remained in the program, and was apparently upset about the switch to downhill as he considered himself stronger in the slalom. Hunter eventually left the team, which ended up with Read, Murray, Irwin and Podborski.
The team tried their first attempts at the European downhills in the winter of 1974-75, although they did not have a spectacular showing. For the next two seasons the team was the unofficial mascot of the tour, dramatically underfunded, under-equipped, uncouth and suffering from a number of disastrous falls. After one particularly spectacular fall by Irwin in 1976, Serge Lange walked up and muttered, "crazy Canuck". The name stuck.
By 1978 things had changed. On February 10, Ken Read was the first to ski down Chamonix during a day where the conditions deteriorated as the race progressed. Read held his early record time to win the race, the first non-European to ever win a World Cup downhill. There was some criticism of the victory due to the conditions, the general consensus among the Europeans being it was a lucky win.
The Crazy Canucks proved them wrong throughout the month. Two weeks later Dave Irwin beat Franz Klammer, the highest-ranked skier of the era, taking first place by over two seconds, a very long time in the downhill. But the race in Schladming on December 26, 1978, proved the team as a whole was world class, when all four members finished in the top ten: Ken Read came in first; Dave Murray in second; Dave Irwin was seventh; and Steve Podborski came in ninth.
This was a particularly bad year for traditional European pride in skiing. While the Crazy Canucks were making a name for themselves in the downhill, Phil Mahre of the USA was making similar waves in the slalom and giant slalom.
The next season started off much the same, but this time the Canucks were better known and much better funded. On January 18, 1979, Read won his second race of the year, but was challenged by the Italians because his new suit had not been tested prior to the race. Although the same was true of the Australian and Japanese teams, they were not in serious contention no one bothered to challenge them. Two days later Read was stripped of his win, which was passed onto the second-place racer, Steve Podborski, who just happened to be wearing his older suit. At the next race both wore the newer suits, both of which passed testing. This apparent discrepancy was never explained.
The 1980-81 season was a repeat of the previous one, with Read and Podborski dominating the team, while Irwin continued his series of spectacular falls. At Kitzbühel, Read won again, while Irwin took fifth. The team had extremely high hopes at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, but Read's binding popped open at the start of the run. However, Podborski earned the bronze medal, which was the first ever downhill medal by a North American male. Although Podborski was disappointed at the outcome, the Olympics marked the start of his winning streak, as he finished the year with seven wins.
There was a transition year in 1981. Irwin and Murray were unable to repeat their earlier successes, while Podborski continued to compete with Read. By the end of the year, Podborski had earned an unassailable lead, winning the men's World Cup Downhill Champion title, the first time for a non-European. At the end of the 1982 season, Irwin and Murray retired. After the 1983 season, Read also retired after ten years on the team. Podborski followed the year later, after the 1984 Winter Olympics.
New members looked to be ready to fill in for the retiring members, notably Todd Brooker, who took two wins in the 1984/85 season. However the turnover was too great, and the team was never again great as a whole.
[edit] Legacy
Although Team Canada would eventually fall from dominance, the training methods they pioneered were soon standard around the world.
Legandary 'Crazy Canuck' Ken Read was named to re-build the Team Canada spirit after a decade of inattention, and in 2002 he took over the newly-formed Alpine Canada . Since then the team has slowly started to recover lost glory. Canmore Alberta's Thomas Grandi started with two giant slalom gold medals in 2004/5 . The momentum than continued through the Olympic year of 2006 with several near podium finishes in Alpine events in Turin. The 2006/2007 Alpine team then exploded out of the gate at Lake Louise Alberta in November 2006. Vancouver's Manuel Osborne-Paridis claimed the silver in the first men's downhill of the season stunning the heavily favored Europeans .Teammate John Kucera of Calgary then did the almost unthinkable winning the super giant slalom the next day on home turf in frigid conditions in front of boisterous local fans . The gold medal run was the first Alpine victory for a Canadian male skiier on Canadian soil in almost 20 years. The following week when the women came through Lake Louise Kelly Vanderbeek who had previously finished 4th at the Turin Olympics, continued to Own the Podium - 2010 by finishing 3rd.
In 2006, it was announced that Ken Read, Steve Podborski, Dave Irwin and Dave Murray would be receiving stars on Canada's Walk of Fame. They would all be inducted as one group. The only other skier on the walk is Canadian skiing legend Nancy Greene.
