Freestyle Skiing

At first blush, the biggest rivalry in men's moguls skiing could be cast as hero versus villain.

On one side is defending Olympic champion Dale Begg-Smith, a Lamborghini-driving 24-year-old who made a fortune peddling invasive Internet spyware and who shunned his native Canada to win gold for Australia.

His foe is 22-year-old Alexandre Bilodeau, a hockey-playing all-Canadian boy whose hero is his older brother, Frédéric, who has cerebral palsy.

"It's going to be like Ali versus Frazier for two months heading into the Olympics," said Peter Judge, chief executive officer of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association.

But a closer look shows that this highly anticipated showdown, kicking off Dec. 12 in Finland at the first World Cup event of the Olympic season, is more complicated than good guy versus bad.

While Canadians might find it hard to cheer for an athlete who turned his back on his country, associates of Begg-Smith - and even Bilodeau's coach - explain that it never would have happened had the CFSA not turned its back on him.

"He took his future into his own hands and for that I will always respect him," said Dominic Gauthier, who coaches Bilodeau in Montreal. "Too bad for Canada, but maybe we learned something from that. We lost an Olympic champion."

Moguls skiing will be a big story for Canadians at the Vancouver Olympics, in part because the event is scheduled on the first two days of competition.

Jennifer Heil of Spruce Grove, Alta., aims to add another gold medal to the one she won in Turin. If successful, she will be the first Canadian to win Olympic gold at home.

On the men's side, Bilodeau heads the most talented squad of French-Canadian moguls skiers since the generation led by Jean-Luc Brassard, champion at the 1994 Lillehammer Games. Twice during the 2008-09 World Cup season, Bilodeau and teammates Vincent Marquis and Pierre-Alexandre Rousseau went 1-2-3 on the podium. They finished in the top four in overall World Cup rankings, with Bilodeau No..1.

But their success came with an asterisk.

An injured knee forced Begg-Smith, who dominated the sport for three years following the 2006 Olympics, to quit midway through the season after a weak start by his standards. Now rehabilitated, he told an Australian reporter he's feeling stronger than ever and has his sights set on winning on his old turf.

Bilodeau, 22, has three words for him: "Bring it on."

Had things gone differently, Begg-Smith and Bilodeau might have been teammates.

Begg-Smith grew up skiing in Whistler, but left for Australia at 15, reportedly because Canadian team officials disapproved of how the promising young skier's business interests interfered with his training. Years later, when Begg-Smith won gold in Turin wearing Australia's uniform, he had a black Lamborghini parked in his garage in south Melbourne.

"He found that he needed a very individualized program and the team didn't allow that," said Gauthier, adding the Canadian system has since relaxed its "one-size-fits-all" philosophy.

Begg-Smith has largely shunned the media, perhaps stung by Australian newspaper reports probing the nature of the Internet business he runs with his brother, which he has vaguely characterized as "technology for companies to monitor ad campaigns." But Peter Judge, who knew Begg-Smith growing up and still speaks with him regularly, says the skier has been unfairly cast.

"A lot of people have misinterpreted his shyness for arrogance, and he's the furthest thing from that," Judge said.

He adds that anyone who might attribute Bilodeau's recent success to Begg-Smith's absence is similarly misinformed. "It was really about Alex's story and not who was in the field with him."

That story, which begins more than a year ago, is of a young skiing prodigy who found the key to winning by looking inside his own head. While Bilodeau burst onto the international scene four years ago, becoming the first rookie to top the podium in World Cup competition, he hovered between second and fourth overall for several years. With his sports psychologist, Bilodeau says he realized that while he could ski brilliantly in training, his perfectionist tendencies were tripping him up in competition.

"Nobody could speak to me," Bilodeau said. "I was in my bubble all the time on competition day and it was killing me."

He's more relaxed now, more on the top of the course. "I'm going with the flow and it gives me more confidence," he said.

Off the hill, it's now okay to play hockey with his buddies until midnight, but saying the "O word" (Olympics) during family meals was not. He likes to quote Tiger Woods: "Golf is what I do, it's not who I am."

He knows Begg-Smith isn't the only threat, and his friends and teammates will be among his toughest challengers. Marquis defeated Bilodeau at a World Cup event at Mont Gabriel in Sainte-Adèle, Que., last season.

Rousseau, 30, is driven to make his first Olympic Games after injuries forced him off the team just before the last two Olympic Games. Also hungry is France's Guilbaut Colas, who has finished second in the World Cup standings for the past three years.

But moguls is a judged sport, based on speed, technique and tricks, so Bilodeau knows what he really needs to do is compete with himself.

At the gym where he and Heil train in Montreal, a bucket sits in the corner for athletes to vomit into if they've pushed themselves past their body's limit. Afterward they sign the bucket as a badge of honour, and Bilodeau's name is the most recent, dated November, 2009.

"First of all, I'm focusing on me," he said. "If I do that, the result will follow."

- With a report from Alex Blair