Chandra's Latest Update

January 21, 2009

Hello Skifans,

Although lots has been happening in the ski world, my little part of it is rather stagnant. The best ski Junior and Senior racers in the country have fought hard these past weeks for their positions on the teams that will represent Canada at the big Championships. These trials were in Canmore early January and super exciting to watch. The Olymps may be coming to Whistler, but Canmore still has the best facility, best trails and best organizing crew. That being said the experience out in Callaghan last week with perfect weather and sweet racing action was really cool.

The World Cup at Callaghan was so inspiring when Devon Kershaw and Sara Renner roused their Tour-de-Ski weary bods to three top tens and then when George Grey and Alex Harvey stepped up onto the World Cup podium for the men's first ever Canadian Sprint Relay medal. I was already planning on partying that night but after the medal-winning my celebratory fervor could scarcely be constrained and a raucously great time was had in Whistler.

Other than that, the life of Crawf is much as it was back in December 18th. Things get better with the injury, sometimes they get worse. It sucks missing all the races and even more missing Devon while he's away on World Cups but the mainstays are my great family, friends and support from our team. The future of my season remains questionable but I'm not yet ready to give up completely on my World Champs dream of racing the skate sprint Feb 24th in the Czech Republic.

I went to Whistler to engage in some cultivation of home course advantage. Continuing to familiarize myself with our team accoms in Black Tusk, the set up at the race venue and everything in between. I was very keen to race the courses with some World Cuppers but with the ankle tendonopathy (read: owie) not ready for that yet I got as much as I could from watching and doing high-powered imagery with sport psych extraordinaire Cal Botterill.

The best place to watch a race from is the announcers booth. Up high in the building overlooking the startline, I was lucky enough to hang with Canadian Ski Legend Pierre Harvey while he and Pro Announcer Kjell-Erik Kristiansen gave me a mic and let me get into it a bit with the commentating. It was just awesome. My focus on the action was complete every stride of every heat in both the sprint and sprint relay. I saw where moves were made, where the best line was on the corners, where people made time and where they lost time or crashed. As I made the calls about who was doing what in each race I was completely present mentally in the race... stopping just short of announcing my vivid fantasies of passing the leaders to take the victory.

And what a place to watch from when Alex made his huge move in the finish and sprinted to a medal... As always, I find the breakthrough performances of my teammates so inspiring and so emotional. When Devon is leading the pack I become a speechless, spell-bound and ineffective announcer, and when there are Canadians earning spots on the podium I can hardly be counted on for commentary when there are tears streaming down my face.

GO CANADA!