Tomorrow, 26 Canadian freestyle ski athletes—moguls, aerials, halfpipe and slopestyle—will be nominated to the Sochi-bound Olympic team.
Twenty-six sounds like a lot of tickets, but Canada is incredibly deep in freestyle. “It’s going be really tight,” says Mike Riddle, a podium favourite in ski halfpipe.
The 2012 overall world cup champ, Riddle can breathe easy since he earned his Olympic berth in December. He breaks down just how deep this team is:
“In halfpipe we have six guys on the team and every one of them has the potential to podium in any event we go to, but we’re only sending three or four to Sochi. The girls’ team is also strong. The Canadian team is strong across all the disciplines within freestyle, so the halfpipe skiers are competing against the mogul skiers and the aerial skiers and the slopestyle skiers for spots.”
Riddle says this isn’t a problem for most countries.
“It affects Canada more than anyone, and a little bit the U.S. The other countries don’t have the depth,” he says. “For Canada, we’ve qualified for 40 Olympic spots, but we only get to send 26.”
The process of deciding who goes is a complicated system based on four past results that count for points. Two of the results have to come this season. “Even the people competing, most of them don’t fully understand how it works,” Riddle says. “I don’t want to pretend I can explain it. The top guys are all going to go, but the ones ranked 20th through 30th, you could probably argue either way.”