My very short ski experience with Britt and Michael Janyk
February 17th, 2010. Published under General, Life, Sports. No Comments.
Sometime around 1995 or ’96 I spent a winter in Whistler teaching skiing. I was teaching in Whistlers Ski Scamps, the kids ski school, and having a great time. I was teaching school groups during most of the week, but on the weekends I had the chance to teach the same group of kids every weekend. That was the most fun because the kids were pretty good skiers and I got to see them learn lot over the course of the season. That weekend program was run by Andree Janyk, Britt and Michaels mom. She was a tough person to work for; she expected a lot out of everyone who taught in that program, but she was quick to praise you when you were doing a good job.
Close to the end of the season we had some big event where all of the groups got together, all the weekend groups and all of the racing groups. Andrees son Michael there with some group of racing kids, most of whom were a bit older than the group I was teaching. Britt was hanging around there somewhere too, but I think she was already on a development team by that point so she was really just helping her mom out. For one reason or another all of my kids left early that day (it was a beautiful March day) and one of the coaches with the racing groups had to leave. That coach asked me if I’d ski down to the village with his group then let them go off on their own. I was about to head down for the day so that was fine with me. Michael happened to be in that group of kids.
Once we got started going down the hill I was flying down the hill, enjoying being able to ski fast and not worry about whether the kids I was leading could keep up or not. I thought I was keeping ahead of them no problem until I looked back over my shoulder to make sure they were all still there only to see Michael right on my heels and a look on his face of “Why the hell did we get stuck with the slow guy?”. I did everything I could to ski the fastest I possibly could, but I definitely couldn’t outrun any of those barely-teenage-kids. I like to think I did pretty good, but when I was skiing flat out I was barely keeping up with them! I won’t even get into how tough it was to keep up to Britt and her mom skiing out one day.
Now that both of them have been on the national team for years and Britt just came 6th in the 2010 Olympic downhill race I think my ego can bounce back from barely being able to keep up with them ;)
