Contributor: Ben Steiner

Sometimes, a little more time can pay off. That’s what the Canadian men’s alpine team is hoping for as the 2024-25 FIS World Cup season. 

Unlike in past years, Alpine Canada’s men’s team is focused on speed events and will not start competing on the World Cup stage until the speed season opens on Dec. 7-9 in Beaver Creek, Colorado. 

It’s a later start to the season for the group, with the Cervinia downhill and super-G off the calendar after two years of failed attempts at the early-season cross-border race. They’ll have to wait until the final month of 2024 to get the campaign going. 

“The schedule is a little bit different this season, especially on the front end with the speed season starting later and starting in Beaver Creek. This new timing changed how we approached our summer prep, especially our snow training,” head coach of the Canadian men’s downhill team, John Kucera, said; with the group training in August in Portillo and La Parva Chile, before returning in September to Chillan for a final South American training block. 

“We’d normally be on snow later in October, but this year the team had the opportunity to target dryland training in Canada. Hopefully, the change in training will boost the guys mentally and physically as they head into the season. In November we’re at home, planning to train at Nakiska as usual, and then we'll head down to Colorado a few days training before Beaver Creek racing.”

Once the team gets going at Beaver Creek, they’ll make nine stops on the World Cup, including a new race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, a regular race on the women’s circuit, that will be introduced to the men from February 20-23 as a test event for the 2027 World Championships. 

“There’re a couple of new stops on the circuit this season, but the biggest change for us, is the later start to the speed race season. It will be interesting to see how everyone adapts to it,” Kucera said. 

“We believe one benefit to the later start is that it will let our guys get home for three or four days after Nakiska before we head down to Colorado. This should be a nice mental break before the race season starts.”

With lead-in time to the season, they’ll look at fine-tuning things, all with the hopes of peaking by the World Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm from February 4-16. 

After two massive seasons of Olympic success and into World Cup success, the group headed by Jack Crawford, Brodie Seger, Cameron Alexander, and Jeff Read finds itself in a World Championship season after a year of no major events. 

In 2023-24, Canadians landed on the podium three times, highlighted by Alexander's two podium finishes and Read’s second-place finish in Kvitfjell, NOR, his first career podium. 

Still, the focus isn’t entirely on hitting their peak at every moment in the year but on building consistency, something Crawford targeted and managed to do through the 2022-23 season, regularly cracking the top-7. 

“Our goal is to build strategies to elevate the team’s overall performance. We can’t always be at our peak, but we want to minimize any valleys,” Kucera said. “We'd like to hit a high level and then maintain that level while having the ability to elevate when we need to.”

“We want to win Globes and to do that, you need to show up every weekend. Our goals are to build on our results, and work to stay more consistent through the whole season.”

It may be a bit of a new look World Cup schedule for the Canadian men’s alpine team in 2024-25, but with a long burgeoning generation of speed skiers now hitting their stride, there’s a lot to be excited for when it comes to kicking out of the start gate. 

For now though, more time in the gym. Some time watching the tech World Cup, just waiting to get things started in early December on the Birds of Prey downhill in Beaver Creek.