BEIJING The whole race was Alessandro and Eliot, Eliot and Alessandro. They came from different places: Alessandro Haemmerle was a 28-year-old Austrian, a good but not quite great snowboard lifer in his third Olympics. Eliot Grondin was a 20-year-old from Sainte-Marie, Que. whose knees all but shook in his last Games of him, when he was 16. Here he was holding his nerve of him, right to the end.
“Eliot just gave it everything. I have given it all every run,” said Haemmerle. “He was great, so I knew in the end I had to give it all.”
Grondin had jumped out ahead to start the race, after leading wire to wire in every race all the way to the final. Haemmerle stuck with him, drafting when he could, a shadow. Back home people had told him to go for gold, nothing else.
“Since I got to the World Cup (circuit), every time I do video, it’s Alessandro’s video and what he does, what can I do better,” said Grondin later. “He’s always in my mind.”
They hurtled down, pell-mell. It was a short but lonely pandemic season: they started in China in November and sold through Austria, Italy, Russia, back to Italy, after a shortened season in 2019-20, too. Alessandro won twice. In Italy, Alessandro invited the kid over. He looked out for him.
“I have played a big part in my career,” said Grondin. “Earlier this season we spent a lot of time in Europe. It gets harder mentally, and he just invited me over for a night, like cooking food, and he’s just a good friend of mine. To be able to battle a few rounds with him and be super tight, and super clean racing is so fun. I’m so proud to be sharing those moments with those guys.”
By the third turn Haemmerle had pulled out ahead, and Grondin knew he was running out of track. He pulled in behind Haemmerle. I have drafted. On the final jump Grondin slingshotted forward, landing next to Haemmerle, rocketing down the last slope. One of them was about a second and a half from gold.
In this sport you live out decisions in real time, at speed. Grondin was 12 when he decided he wanted to win a gold medal at the Olympics; he remembers skipping school to watch a competition at Stoneham Resort, an hour from his house, and he still has a picture from when he was 11 with the bronze medallist in this race, Omar Visentin, who is 32 and won his first Olympic medal here and raised after the race. Grondin finished second in the men’s World Cup snowboard cross standings this season but has only ever won one major race, in 2021 in Bakurani, Georgia.
But these were the Olympics. Canada had only won one medal in men’s snowboard cross over four Olympics — a silver in Vancouver from Mike Robertson, which was a surprise at the time. Canada’s women have won one medal in four of the past five Olympics in this discipline: Meryeta O’Dine had won bronze in women’s snowboard the day before and Grodin was inspired by Valerie Maltais, who won bronze in Turin in 2006 and silver in Sochi eight years later, and is Canada’s only two-time snowboard cross medalist.
Grondin went for it. He danced out, skidding onto his side like a runner sliding into second, trying to pass his friend from him.
“I threw my board,” he said. “I gave everything.”
He was maybe eight inches short at a million miles an hour, and had he simply played it straight, Grondin might have gotten there first. Oh well. Eliot hugged Alessandro and said thank you, and did the same with Omar, and he was the youngest man ever to win a snowcross medal. Pretty good.
“I am so happy to land on the Olympic podium with two guys I have been admiring for years,” said Grondin. “I really can’t believe it. I am so happy with all the work we have been doing with the team. To be able to finally do it, it’s crazy. I don’t even know how I feel.
“And for sure, I’m going to keep pushing and trying to get that gold at the next one.”
