From picnic table to Pyeongchang … How three Canadian medal contenders coordinated their Olympic comebacks
A luger, a bobsledder and a figure-skater are sitting on a picnic table on Parliament Hill …
Sounds like the start of a corny joke, doesn’t it?
It turned out be a turning-point type of conversation for a trio of Canadian Olympians and close pals — all legitimate medal contenders at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang.
“It’s so funny … Luge and bobsled, obviously those two sports have similarities. But ice dance?!?” said Scott Moir, one half of Canada’s darling duo with long-time skating partner and now fellow flag-bearer Tessa Virtue. “I mean … I guess we all wear tights. Those guys just don’t have as many sequins as I do. I bet they wish they did.”
Outfits aside, they are bonded by a picnic-table pact.
Without it, perhaps they wouldn’t be packing for Pyeongchang.
Rewind to June 2014, with Canada’s athletes from the Sochi Winter Olympics assembled in Ottawa for the so-called Celebration of Excellence.
At some point, three standouts from separate sports — Moir, luger Sam Edney and bobsled brakeman Jesse Lumsden — plopped themselves atop a table in an outdoor courtyard.
Talk turned to the future.
“The three of us, we were enjoying our time to celebrate and to cut loose, but we were all tired,” said Lumsden, a star running back in the Canadian Football League before retiring from pigskin to focus on his quest for Olympic glory. “We got talking about what comes next, and there was kind of this, ‘Well .. I’ll come back if you come back’ and ‘Well … if you’re coming back, then I’m coming back too.’ But we needed to take a break. And that’s sort of what it turned into.
“We’d keep in touch, and it was always like, ‘Where’s your head at? How ya feeling? You coming back still? I am if you are.’ So it’s been this continual thing. Sam went off to Victoria to go to school but always said, ‘I’m doing it. I’m making the comeback.’ And then Scotty and Tessa announced their comeback, as well.
“I’m not going to say that it’s because we promised each other we were going to do it, but none of us wanted to let each other down. We said that we were doing this together, and we wanted to see it through.”
Moir and Virtue will lead Canada’s contingent into the opening ceremonies next Friday in South Korea. After winning gold at Vancouver 2010 and then silver in Sochi, they’ll share flag-bearer duties, an honour that Moir never could have imagined four years back.
Because when the pride of Ilderton, Ont., arrived at the 2014 Celebration of Excellence, his mind was made up. Or at least he thought it was.
“I thought, for sure, I was done,” Moir admitted. “Those two guys had both played with the idea of maybe taking a bit of a break, and I know Jesse had a very clear plan where he would start to work back in bit-by-bit, year-by-year. And that was the first time I sort of thought of it like that. So for me, it was a huge moment, because I kind of thought, ‘Whoa, maybe I could take some time off AND come back for the Olympics.’ That kind of made that click.
“Sitting there on that bench in Ottawa … it planted a seed in my head.”
A legacy baby of the 1988 Winter Games, Calgary’s Edney skipped the following season on the World Cup luge circuit, cramming to complete a commerce degree.
Lumsden, who originally hails from Burlington, Ont., but now also calls Cowtown home, didn’t compete for the next two winters.
According to Moir, about a year passed before he and Virtue started to chat about a push for Pyeongchang, spit-balling about where they would train and what they might do differently. They made their comeback official early in 2016.
“Once we started to kind of play that game, we fell in love with the idea so much that it was something that we couldn’t live without,” said Moir, who turned 30 in the fall.
There is one other character in this picnic-table tale — Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
What does he have to do with it?
That day on Parliament Hill, a spotting of Trudeau — then leader of the opposition — caused a fuss.
Athletes scrambled for selfies with the hunky politician.
Edney, Lumsden and Moir stayed put.
“All of a sudden, there was this big commotion, and it was like, ‘Holy jeez, what’s going on over there?!?’ ” Edney recalled. “And the three of us just took this moment. It was our moment, I guess. We had a bit of time, and it was like, ‘Boys, are we going to make this happen in another four years? Are we going to all band together?’
“We all made a bit of a pact that we could rely on each other and if there was ever a moment through the next cycle that we needed a hand or needed a buddy to chat things out or just talk about whatever, we would always be there for each other.
“I think somebody even said, ‘Boys, this is a great moment. We have to capture this.’ I don’t remember who took the photo, but we all threw on the serious faces, pondering what’s going to happen in the next Olympic quad.”
The future they were staring into is now.
When the picnic-table pact was made, Edney was motivated by “unfinished business.”
Canada’s luge relay team — Edney, Alex Gough and the tandem of Justin Snith and Tristan Walker — finished fourth in Sochi, missing the podium by one agonizing tenth-of-a-second. They learned in late December they had been upgraded to bronze due to the doping disqualification of two members of Russia’s silver-medal squad.
With the 33-year-old Edney as their elder statesman, Canada’s luge relay team is again a medal threat.
Lumsden, 35, is one of two brakemen who pushed pilot Justin Kripps to the overall World Cup crown in two-man bobsled this season. Kripps, Lumsden & Co. are among the frontrunners in four-man competition, too.
As two-time Olympic medallists and reigning world champions, there are sky-high expectations for Virtue and Moir.
“Four years away is such a long time, but I think we all know from our various sports that it goes by way quicker than you expect. I can look back to that moment and it doesn’t feel like that long ago,” Edney said. “For me, it was looking at setting a goal but also committing your life to being very different. I mean … the amount of effort and work that has to go into an Olympic quad and basically knowing that each moment over the next four years is going to either add up or take away from that Olympic moment …
“It’s a big life-changing decision. I guess it was nice, in that scenario, to know that you weren’t making that decision totally alone. When you have two other guys that are sort of in the same mindset, I think it’s easier to get stoked about it.”
It was, they all agree now, a good decision.
“Every time that there is a team selection, I just watch and think, ‘Thank God we came back,’ ” Moir said. “Because I couldn’t have sat at home and watched all of my friends have the time of their lives and compete in Korea without me.”
- Calgary Sun, Jan 28th 2018
