The road to recovery isn’t always straight and smooth for athletes who get hurt. Instead it can be circuitous, not unlike Highway 99 snaking its way from Cache Creek down to British Columbia’s border with Washington state. At times, there’s not even a clear roadmap to follow—instead there are delays and surprise detours which make the rehab process feel like using a GPS that is constantly recalculating.
If you’ve lived through such an experience, Tiana Gairns can empathize with you.
Gairns, a member of Canada’s national ski-cross team, missed the beginning of this season after her knee started bothering her. She raced to her first career World Cup medal—a bronze—back in March 2023, but began feeling what she calls “a decent amount of pain” in the offseason. Said pain did not go away, and Gairns realized she needed to do something about it.
The Prince George native, who now lives in Whistler, has rebounded from injury before. A shoulder ailment kept her out of action in 2018-19, and she also blew her knee out at the end of 2019. But this time was different.
“I didn’t have a process in place, like the other injuries, and it was not nearly as straightforward,” Gairns said. “I had a lot of bumps in the road, a lot of things that didn’t work, and way more setbacks. In the past, I often look back at how far I’ve come in rehab to gain motivation and optimism, and that didn’t really work for me because each time I looked back, it just felt like I hadn’t moved forward very much.
“So this rehab has really taught me patience over anything else: trusting the process, even when you can’t see the process working.”
That very saying—trust the process—has become a familiar rallying cry amidst both Canadian skiers and the wider sports world.
Marielle Thompson battled multiple ACL tears en route to two Olympic medals, three World Championship podiums and three Crystal Globes. 2018 Olympic silver medallist Brittany Phelan suffered major lower body injuries as both a slalom skier and a ski-cross athlete. One thing Gairns shares with them is a passion for her sport, which drives her to return stronger than ever.
Yet passion alone is not her only fuel source.
Keeping the faith
Throughout her life, on and off the racecourse, Gairns cites faith in Jesus Christ as her ultimate foundation.
“Ski cross isn’t my be-all and end-all,” she explained. “God is my be-all and end-all, and even though I ski race, I really try not to do it for myself. I think that there’s a bigger purpose in life and try to keep myself grounded in that.”
Anyone who has competed at a high level could tell you how all-consuming sport can be. Results, awards and besting one’s opponents often dominate an athlete’s mental space, but months of downtime allowed Gairns the opportunity to re-centre herself, not only in her faith but in many other aspects of life as well.
“I had some big life questions to ask myself and to go through, so it feels like I’ve done a lot of maturing over the last year,” she said. “One of the biggest things I learned is that you’re constantly maturing, and you’re constantly changing. As life goes on and as you encounter different things, you change as a person, and that is just the way life is.”
Now, Gairns is able to return to ski cross as a wiser and more resilient version of herself. Her love for the discipline is multi-faceted: as a highly competitive person, she loves being able to push herself while enjoying the outdoors. She also appreciates the culture found on Canada’s national team, which—cliché as it may sound—she likens to a family.
The 25-year-old has been quite a cheerleader from afar as her teammates opened this present campaign on fire. Jared Schmidt ripped off three straight World Cup victories last December, becoming the inaugural Canadian man to achieve such a feat. His sister, Hannah, recently managed two consecutive wins in Nakiska—the first Canuck on the women’s roster since Thompson to do so on home soil.
Thompson herself returned to her winning ways on Jan. 28 with a gold medal in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
“Being Team Canada really means something, and I think one of the first things that I learned when I started skiing World Cups was that when a Canadian does well, you all do well,” Gairns said.
“When you show up to a race, everyone has a chance of winning that day … and seeing all my teammates do well—that’s the best motivation you can give me. I’m so happy for them, and I’m so proud of them.”
When asked who has had a particularly salient impact on her career, Gairns identified Phelan, whom she calls “a rock” with loads of wisdom and knowledge to impart.
Olympic dreams
Perhaps it was inevitable Gairns would become some kind of top-flight skier. Her dad Stuart raced back in his heyday, and she spent five years of her youth living in Austria—a nation where skiing is king. Both of Gairns’ siblings, Mikayla and Lucas, also competed, though neither went as far as she did.
Most ski-cross athletes get their start in alpine, and Gairns was no exception. Yet she began distinguishing herself at ski-cross events that were added into her alpine circuit as a teenager, and took part in the 2016 ski-cross nationals in Smithers, B.C. Her dedication to the sport grew until she earned a berth on the NextGen roster, and eventually the senior national team.
Gairns was once very adamant the Olympics were no big deal to her. Back then, she felt World Cup success was just as important as winning medals under the five rings.
That perspective evolved after she, as Canada’s first alternate, did not see action at Beijing 2022. Instead, she watched from the sideline as Thompson locked down silver.
“I believe in [the Games] as an event that brings people together from all different countries and all different sports,” Gairns opined. “It is a show of what our world can do when we’re interacting with each other in a peaceful way.
“If we put politics aside, the Olympics can show how people from different cultures, different backgrounds and different countries can come together and celebrate each other. I’ve never been part of that, and I would really love to be.”
