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Skipress - SkiPress Canada Vol.22 No.4 - Index

TEAM ALPINE
BY PETER OLIVER
WHO’SThere?
That knocking sound you hear doesn’t mean you need to switch to a higher octane.
As Peter Oliver explains, it’s the sound of potential victory.
“Can’t you hear me knocking?” The Rolling Stones sang those words, and
now Francois Bourque is living them. Rap! Rap! That’s Bourque knocking
on the door of greatness, ready to step across the threshold.
Perhaps the loudest knock came at the 2006 Olympics in Torino. Leading
the giant slalom after the fi rst run, Bourque ended up drifting to fourth,
just out of the medal hunt. But a statement was made: Francois Bourque,
at just 21, was a skier who could challenge the world’s best.
With three World Cup podiums to his credit at the start of this season, the
knocking gets louder… but with a certain irony.
Here it is: For the last four years, as the entire Canadian men’s team made a
gradual rise out of the doldrums, Bourque has been considered Canada’s most
promising young racer. Bourque was the guy with two Junior World
Championship gold medals, in 2003 and 2004. And Bourque was the guy
twice named Canada’s Breakthrough Athlete of the Year, in 2005 and 2006.
Yet for all that promise, he has been passed by teammates in the race to
the World Cup winner’s circle. In the last couple of years, Erik Guay, John
Kucera, and most recently Jan Hudec have earned their fi rst World Cup
wins, while Bourque has been left, well, knocking.
Part of that, of course, is just luck. In earning his fi rst World Cup podium,
a 3 rd in a Super-G in Garmisch in 2005, he was only four-hundredths of a
second off the winning time of Christoph Gruber. Ask Guay, Kucera and
Hudec why they won, and while they’ll credit their skiing and their skis,
18 THE SPRING SKIING ISSUE 2008
they’ll shrug. In a sport decided by tiny fragments of a second, the winning
edge is often a mystery.
Part of Bourque’s absence from the winner’s circle, however, can likely be
attributed to his long-term goal of becoming overall World Cup champion.
To get there means honing skills in at least four disciplines — in Bourque’s
case, downhill, Super-G, giant slalom and combined. That takes time, often
resulting in a more gradual ascent up the World Cup ladder rather than a
fast-tracking leap by concentrating on one or two disciplines.
He learned to ski by being towed on a
snowmobile by his father…
Finally, there may be an explanation in Bourque himself, a down-to-earth
Quebecer from the rural Gaspe Peninsula. He didn’t come from a big-resort
or big-ski-club background as Guay did at Tremblant or Kucera and Hudec
did in Alberta. He learned to ski by being towed on a snowmobile by his
father, and he is probably most comfortable in a backwoods cabin with
hunting and fi shing partners. That can make for a big cultural adjustment to
the cosmopolitan world of World Cup racing. And hey — the guy is still only
23. Even Hermann Maier didn’t get his fi rst World Cup win till he was 24.
But Bourque’s time is coming, and the success of teammates can be contagious.
Listen to that sound. That’s Francois Bourque, and he’s knocking.
more race coverage on skipressworld.com
Photo: ACA/Pentaphoto