February 2, 2010 Sports

Hundreds turn out for Crashed Ice qualifiers

11 Montreal area hopefuls headed to Quebec City

by Jessie Mathieson

GRAPHIC VIVIEN LEUNG

Loaded up with hockey gear, a long line of athletes waited outside McGill’s McConnell Arena Sunday night in hopes that they would soon be hurtling down an obstacle-filled slope at breakneck speed.

Red Bull Crashed Ice is a downhill skating race that takes place each March in Quebec City.
Ice Cross Downhill (the sport’s official name) was born in Sweden in 2000. It combines boardercross, hockey and downhill skiing to produce a thrilling and crash-filled competition.
For the first time ever, the decade old sporting event is being formally recognized as something worthy of a world championship. The Munich race wrapped up Jan. 16, and now all eyes are on Quebec City for the final round and the crowning of women’s and men’s 2010 Ice Cross Downhill world champions.

A series of semi-finals running until March 20 will decide which Canadian speed skaters will make it to Quebec to compete in the race.

Montreal is the fourth of 11 cities across Canada to host a qualifying round. Two hundred men and 20 women from the greater Montreal area demonstrated their skills on the flat hockey rink Sunday night. Each skater was timed to see who could fall to the ground, recover, jump an obstacle, make a U-turn and arrive at the finish line in the shortest time.

Women raced two by two in a single heat. Only one Montrealer, Jenny-Isabelle Dubé, will move on to the women’s world championship round.

The male competitors performed the same course in two heats, with the fastest 10 moving forward to compete in the main event. Jean-Guy Chouinard had the best time, completing the course in just 11.66 seconds. Yohan Perreault, Martin Nadeau, Johnathan Robert, David Dufour, Louis-Philippe Dumoulin, Dominik Ménard, Jean-Philippe Faubert, Robin Beauchemin and Louis Roy are the other qualifiers in this round.

The stakes rise drastically at the main event. Competitors dressed in full hockey gear bomb downhill four at a time on an icy track complete with sharp corners, gaps, jumps and ice steps before finally coming to a halt at a padded crash wall at the end.

Each athlete must maintain agility and speed throughout the race and are forbidden from intentionally interfering with other racers for safety reasons.

This is Quebec’s fifth year creating the 575-metre long, four-metre wide track that runs through the heart of Old Quebec, beginning at the Château Frontenac and ending at the banks of the St. Lawrence River.

In 2007, Kevin Olson of Pincher Creek Alberta won both Red Bull races in Quebec City and Helsinki, Finland. “It’s a great honour,” he told Red Bull Canada. “Any skater would like to represent the country in this particular sport.”