While Canadians collectively mourn the rink results that
will leave their country without a gold medal in either men’s or women’s hockey
for the first time in two decades, the nation’s top-of-the-podium success in
other sports shouldn’t be overlooked.
For example, the day after Jocelyne Larocque and the women’s
hockey team grudgingly accepted their silver-coloured hardware, Canada earned a
gold and a silver medal in women’s ski cross, from Kelsey Serwa and Brittany
Phelan, respectively.
Both women owe a great deal of their success to Whistler,
B.C. native Ashleigh McIvor, the ski cross pioneer who became Canada’s darling
of the slopes by taking home the first-ever Olympic gold in the sport, eight
years ago today, in a home Olympics for good measure.
“It’s
hard to believe it’s
been eight years, it’s
nice to have had some time to reflect on it,” McIvor said to a Toronto-based
sportswriter before the start of the 2018 Games in PyeongChang.
“The 2010 Olympic gold medal was icing on the cake. It was
never really about the results for me, it was about leading a healthy, active
lifestyle and inspiring the next generation to do the same.”
McIvor, who was behind the CBC microphone for Thursday’s
race won by her former teammate Serwa, retired from the sport just over two
years after achieving international glory.
She grew up skiing and biking in Whistler, loathe to
watching television, but instead choosing to embrace the outdoors during her
childhood years and beyond. While
studying marketing at the University of British Columbia in 2003, she penned a
hypothetical essay to the International Olympic Committee asking for the inclusion
of ski cross into the games.
Although the letter was never sent, the sport did make its
Olympic debut seven years later. On February 23, 2010, McIvor was the first to
cross the finish line at the base of Cypress Mountain in the big final,
jubilantly celebrating in front of her hometown fans.
“I couldn’t
believe how well everything came together for me.”
People in the media kept saying the stars aligned. Because it was a combination
of a lifetime of preparation, despite the fact that I didn’t know what exactly I was
preparing for,” she said.
“I was an alpine athlete just doing what I loved to do for
fun…skipping,
training, skiing, racing my buddies off cliffs and through trees, and
eventually an Olympic sport that encompassed all those things that I was doing
for fun became part of the program.”
Coincidentally, Serwa finished first in the small final, in
the same 2010 event.
McIvor, 34, lives in Whistler with her husband, retired
American soccer star Jay DeMerit, and their two-year-old son Oakes. Her
Instagram profile is rife with photos of British Columbia’s snow-capped
mountains. When she’s not broadcasting for CBC, she is invited for speaking
engagements, promotional work, and appearances for the Canadian Olympic Committee,
and other partners.
“It seemed like destiny at the time, all this inadvertent
preparation became relevant suddenly in perfect timing for me to be in the
debut of the Olympic sport at home, at the right age to be at the pinnacle of
your career,” McIvor said. “Now that I’ve
had some time to reflect, I realize it wasn’t
exactly as magical as it seemed, it was a series of good decisions and hard
work and energy being put into the right place.”
McIvor now leaves a legacy of Canadian ski cross Olympic
champions that includes Marielle Thompson, in Sochi, 2014, and now Serwa in
PyeongChang as her successors.
