Erik Guay is out to defend his world cup Super-G title for Canada

By Chris Welner

Erik Guay is a magnet for attention as he strikes a superhero pose on the shores of Lake Louise, resplendent in a yellow ski-racing suit and flowing red cape. Tourists from around the world marvel at the cover photo shoot being staged for IMPACT Magazine and the star athlete from the Canadian Alpine Ski Team revels in the celebrity. He signs autographs and poses for snapshots as travellers from Europe, Asia and his native Quebec greet the downhill racer at this picture-postcard setting in the Alberta Rockies. Even the resort’s tour guide makes Guay part of his story.

Guay better get used to the attention. As the defending overall super-G champion, Guay will be trading in the red cape for a red bib on race days, emblematic of the World Cup discipline leader. The Crystal Globe he clutches is the prize every alpine racer craves and Guay and his globe will be the target of his competitors’ pursuits when the World Cup ski season gets underway at Lake Louise with downhill and super-G races the last week of November.

“Winning the globe was something I’d been dreaming about since I was a little kid,” says Guay. Yet because of the complicated scoring system, Guay didn’t know he had won the super-G title in  Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany until one of his sponsors’ representatives did some math and passed on the good news. “I called my wife and my parents. It was pretty emotional. They had been following the race on the Internet and their phones were ringing off the hook in Tremblant.

“I was ecstatic to finally win that globe, especially after the season I had heading in.” What culminated in triumph in a German finish corral last March began in pain at the season opening speed races in Lake Louise for the 29-year-old, from Mont Tremblant, Que. Despite nursing a sore back and lacking the training mileage on snow, Guay placed a tantalizingly close fourth in the super-G at Lake Louise. Add in Olympic-sized frustrations of two fifth place finishes at Whistler in February from one of Canada’s medal favourites, and Guay felt he had something to prove. “There were mixed feelings. I would have loved to have a medal at the Olympics in my home country,” says Guay. “If I look at where I came from and how close I came under pressure, it wasn’t a disaster, but I think Canadians were expecting more from us.

“It was that little burn from the Olympics that launched me into that end of season attack. I wasn’t there, but I knew I could be. There were two races after the Olympics in Kvitfjell (Norway) and Garmisch and I won them both.”

In the six-race super-G season, those two victories and three other top-seven results vaulted Guay ahead of Austrian Michael Walchhofer and Norwegian Aksel Lund Svindal to win the title. In doing so, Guay became the first Canadian to win the overall super-G title and it put him in select company. The only other Canadians to win a Crystal Globe are Steve Podborski, with the downhill title in 1982 and Nancy Greene Raine, who won the first ever World Cup overall titles in 1967 and 1968.

“I’m just delighted for him,” says Podborski, the Crazy Canuck who was the first non-European man to win the overall downhill globe. “It’s so hard to win a World Cup title and the simple fact is he beat everybody else. That’s pretty magic.”

Podborski’s 20 World Cup podium finishes are more than any Canadian man. Ken Read is next with 14 and Guay has three World Cup victories among 13 podium finishes. “This puts a great deal more expectation on Erik and the hard part is living up to those expectations, because you’re the man,” says Podborski. Greene Raine, Canada’s athlete of the 20th century, says an Olympic medal brings prestige, but racers know an overall title means you are the best. “I felt badly he didn’t get a medal in Whistler, but Erik  came on so well at the end,” says Greene Raine. “Erik is a mature racer, a very professional ski racer. Being a father with a family to support is a big part of it.”

Green Raine remembers she made exactly zero dollars from her World Cup championships, but today, with prize money of about 30,000 Swiss francs for winning a race and sponsorship bonuses, Guay earns a high six-figure income. The middle son in a ski racing family, Erik’s brothers Kristian and Stefan both competed on the national team.

His father, Conrad, coached them all and his mother, Ellen, is a ski instructor at Mont Tremblant. By the time he was 17, Erik Guay knew ski racing was his life. He had to choose between university or the national team. His dad said he had one shot at ski racing and school would always be there, so young Erik headed out for the rock star life – but one with goals, direction and a champion’s focus.

“A lot of parents would say go to school and take the scholarship. But my parents were the opposite,” says Guay. “The opinion of my parents mattered to me.” Guay has always demonstrated maturity beyond his years and he shows it with his baby girl, Logann, born in January 2009. The fact that he won his overall title a year later was not surprising.

“Fatherhood has affected me for sure,” says Guay. “As an athlete it’s been all about getting to the top. All about me. Now with a daughter it’s almost the opposite. You have to do everything around her schedule and I’m learning and loving it. It’s opened my mind and let me see what life’s really about.”

While the Crystal Globe is his crowning achievement, Guay is just entering his prime as a ski racer. He has moved his home base to Calgary with his wife Karen and their daughter where they live in a tony west Calgary neighbourhood ripe with million dollar homes and views of the Alberta Rockies.

It’s also closer to national team headquarters, the base for fitness trainer Matt Price and sport psychologist Derek Robinson. Price has Guay in the gym lifting weights, riding the bike, busting out full-range of motion exercises and playing hockey twice a week.

“The hockey is for my back. I used to do a lot of lifting, but now I have a more complete program. A ski racer needs power, flexibility, endurance,” says Guay. “I think I’m way fitter than I was.”
Robinson, a psychologist at the Canadian Sport Centre Calgary, says Guay is one of the hardest working athletes he’s been around.

“Erik is a great example of an athlete with a great openness to learn,” says Robinson. “We identified different situations on the hill that simulate pressure situations in practice, then apply those strategies. “Erik is easy to work with because of his will to win. He genuinely wants to be there and he’s doing whatever is in his control to have success.” With a Crystal Globe in his grip, Guay has one major item checked off his bucket list. Everything from now on is a bonus. First up is the Lake Louise program on Nov. 27 and 28. The season will finish with the World Championships back in Garmisch, the hill where he won that final super-G and where he also won a downhill in 2007. “It will be a different game now that I’m the one to catch,” he says. Indeed it will.