Something missing at Beijing Olympics. Actually it’s someone — Jasey-Jay Anderson

Opinion

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This article was published 08/02/2022 (1332 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING If you’re watching the Beijing Olympics and thinking there’s something missing beyond fans and real snow, you’re not wrong.

You’re watching the first Olympics to include snowboarding while not including Canada’s Jasey-Jay Anderson. Anderson, the 2010 gold medallist in parallel giant slalom, is one of his sport’s great champions and true pioneers, a winner of 46 World Cup titles and four world championships. Now age 46, he was competing at a high level long before snowboarding made its debut in Nagano in 1998. And he had competed in every Olympics since then — the only Canadian to compete in six Winter Games — until the snowboarding competition got underway this week.

Which is not to say Anderson, though he has long lived in Quebec’s Mont Tremblant resort area, has been happily retired. While he sat out most of last winter’s competitive season on account of COVID, he was roused back to racing by a familiar motivator.

“It was the Tokyo Olympics. I watched the summer Games and I did the quick math,” he said. “I was seven months away from the Beijing Olympics. I said, ‘You know, it would be silly to just sit by and let this opportunity go. If you only have seven months, just get ’er done.’ ”

No longer funded by the national program, Anderson said he spent about $20,000 of his own money racing on the World Cup circuit with an eye toward making his seventh Olympic team. Even though his years on tour have taught him the tricks of travelling Europe frugally — “Your meals don’t have to be four star. You can eat really well from the grocery store for about 10 bucks a meal,” he said — most of his money went toward airfare and COVID tests.

“I’ve spent thousands on COVID tests,” he lamented.

In the end, alas, he didn’t manage to qualify for Canada’s contingent at these Games. Which, given the realities of the pandemic, might have ultimately been a blessing.

“Honestly, I don’t want to go to these Olympics,” Anderson said in an interview before they began. “There’s too much uncertainty (around COVID). It’s not like a fun process as it used to be. Some Olympics are actually a fun process. These ones are not, I would say.”

Jules Lefebvre (20th), Arnaud Gaudet (26th) and Sébastien Beaulieu (27th) didn’t make it out of the qualifying round Tuesday for Canada.

Depending on who you ask, Anderson, by his own admission, had a reputation as a teammate who was about as much fun as a brain-tickling Q-tip. A self-proclaimed “mad scientist” who became obsessed with the hows and whys of speed on the slopes, Anderson said his uncompromising drive to push limits often led to him being perceived as an “irritant” around Team Canada.

“But that’s the kind of irritant that you want on a team,” said Alexa Loo, Anderson’s teammate on two Olympic snowboarding squads. “If you’re out there trying to win Olympic gold, you need that guy that’s not going to let you be complacent … He held us all to a higher standard.”

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In the eyes of Canadian officials, Anderson couldn’t quite reach the standard required for a trip to Beijing. His best finish on the World Cup circuit was 27th. The only men’s athlete Canada initially named to its team in parallel giant slalom, 21-year-old Gaudet, managed a seventh-place finish last month.

After Anderson saw that four other Canadian snowboarders, including two men, were added to the team after they appealed their omission, Anderson figured he might have made it to Beijing if he’d followed the bureaucratic same path.

But that’s hindsight, and Anderson made a name as an athlete enthusiastically looking forward to the next thing. While he refused to say he is officially retired — and fair enough, since he did that once, in 2010, and competed in two more Olympics — he acknowledged his window as an elite competitor is closing. He’s married with two teenage girls. Long obsessed with the intricacies of equipment, he and his wife operate a custom ski and snowboard company into which he has poured the knowledge he’s gleaned as an athletic mad scientist.

“I’m 46. I’m not superhuman. I still think I could have squeezed out a gold medal with what I have today,” he said. “But in four years, that’s a different story. Because I really feel I’m at my limit of being able to win Olympics … But I honestly can’t say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m totally retired, pulling the plug.’ Because there’s always more to learn. If you see me come back on the circuit, it’s not because I’m trying to win races. It’s because I’m trying to get information … I still have some things to figure out that I didn’t figure out.”

Dave Feschuk is a Toronto-based sports columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @dfeschuk