It’s late morning during the pre-season grind for alpine skier Valérie Grenier, who enjoys sipping coffee following an extended sleep on her day off in Colorado. An afternoon of rest is planned after a walk and grocery shopping in Silverthorne with her Canadian women’s teammates.
Grenier is upbeat and relieved near the end of another pain-free training camp in 2022, a big deal for those who have followed her career.
“I feel I’m doing [the same] volume as everyone else and I can go all-out every day,” Grenier said over the phone recently. “I feel so good and I’m grateful for that because I haven’t felt this way in a long time.”
Unfortunately, Grenier has yet to complete a World Cup race this season after appearing to lose an edge last Saturday during her opening run of the women’s giant slalom in Killington, Vt. Last month, she was set to race a GS at the World Cup opener that was cancelled due to rain and warm weather in Solden, Austria.
This week, Grenier arrived in Lake Louise, Alta., where scheduled downhills Friday and Saturday and a super-G Sunday will be live-streamed on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem.
The 26-year-old hasn’t raced super-G at the mountain resort in Banff National Park since 2018 when she placed fifth and 5-100ths of a second behind bronze medallist Viktoria Rebensburg of Germany.
Two months later, Grenier broke her right leg in four places and her right ankle travelling about 130 kilometres per hour in a downhill training run at the world championships in Are, Sweden. She needed a second surgery five months later when the bone wasn’t healing properly.
Nearly four years after the crash, Grenier is ready to return to speed racing “for real” after a few unsuccessful attempts. She was back on skis Oct. 17, 2020 following multiple surgeries, physiotherapy and COVID-19, finishing 25th in giant slalom in Solden. But it was a different story a month earlier when Grenier stood at the top of a mountain for her first training run post-injury and couldn’t push out of the gate in Zermatt, Switzerland. The crash kept replaying in her head.
WATCH | Grenier suffers mental block upon return from injury:
After her recovery, Valérie Grenier was excited to get back to skiing but her path was clouded with fear. Worried and ashamed of injury, Grenier decided to focus on what she does best giant slalom.
The mental challenges forced Grenier to abandon thoughts of downhill or super-G and shift to giant slalom, a more technical and slower discipline. She raced 13 times before a disqualification at her second Olympics last February in Beijing after getting caught on a gate just seconds from the end of her first run.
When she attempted a super-G on March 5, a “crazy scared” Grenier pulled up halfway down an icy and bumpy course in Lenzerheide, Switzerland.
“As much as I wanted to fight through it, you can’t when you don’t feel 100 per cent and you’re going that fast,” said Grenier, who grew up in the Ontario farming community of St. Isidore, east of Ottawa. “It was hard [mentally] to [stop] because that’s not me. I’ll keep going through anything, but at that moment there was no way.
“For a long time, it seemed I wasn’t going to get back to my old self. Before my injury, I was the crazy one. I would give it my all and not think about the consequences.”
WATCH | Grenier ties career-best finish on Jan. 8, 2022, in Slovenia:
St. Isidore, Ont.’s Valérie Grenier came up just short of a medal, placing 4th in the women’s giant slalom event at the FIS Alpine World Cup stop in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia.
After Alpine Canada hired Karin Harjo in April to coach the women, she told Grenier and her teammates to spend the summer at home after a long season. Grenier, who finished 12th in the World Cup GS standings, was soon back in the gym to get herself physically stronger for the 2022-23 campaign. She also did mental exercises to help maintain her focus through an entire race that had plagued her late in previous seasons.
In Colorado, Grenier continued her GS training while adding a healthy diet of super-G to get accustomed to speed again and how the terrain “pushes you around,” Harjo told CBC Sports. Grenier felt strong, didn’t suffer a setback from back issues that bothered her last season and noted “huge progress” from a mental perspective.
“It has been so hard since my injury, up and down,” said Grenier, whose only reminder of the crash is having to loosen a stiff ankle each morning or feel discomfort in her ski boot. “I felt so good in Colorado. Even if it’s dark [when] you can’t see holes in the snow, I don’t think twice about [it].
I’m looking forward to going all-out, taking chances and risks and seeing what happens.— Canada’s Valérie Grenier on racing super-G in Lake Louise, Alta.
“Being scared is not in my head. I’m having fun and thinking about what I’m working on. I feel like myself again.”
Grenier believes the 20-month layoff made her a better athlete. She is more aware about the potential for injury while the risks she takes during competition are more calculated.
“I’m looking forward to going all-out, taking chances and risks and seeing what happens. I’m ready,” said Grenier, who raced two FIS-level super-G events last month at Copper Mountain in Summit County, Colo.
Harjo, who spent each of the previous five seasons as an assistant coach of the United States women’s downhill team, admires Grenier’s grit and confidence.
“She’s so acutely aware of space and time [on the hill] which is good in this sport,” said Harjo, who also worked as an assistant of the American women’s slalom and giant slalom teams from 2015 to 2017. “Her ability to ramp it up when it’s time and have that confidence to push without anything in the back of her mind is amazing.”
‘I’m not going for the podium’
Sunday’s super-G will be contested nearly eight years to the day of Grenier’s World Cup debut at Lake Louise on Dec. 7, 2014, where she was 32nd.
“[Lake Louise] has long [flat sections] at the bottom [of the course] which I think are my strength,” she said. “Coming from the [huge] pitch [atop the hill] I’m good at [maintaining my] speed. I feel good on skis right now and being on a course steep in the middle is good for me.
“I’m definitely not going for the podium because it’s my first super-G World Cup in a while and I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on myself.”
Grenier has yet to medal in six-and-a-half seasons on the circuit, placing fourth in GS last January in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, to match her career-best result from a January 2019 super-G in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
Marie-Michèle Gagnon of Lac-Etchemin, Que., returns to Lake Louise to compete in downhill and super-G after leading the Canadian team with ninth-place performances in each a year ago. On the advice of Harjo, the three-time Olympian dedicated more time to giant slalom in recent months to support her speed.
“I see it elevating her to another level,” said the coach. “She was in Copper [Mountain] and had incredible days of downhill and super-G.”
WATCH | Gagnon 9th in 2021 Lake Louise downhill:
Lac-Etchemin, Que.’s Marie-Michèle Gagnon finished 9th place in the women’s downhill event during the FIS Alpine World Cup competition in Lake Louise, Alberta.
As of Tuesday, Candace Crawford and Stefanie Fleckenstein were the other Canadians slated for both events this weekend.
Crawford’s best downhill result at Lake Louise last year was 48th while the 28-year-old Toronto native was 36th in super-G. She went on to place second in a Nor-Am downhill at the resort west of Calgary and won the super-G. The 2018 Olympian also competed at two other World Cup events last season.
The 25-year-old Fleckenstein, an independent athlete running her own program this season, has earned World Cup starts through her success on the Nor-Am circuit. The three-time downhill champion from Whistler, B.C., had seven podium finishes last season and was 38th in downhill and 41st in super-G at the World Cup stop in Lake Louise. Fleckenstein was the top Canadian during Thursday’s final training run, 19th in one minute 51.06 seconds.
Live coverage of Friday’s downhill begins at 2 p.m. ET and continues Saturday at 2:30 p.m., followed by super-G on Sunday at 1 p.m.