Thinking two gates ahead

First-year student Mike Hardy has been skiing since the age of two. (Nick Pearce Photo)

C A N A D A   G A M E S

When you’re bombing down a hillside at speeds to rival freeway traffic, what goes through your mind?

“When you’re going so fast, you’re not thinking of what you’re doing—like what a bad idea it actually might be,” says Mike Hardy, a member of Nova Scotia’s alpine ski team competing at the 2011 Halifax Canada Games.

“As for me, I’m thinking two gates ahead,” says Mr. Hardy, 19, a first-year Dalhousie student who lives in Ingramport, a village on St. Margaret’s Bay. “I want to know exactly what I’m doing way before I get there.”

On skis at the age of two, Mr. Hardy says he’s always been a crazy Canuck: “I’d just go straight down until I hit something,” he says, laughing.

Even at a young age, he had speed, he just didn’t have finesse. That came home to him once he started to race on a national circuit as a pre-teen. Competing at K2 nationals at Mount Tremblant, Quebec, “I got beat a lot worse than I did in Nova Scotia,” he relates. “That’s when I knew I wanted to get better.”

Having a cottage two minutes away from the slopes of Ski Wentworth helps, as well as the chance to train and ski in Switzerland through his high school years.

With the Canada Games taking place on his home hill, he returned to Nova Scotia a year ago and enrolled at Dalhousie. This term, he’s got a reduced course load to allow him to train for the slalom, giant slalom and super combined, which pairs one run of slalom and super G for a combined time. The alpine events all happen at Ski Wentworth during the second week of Canada Games competition.

“I definitely want to get a good academic base,” he explains. “If you hit a fence and get injured, you want to have a back-up plan.”

Dalhousie is a proud Sapphire Sponsor of the 2011 Canada Games. For more:

• Visit our Canada Games website with links to all Games-related Dal News stories
• Read first-person Games accounts and get Dalhousie results at our blog
• Contribute your Games photos to our Flickr group.