Injury kept Hawrysh from putting best foot forward

Opinion

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This article was published 30/01/2015 (3885 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Racing head-first downhill at 140 kilometres an hour on ice-covered tracks, Brandon’s Cassie Hawrysh is used to the twists and turns that the sport of skeleton offers.

But the 30-year-old Canadian Olympic hopeful has had to endure her most challenging season yet, battling a frustrating foot injury, funding shortfalls and equipment issues to earn a third-place overall finish on the second-tier Intercontinental Cup tour that wrapped up last weekend in Calgary. For the Neelin high school graduate, the bronze-medal finish and a 28th ranking overall in the world were consolation prizes in a season that has tested her like never before.

“It was definitely a battle, but there’s a lot of things that I am super proud of from this season, a lot of things you might refer to as disappointments, but for me I am trying to look at them all as more than just lessons, but as directional navigators for me,” Hawrysh said from Calgary, where the national team is based. “I learned a lot, in particular about my equipment, as well as what I can overcome in the face of adversity in this sport. … And for sure, a trophy and some international recognition is never a bad thing.”

After winning the 2013 national title, Hawrysh was ranked as high as ninth in the world at one point last season, but was left off of Canada’s Olympic team for the 2014 Sochi Games.

She began this season battling a chronic foot injury that continues to plague her — after waiting half a year she is finally in line for an MRI in two weeks — and kept her from posting the times she needed to remain on the top-tier World Cup tour, where the world’s 26 best sliders compete.

“The truth is, I wasn’t able to train properly this season, so on a grand scale for me, it was a big deal,” Hawrysh said of her foot problem. “Surgery is not an option. It’s like a bone spur, but it’s not a bone spur. … It’s a very strange, tricky little injury. This has already been eight months with this and I can’t do another year like this.”

Compounding the injury issues, Hawrysh’s once-trusty sled started to show its age this season in a sport where any edge in equipment can mean precious tenths of a second that make the difference between being on the podium or in the back of the pack. But with national skeleton funding slashed from $875,000 to a paltry $20,000 this season after a disappointing showing in Sochi, and Hawrysh paying “anywhere from fifteen to twenty grand” out of her own pocket to race this season, upgrading her equipment will be another financial challenge for next season.

“I have done everything I could this season to make this sled work again, and as you see in my results, it’s hit or miss and you can’t be racing on a piece of equipment that only works 50 per cent of the time,” said Hawrysh, whose races ranged from second- and third-place performances to 13th and 14th on the IC circuit this season.

While qualifying for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea remains her focus, Hawrysh will also have to deal with challenges from a younger crop of Canadian sliders like 20-year-old phenom Elisabeth Vathje, who has won gold and silver on the World Cup tour this season and is currently ranked seventh in the world.

However, Hawrysh remains undeterred and has turned her focus to rehabbing her injury to be 100 per cent for team trials in the fall. And with the next Olympics still three years away, Hawrysh has plenty of time to get back on track, so to speak. In the big picture of the four-year Olympic cycle, this wasn’t exactly a make-or-break season.

“I’ve heard that a lot and it’s true,” said Hawrysh, who could conceivably still be called up to finish the season on the World Cup tour next month. “If you are going to have a season with a lot of ups and downs, you might as well make it Year 1 of the quadrennial, because in that perspective, this season doesn’t matter. It matters for what I take away from it and know what I got out of it … and no matter what it looks like on paper, I haven’t gone backwards, I am only going forward and that’s what’s important to me.”