Alpine Skiing

John Kucera was the one, the only one really, who seemed in every way ready.

In the training runs leading up to the World Cup opening downhill here Saturday, the other Canadian Cowboys were all over the map when it came to their emotional and physical well-being.

Erik Guay, normally the coolest, most professional of customers, seemed shaken by time lost over the summer to nagging back problems. He said he didn't want to panic, didn't want to try to hard to catch up, but understood in this Olympic year that time was of the essence.

Jan Hudec knew that he was still on a much longer road back, racing for the first time since blowing out a knee at the World Championships last February. Just getting down the mountain would represent a baby-steps victory, with many miles still to travel.

Robbie Dixon, the long shot of the group, was skiing as well as he ever had, and brimming with confidence.

His eighth-place finish in the downhill, on a course he hated, would only confirm those feelings. His housemate and running buddy Manuel Osborne-Paradis, as ever, had that extra little bit of swagger even if his coaches didn't know quite what to expect from him.

And then there was Kucera, he of few words, he of the even keel, he the closest thing to a real strong-but-silent cowboy in the bunch - at least if cowboys rode dirt bikes. He the reigning downhill world champion, confident, at the height of his powers.

The Olympics would be just another race or two, just another stop in the season, Kucera said over and over again for public consumption. That's how the pros are supposed to talk. But you could tell he was feeling it, entering what would be the biggest year of his career, of all the Canadians' careers whether they'll acknowledge it out front or not.

You could tell that he believed - just like the television commercials say - and that his coaches believed as well. He is 25, which is young for this game, but that big win in Val d'Isere on the biggest occasion of last season seemed to push him forward, push him ahead of his teammates, out of the world of high hopes and into the ranks of those who are expected to win, and expect to win.

"It's been a long road," Kucera said that day. "This is a dream come true."

On Saturday, Kucera was the top Canadian, finishing sixth in the season opening downhill. And yesterday, in the Super G - in many respects his best event - there was good reason to believe he'd wind up on the podium.

What a cruel, razor's edge game this is.

With his teammate Osborne-Paradis having already put up the best time of day, Kucera started out flying, wearing the No. 16 bib. On the steepest pitch of the Lake Louise course, the Fallaway section, his skis slipped out from under him and he crashed, tumbling off the course towards the safety fence.

It is always an ominous moment at the bottom of the mountain when you hear the helicopter motor start, when you see it climb into the sky and everything else goes silent.

So many things can happen in a fall, limbs twisted, heads and necks and backs battered, a tangle of equipment and humanity moving 120 kilometres an hour, the perfect arcs of the race transformed into an ugly tangle of acute angles and jagged edges.

And in that instant everything can change.

Osborne-Paradis won the race, his second World Cup victory, more confirmation that on the right day - and perhaps on his home mountain at Whistler - he can be just a big a star as his personality suggests. Guay finished fourth, a huge boost for his confidence, a great sign going forward. Dixon was fifth, and ecstatic, more evidence that when the four spots are allotted for the Olympic downhill, he may well be in the mix.

And Kucera was in hospital. The early reports were of a "serious leg injury," then suggestions of a broken leg, first unconfirmed, then verified. A season lost, an Olympics lost. A bittersweet day, just at it had been in February, when his great moment of triumph was tempered by the sadness of Hudec's crash.