By Dan Balkin
Imagine if Canada’s ice hockey team – bubbling with NHL stars – showed up at the Winter Olympics and lost to France, Switzerland, or Austria. Unthinkable, right? That’s what these European alpine skiing powers thought when a fearless group of Canadian downhillers, mainly between 1978 and 1984, showed up at World Cup Downhill races in Europe and began to make their mark in the history of ski racing. Their first collective nickname, dubbed by the jealous Europeans, was the “Kamikaze Canucks.” As, however, their amazing feats on Downhill racecourses accumulated, a French ski writer, in despair, labelled them the “Crazy Canucks.” The name clicked – and it stuck. The courageous Canadians embraced the crazy nickname. Why? Downhill ski racing is one of the world’s most exciting and perilous sports; they knew they were crazy – crazy good.
Ken Read, Steve Podborski, Dave Irwin, and Dave
Murray.
The World Cup is the pinnacle of worldwide ski racing. The typical race has 50-70 participants, each one of them, at this level, an amazing and talented skier. To put things in perspective, from 1975 – 1984, the Crazy Canucks earned a remarkable total of 107 top 10 World Cup finishes. Even more remarkable, 39 of these finishes landed one of them on the podium, meaning they finished first, second, or third. Let’s pull the curtain back on their collective Crazy Canucks nickname and see who these four remarkable Canadians were. In December of 1975, at Val-d’Isere, France, Ken Read, was the first non-European to win a World Cup Downhill event. This was the race that first put the Crazy Canucks in the spotlight as a skiing force to be reckoned with. The Europeans thought he was lucky, but as he made it to the podium thirteen other times, and won four more races, he proved that his luck consisted of being a very skilled and dedicated athlete. Adding to the luster of his achievements, Read was also the first North American man to win at the notoriously treacherous Hahnenkamm in Austria and the prestigious Lauberhorn in Switzerland.
Dave Irwin, a native of Thunder Bay, Ontario, had nine top 10 finishes in World Cup Downhills. He only had one victory, but it was a doozy! Franz Klammer was – and perhaps still is – the most famous Downhiller in the world. Klammer’s epic Downhill run, to win the gold medal on his native turf – or should we say snow – in the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria is legendary for its daring and recklessness. Dave Irwin, on the World Cup stage, ended a remarkable season and a half of dominance Klammer had in Downhill races. In Schladming Austria, on December 20, 1975, Irwin beat the legendary Austrian by 1.61 seconds. Beating Franz Klammer in a Downhill ski race would be like a boxer saying he knocked out Muhammad Ali with a right hook! Steve Podborski had 20 World Cup podium finishes between 1978 – 1984. He was a two-time Olympian, and in 1980 won the bronze medal in the Downhill event at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics. The next year, showing his bronze medal was no fluke, he was the first non-European to win the World Cup Downhill Champion title.
Rounding out this Crazy Canuck quartet was Dave Murray, who did not take up skiing until he was fifteen years old. He had three World Cup podium finishes, and two of them were second place in races his teammate Ken Read won. In 1979, despite never winning a race, his race results were still so consistent that at the end of the season he was ranked third in the world in Downhill. He became The Director of Skiing at the legendary Whistler-Blackcomb ski area in British Columbia. In 1988, at the same mountain, he founded the Dave Murray Ski School. Sadly, after battling skin cancer, he passed away at only 37 years old in 1990.
In 2004, there was a Canadian TV movie which chronicled the exploits of these Downhill racers. It also included the Canadian downhiller “Jungle Jim” Hunter, who was a predecessor and inspiration for the four racers we featured in this article. Their achievement seemed crazy – because it was – they overcame entrenched European dominance in the World Cup Downhill circuit.