The big bobsleds have given way to skeleton in Whistler, and Josip Brusic paced Canada on Thursday with a North American Cup (NAC) bronze medal.
Brusic notched a combined two-run time of one minute and 48.74 seconds, which was 1.7 seconds back of triumphant Austrian Florian Auer. Nicholas Timmings from Australia locked down the runner-up spot (+1.49).
"In [terms of] ranking I'm pretty pleased, but my performance today wasn't the best," said Brusic. "I could have done a lot better on the ice and I could have chased for my personal best. I was just off it by about two-tenths [of a second]. Wanted to do more, but I'm happy with what I got.
"We want to look where we're going, but that makes us slow because our head acts as a parachute. When we bring it down, we become more aerodynamic. I'll be trying to keep my head down [more] as I start hitting 120 kilometres per hour—not being scared of that, and just embracing it."
On the ladies' front, Kendall Wesenberg netted gold for Team USA (1:50.20) with a convincing performance. Silver went to Laura Vargas of Colombia (+0.51) and Virgin Islands native Katie Tannenbaum earned bronze (+2.71).
Mackenzie Adams placed ninth (+6.89) as the event's only Canuck, but is keeping the small victories in mind.
"I brought my downtime down by two seconds today, which is pretty good for me," explained Adams, who also reached her goal by completing each run in less than a minute (58.61 and 58.48 seconds, to be exact). "You have to be a fast thinker [in Whistler] and you need to be able to adapt to whatever's going on."
Fundamental development
Change is afoot in the Canadian skeleton program with two-time Olympic veteran Mirela Rahneva, former Whistlerite Tirza Lara and three-time NAC medallist Blake Enzie all on hiatus from skeleton.
That leaves reigning World Champion Hallie Clarke and Jane Channell as the roster's most decorated personnel, with both focused on World Cup races this season.
Brusic and Adams find themselves in the mix alongside Jordan Rwiyamilira (sixth on Thursday), Jacob Coleman (eighth), Sébastien Régnier (ninth), Marc-Antoine Vigneault (10th), Brayden Posyluzny (13th) and Ryan Kuehn (DNS).
"I'm really happy for Josip. He's going into his third year, so a bronze medal is great," said national team manager and technical coach Micaela Widmer. "I'm really excited to see what he can do because I think Josip has the ability to win this race [in Whistler].
"And Mackenzie comes to the track and works hard. She's an amazing teammate, always there to help out when we need her."
Fortunately, Adams won't be the lone Canadian woman on the NAC for long. Four NextGen recruits (Emily Bateman, Julia Hamilton, Madeline Parra and Roselyn Houde) will join her for the next block of races in Park City, Utah in early December. All have come up through the RBC Training Ground pipeline, and Widmer expressed optimism for how they might develop in the future.
Developmental team member Brusic is arguably Canada's senior male skeleton athlete for now, but Regnier's NextGen cohort also includes Dion Charles, Massimo Ardizzoni, Zander Greco, Andrew Piderbeisky, Peyton Mecham, Jesse Plante, Simon Salisbury and Eliot Trembley waiting in the wings
The 2026 Winter Olympics might be out of reach for the present generation, but Widmer emphasized the opportunity they have to prepare themselves for long-term success.
"I think that at the North American Cup level, we are really focused on developing sliding fundamentals, great push technique, being a great teammate and building the culture of skeleton," she elaborated. "It's a little bit more about participation and learning…not saying our athletes will be out of [Olympic contention], but we're trying to achieve different outcomes."
The 2024 Whistler NAC concludes on Nov. 29 with one more round of skeleton racing from 10 a.m. to noon.
