On June 11, Canada Snowboard announced the composition of its national teams for the 2020-2021 season. Among the athletes selected to the Alpine team, we find the name of Jasey-Jay Anderson, 45 years old.
–
–
How many years has he been a member of the national team? ” I do not know. The structure has evolved, but at 16, I won my first Canadian Championship, “said the principal, who became the first Canadian to take part in six editions of the Winter Olympics in 2018.
Sportcom spoke with two men who know him well to find out the secret of his sporting longevity: Christian Hrab, former member of the national team and ex-coach and manager at Canada Snowboard, as well as Brett Carpentier, double Olympian and former teammate of the Canadian team.
Register for the long term
“When we started in snowboarding, we were all very young. The sport was young, it attracted young people and those who did it at 45, it was weirds “, Laughs Christian Hrab, today at the dawn of his fifties.
Jasey-Jay Anderson is not a weird. He is rather meticulous and stubborn, believes the coach of the Canadian Alpine team at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.
“His first quality is certainly that he has a damn hard head and when he is convinced of something, he goes for it, no obstacle is too big and nothing is impossible to overcome!” He has a vision in mind and he goes there. I think that’s why it manages to last so long. His second quality: he must like it, right? ”
PHOTO JACQUES BOISSINOT, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVE
–
The main stakeholder goes in this direction, but in a more analytical way.
“In the end, to stay in sport, you have to have a reason. This is what is most important. Someone who never has enough money will never be happy enough because they will always want more. It can become the same for victories. If this is your reason for playing sports, it can be hard to continue, because it is certain that in your career you will have ups and downs. ”
Brett Carpentier also recognizes the determination of the Olympic champion at the Vancouver Games.
“I’m not surprised to see him there again. Experience counts for a lot and he has it. He knows what to focus on to be successful. He goes for fractions of a second everywhere with his equipment which he improves. ”
Nagano to Vancouver
The name of the Canadian Ross Rebagliati marked the arrival of snowboarding on the program of the Nagano Olympic Games (1998), both for his gold medal in the giant slalom and for his positive doping test with marijuana (which was not not a prohibited substance.) But what we forget about this race is that it was Jasey-Jay Anderson who was the leader after the first run.
“Jasey-Jay was of caliber to win at Nagano, but it was 12 years later in Vancouver that he won at the Olympics. That, for me, is a bigger story that he still does snowboarding at 45, says Christian Hrab. His best performance, apart from Vancouver, is his qualification for the 2010 Canadian Olympic team. ”
PHOTO BERNARD BRAULT, PRESS ARCHIVE
Jasey-Jay Anderson won gold at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.
–
Hrab was then administrator at Canada Snowboard and recalls that the federation had decided that a victory at the 2008 World Championships would be an Olympic pass for Vancouver.
“We called that Win and you’re In. I think he thought it was a good idea and boom, he won! For me, this performance always illustrated well what kind of person he was. ”
In February 2010, in the mist of Cypress Mountain, Anderson snatched Olympic gold by making up 0.76 seconds behind his last run. He then returned to his land to withdraw from the competition, but not for long. And if he came back, it was to do things his way.
“I thought it was funny that he retired so quickly after the Olympics because he had been snowboarding all over the world for 12 months a year,” recalls Hrab. He had stopped Cold Turkey. When he came back, it was because he missed it. ”
The quest for a fast snowboard
“It is head often the year after the Olympics and I had to find the reason. Often the reason was to understand the equipment, recalls Anderson. I have succeeded in timer equipment and the Games once in my life and it was in 2010. Looking back, I was lucky because I would not have won if the race had taken place a week before. I persisted in my tests and it was on the last day of training that I found what I wanted. ”
From then on, his new motivation was to test and collect data to improve his handcrafted boards, Jasey-Jay Snowboard.
“When he analyzes something, even if some people think otherwise, he will persevere in his own way,” explains Brett Carpentier, ninth in the halfpipe in Nagano in 1998. “He will listen to them and consider [les opinions], but he is original enough to find his ideas, develop them and stick to his thinking. And that’s what he did with his equipment. Adapting your equipment is one thing, but starting from scratch and making your own boards, fixings and plates is big! He will never reach perfection, but he must still be satisfied with his equipment, because otherwise he would have put it aside. ”
Jasey-Jay Anderson emphasizes the importance of making the difference between determination and obsession.
“Determination is someone who is able to readjust to continue to be persistent. Obsession is when you take it too far and it’s just what exists. Repeating the same mistakes is a sign of being just obsessed with your sport without analyzing what is going on. A perseverant will pass through the hollow phases to reinvent and persevere. In a sport like this, you cannot achieve perfection. All you can do is improve yourself and get there as close as possible. I’m not looking for perfection. What I’m looking for is to answer questions. ”
Brett Carpentier laughs when asked how old he sees Jasey-Jay Anderson on the national team.
“The World Championships are presented every two years. If he emphasizes this competition, he is not obliged to do 20 in the year to ensure that he performs at the worlds. I imagine he could do that for a few more years if he stays in shape and avoids injuries. “
Austria’s Claudia Riegler won a Snowboard World Cup at the age of 45 in January 2019. To see if Anderson will try to dislodge her from the title of oldest World Cup winner next season.
–
