Canada looks to break gold spell

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Four years ago, Jennifer Heil was the best. Now she has a chance to be the first. If you were blissfully unaware that Canada,

Michael Farber | Feb 12, 2010

Canada looks to break gold spell /

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Four years ago, Jennifer Heil was the best. Now she has a chance to be the first.

If you were blissfully unaware that Canada, host of two previous Games, has never won an Olympic gold medal on home soil, well, now you know. This bit of Canadian Olympic trivia should be resolved sometime after 8 p.m. PT on Saturday, barring an upset win in the men's downhill at Whistler in the morning (weather permitting) or a shocker in the women's moguls on Cypress Mountain on Vancouver's North Shore.

Heil finished first in the last four World Cup moguls events she entered. Her recent training has been exceptional. As her coach, Dominick Gauthier, told SI.com last week, "Without over-focusing, the machine is ready. She's been pushing the speed limit a little bit. She's at the next level of speed and has gotten into a more comfortable zone. From a training standpoint the job is done."

Heil should be pushed by a group of Americans, notably Heather McPhie, who finished tied for first with the Canadian in one of the two moguls competitions at Deer Valley, Utah, last month. In one of the Lake Placid that races Heil skipped the following week, Hannah Kearney led a one-through-four sweep by U.S. freestylers. Aiko Uemura of Japan is another contender, although the judges' seeming emphasis in 2009-10 on speed, form and precision rather than big tricks might work against her as she bumps and soars down the 250-meter course. Uemura is a genius in training but rarely puts a run together on race day.

Heil has rebuilt her body since winning the gold in Turin, fine-tuning her biomechanics and, as her athletic therapist Dave Campbell describes it, "essentially relearning how to walk. We also had to tell her to stop doing intramural sports [at McGill University, where the 26-year-old has been studying commerce and marketing]. If it were up to her, she would be in the pool playing water polo." Heil competed in the '07-08 World Cup season -- there were those post-Olympic appearance fees for a gold medalist, after all -- but sat out the following year to calm her chronically irritated knees.

Mercifully, Heil's knees have been the only things that seem to get irritated. She has handled the inevitable question about becoming the first home Canadian gold medalist with extraordinary grace. She was raised in Alberta, moved to Montreal to attend McGill and disarms in English and French. She has a six-time zone smile that might be the most recognizable in the country, which means either it truly is exceptional or that hockey players simply don't smile enough.

"Jenn's feeling the energy with the Olympics in Canada," says Gauthier, who also is her boyfriend. "She wants to win a medal and share it with the whole country."

Published Feb 12, 2010

MICHAEL FARBER

Along with the pages of Sports Illustrated, you'll find senior writer Michael Farber in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Farber joined the staff of Sports Illustrated in January 1994 and now stands as one of the magazine's top journalists, covering primarily ice hockey and Olympic sports. He is also a regular contributor to SI.com. In 2003 Farber was honored with the Elmer Ferguson Award from the Hockey Hall of Fame for distinguished hockey writing. "Michael Farber represents the best in our business," said the New York Post's Larry Brooks, past president of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association. "He is a witty and stylish writer, who has the ability to tell a story with charm and intelligence." Farber says his Feb. 2, 1998 piece on the use and abuse of Sudafed among NHL players was his most memorable story for SI. He also cites a feature on the personal problems of Kevin Stevens, Life of the Party. His most memorable sports moment as a journalist came in 1988 when Canadian Ben Johnson set his controversial world record by running the 100 meters in 9.79 seconds at the Summer Olympic Games, in Seoul. Before coming to Sports Illustrated, Farber spent 15 years as an award-winning sports columnist and writer for the Montreal Gazette, three years at the Bergen Record, and one year at the Sun Bulletin in Binghamton, NY. He has won many honors for his writing, including the "outstanding sports writing award" in 2007 from Sports Media Canada, and the Prix Jacques-Beauchamp (Quebec sportswriter of the year) in 1993. While at the Gazette, he won a National Newspaper award in 1982 and 1990. Sometimes Life Gets in the Way, a compendium of his best Gazette columns, was published during his time in newspapers. Farber says hockey is his favorite sport to cover. "The most down-to-earth athletes play the most demanding game," he says. Away from Sports Illustrated, Farber is a commentator for CJAD-AM in Montreal and a panelist on TSN's The Reporters (the Canadian equivalent of ESPN's The Sports Reporters in the United States, except more dignified). Farber is also one of the 18 members on the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee. Born and raised in New Jersey, Farber is a 1973 graduate of Rutgers University where he was Phi Beta Kappa. He now resides in Montreal with his wife, Danielle Tétrault, son Jérémy and daughter Gabrielle.