Opinion | Toronto’s Jack Crawford breaks fourth wall to win bronze for Canada’s first ever alpine combined Olympic medal

BEIJING If Jack Crawford’s Olympics would have ended before Thursday, he could have headed home to Toronto with plenty to be proud of.

With a couple of stellar performances in the men’s downhill and super G, where he finished fourth and sixth, respectively, the 24-year-old who grew up around Eglinton and Mount Pleasant Avenues had cemented himself as Canada’s best alpine skier, not to mention an emerging podium threat on the world stage.

He also would have joined an exclusive family club. Crawford’s aunt, now Judy Crawford-Rawley, also finished fourth for Canada at an Olympics, skiing slalom at the 1972 Sapporo Games. So as much as Jack Crawford couldn’t help but ponder what might have been — he’d missed a bronze medal in downhill, after all, by a mere seven-hundredths of a second — there was every reason to be happy with what he ‘d donate

Thankfully, Crawford had one more event on his Olympic calendar: Thursday’s alpine combined, wherein the composite times of two runs — one downhill, one slalom — determine the medallists. Though Crawford, like most of the downhillers in the field, doesn’t spend much time slaloming anymore, he’d grown up learning the skill, and he’d shown an aptitude for the combined event. Alpine combined had produced his best result at last year’s world championships where he’d finished, in the grand Crawford tradition, fourth. If the universe was not trying to tell him something, he remembered something his aunt always did.

“She always told me, ‘No one remembers fourth place,’ ” Crawford said. “That kept popping into my head after the downhill and even today. It’s cutthroat, but it’s true. At the Olympic Games, a medal is everything. That’s what you’re here to do, and that’s what you want.”

Crawford’s performance in the windswept mountains northwest of Beijing was what a breakthrough looks like. Down to his last Olympic chance, Crawford took his aunt’s advice to heart and skied himself onto an Olympic podium. After putting up the second best time in the morning downhill run, trailing only Norway’s Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, Crawford did enough in the slalom to hang on for bronze — a medal that also made him sole heir of family bragging rights.

To put the rarity of his feat into perspective, Crawford became just the fourth Canadian man to win a medal in an alpine skiing event, adding himself to a list that includes Steve Podborski, Ed Podivinsky and Jan Hudec. In a domain historically ruled by Austrians, Swiss and Americans, Crawford also became the first Canadian to stand on the podium in alpine combined. Canada’s previous best finish in the event was an eighth by Jean-Phillipe Roy, achieved 20 years ago in Salt Lake City.

There were no shortage of remarkable stories in alpine combined. Speaking of proud family lineages, gold medalist Johannes Strolz of Austria — a technical specialist who bested both Kilde and Crawford by more than half a second in the slalom to move from fourth place after the downhill to first overall — said he was holding back tears thinking about how his father, Hubert Strolz, had won gold in the same event 34 years ago in Calgary. In a year that saw the younger Strolz lose his spot on the uber-competitive Austrian national team due to under-performance, standing on the top of the podium was beyond redemptive.

“My family always believed in me, and now it’s a dream coming true, (winning) the same gold medal as my father did,” said Strolz.

Silver medalist Kilde, meanwhile, credited his girlfriend, embattled US superstar Mikaela Shiffrin, with giving him the slalom tips that helped him add a second medal to the bronze he won in super G. At an Olympics in which Shiffrin has struggled mightily, arriving as a favorite to win multiple gold medals before failing to finish her first two races, Kilde’s public urging for support for Shiffrin has won him plenty of respect.

“I’m far away from her level, and I won’t ever be at her level, in slalom,” Kilde said. “Together we’ve been able to figure out a good plan (for Kilde’s slalom race). Thanks to her, I was able to just have fun today.”

It was touching stuff. For Canadians, though, there was nothing bigger than Crawford’s first podium in any elite-level race, Olympics, World Cup and world championships included.

“Relief,” is how Crawford described the feeling. “I’ve been searching for a podium for so long on the World Cup at that level this year. I kept feeling like it was right around the corner and I could get it done, and if I just continued what I was doing, it would happen. And today, it finally did.”

As much as skiing medals are carved out by the nano-advantages measured in hundreds of seconds, Crawford’s star turn has been years in the making. It’s not easy becoming a world class alpine skier growing up in Toronto. And for years, Crawford tried his hand at top-level hockey while also pursuing ski racing at the Georgian Peaks ski club near Collingwood.

The story goes that the tipping point in his move to full-time skiing was a Grade 8 hockey game. Playing on a team representing a Toronto sports academy, one of Crawford’s teammates turned out to be pretty good—some kid named Connor McDavid. McDavid, on the day in question, was late for the match. Crawford’s team, without its phenom, found itself down four goals. Then McDavid arrived and scored four goals in about five minutes before he fed Crawford for the tap-in winner — an assist delivered so quickly that Crawford insists he didn’t realize he’d been the one to redirect it into the net.

“After that game I just remember thinking, ‘Wow. If McDavid’s this good there’s no way I’m going to go anywhere in hockey. OKAY. I’m going to be a skier,’ ” Crawford told the Star back in 2018.

McDavid, who has recalled Crawford as a “goofy” kid popular with his classmates and a beast in the weight room, didn’t disagree with Crawford’s choice.

“I remember him on the ice very little. I think he definitely made the right choice with skiing,” McDavid said in an interview as Crawford competed at the 2018 Games. “He’s an Olympian. So I made the right choice.”

He’s an Olympian; McDavid, sadly, still can’t say the same. And the beauty of Thursday’s breakthrough is that Crawford, who won’t turn 25 until May, is essentially just getting started at the sport’s top level. Skiing is often a veteran’s game. All three medalists in the men’s downhill, for instance, are north of 30. Downhill silver medalist Johan Clarey of France is an ancient 41. Meaning, Crawford’s precociousness bodes well for the quadrennials to come.

“Coming fourth, it’s really cool … Looking forward, I’ve got a couple more Olympics where I’m going to get the opportunity to ski in the Olympic downhill, so I’m not too stressed out,” Crawford said this week.

He spoke those words, of course, when he was still facing the prospect of heading back to Toronto with a fourth-place finish as his Beijing 2020 highlight.

“It feels really good to not be in that situation,” Crawford said after his first trip to the podium. “It feels amazing.”