For the past 10 years, World Cup ski racing has been Emily Brydon's life.
Through horrific spills and racing thrills - capped by a single World Cup victory in 2008 - Brydon, 29, has traveled a long and emotional road that changes track this week, when the senior woman on the national alpine team retires after the GMC Canadian championships.
But the stress of competing in a sport where success and failure is separated by fractions of a second seems to have run its course as she takes a farewell trip down the mountain in the low-key atmosphere of nationals in the Alberta Rockies.
"I've done this a long time and I've put a lot of heart and soul and passion into ski racing," the native of Fernie, B.C., said. "Now, I'm excited to move on and do something different, put that energy elsewhere."
But not without reminding fans what they would be missing. Yesterday, Brydon won her final super G race in a time of 1 minute 9.3 seconds, ahead of Shona Rubens (1:09.37) and Britt Janyk (1:09.38).
Yet this is a far different atmosphere than the Olympic pressure cooker last month in Whistler, B.C., where Canadian alpine racers couldn't find the podium.
Brydon was on her way to the best World Cup season of her career. Ranked sixth in downhill, and with health and a home course on her side, expectations were high.
Finishing 16th in the downhill, 14th in the super combined and crashing out of the super G was not part of the 2010 Winter Games script she had rehearsed.
"It was really difficult after the Olympics, not to achieve my goals yet knowing what my potential was," Brydon said.
"With sport you put so much into it - your heart, your body, your soul, your passion - so when things don't work out, it's a huge downer. The emotional roller coaster is just relentless."
At the Turin Games in 2006, Brydon was a respectable ninth in the super G. But while that placing earns World Cup points on any given race day, at the Olympics it means little more than missed opportunity.
If there's one track Brydon loves, it's St. Moritz, where she has a full set of medals, winning the super G and placing third in downhill in 2008. A year earlier, she won silver in super G.
All told, Brydon has nine World Cup podium appearances and 19 Canadian championship medals after her second-place finish in the downhill last Monday, and a third in the super combined a day later - a number she could add to in the giant slalom tomorrow, and the slalom on Saturday.
After a career filled with top-10 finishes at World Cup events in Canada, Brydon broke through to the podium in her final races at Lake Louise, Alta., last November, placing second in downhill and third in super G on two consecutive days.
"Getting two podiums at Lake Louise was one of my career highlights," she said. "This was probably one of the hardest winters of my life, and I'm totally exhausted. I can honestly say that when I left the [Vancouver] Olympics, I could have done nothing more."
Source: Globe and Mail
