Canadian skier Grenier embraces Olympic expectations ahead of Milan Cortina Games

Valérie Grenier wasn’t sure where the high expectations came from.

As the Canadian alpine skier geared up for the 2022 Beijing Olympics, she was surprised to hear talk of a medal, even though she had never reached a senior podium.

“It was strange,” she recalled. “All of a sudden, everyone was saying, ‘Oh, she’s going for a medal.’

“I don’t think it was a good thing. I feel like it put pressure on me that I didn’t need.”

In the end, she didn’t come close. During her only Beijing race, Grenier clipped a gate and failed to finish her first run — and just like that, her Olympic journey was over.

Four years later, she’s happy to own the pressure.

Now a five-time medallist on the World Cup stage, Grenier heads to the Milan Cortina Games — her third Olympics — as Canada’s strongest hope for a women’s alpine podium.

“I’m in a place where I can have high expectations,” she said. “I don’t like to say it, but I’m going for a medal.

“I know what I’m capable of and I have podiumed before, so I know I can do it.”

Grenier will compete in the giant slalom, super-G, downhill and team combined events in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, which will host women’s alpine competitions from Feb. 4 to 18.

The field, Grenier says, is thinner than expected with several top competitors nursing injuries.

“There’s also a lot of people missing, unfortunately,” she said. “Opens up a lot of possibilities for the rest of us, so I think that can be something I can take advantage of. I know the medal is something very realistic now.”

The 29-year-old from St. Isidore, Ont., said the conditions in the Italian Dolomites are also more to her liking, recalling she “could not ski” in Beijing because the artificial snow felt unlike anything she’d ever experienced.

This time around, she’ll race on a very familiar course that brings back good and bad memories.

On Jan. 26, 2024, Grenier captured bronze in Cortina D’Ampezzo for her first World Cup downhill medal, adding to one of the best stretches of her career.

But two days later, she suffered a disastrous crash in a super-G race on the same hill. She needed shoulder surgery for a fractured humerus and a reconstruction of her right knee after tearing her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), medial collateral ligament (MCL) and meniscus.

“It seems like a love-hate relationship, but I’m already over it. I skied there last year, and I felt good, so I’ve moved past that,” she said of the Italian hill. “It’s a track that I love, I’ve been there so many times now, and I’ve had good results too.”

Major injuries have been part of Grenier’s story. She also crashed during a downhill training run before the 2019 world championships in Are, Sweden, fracturing her right tibia, fibula and ankle.

Though devastating at the time, Grenier believes that her first hard fall helped her become a stronger skier. She shifted her focus from speed events to the more technical giant slalom, now her strongest discipline.

She described the more-recent crash as “frustrating” because of her stellar form at the time, but that hot stretch also instilled confidence she could return to those heights.

Canadian teammate Britt Richardson remembers a sad, but resolute Grenier in the aftermath.

“She had like no second guesses of not coming back or not being back to winning races,” said the 22-year-old Richardson, who added Grenier has gone from idol to best friend. “The day she got hurt, she was like, ‘I’ll be back on the podium.’”

Not only did Grenier return to the podium, but she won a giant slalom bronze on home snow this past December in Mont-Tremblant, Que., racing down the hill to a roaring local crowd at the finish. She’s the only Canadian to win a World Cup alpine medal this season.

Grenier also finished fourth in a GS event in Semmering, Austria, on Dec. 27.

“Hard moments always make you stronger because you realize what you’re capable of. I know that I can always come back stronger,” she said. “I’m just proud of the way I was able to come back from this injury, and it shows me that I’m really strong and I can get through anything.”

Grenier grew up in small-town Eastern Ontario, but identifies as both a Franco-Ontarian and a Quebecer after spending her weekends in Mont-Tremblant, where her grandparents owned a condo.

She learned to snowplow at the Laurentians ski resort when she was only two years old, recounting stories of how she’d bawl her eyes out when it came time to drive home.

“It’s safe to say I fell in love with the sport right away,” she said.

Grenier’s parents ran a chicken and egg farming company that her brother has since taken over, and she knows there’s room for her in the family business.

But even after all her serious injuries, she can’t imagine herself doing anything but carving down slopes from the Alps to the Rockies.

“To me, it feels like whatever happens I’ll always get backup and push through it until I make it back, basically until I literally cannot do it anymore,” she said. “I plan on keeping going as long as possible, (until my) mid-30s or something.

“As long as my body can keep going, then I want to keep going.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 30, 2026.