All the signs pointed the other way.
When you tried to qualify for the Red Bull Crashed Ice downhill in Niagara Falls, your men’s-C-league self didn’t come even close. And that was on a sheet of freshly Zamboni’d horizontal ice.
The media test run has been postponed twice due to poor weather conditions. And the original list of 23 “lucky” media guinea pigs on blades had dwindled down to one guy on four hours’ sleep whose agility on a good day, gauged on scale of 1 to 10, rates about a Kramer.
Scott Croxall — younger brother of defending champ Kyle Croxall and the third-fastest ice cross downhill racer on the 2012 circuit – explained to you how much luck played a factor in navigating the course quickly and unscathed. Last night, en route to a good night’s rest, you got stuck in a broken hotel elevator with three drunk women (not nearly as awesome as you think). Lucky is not what you’re feeling today.
“This isn’t for beer-league players to come out and mess around,” Croxall had warned you, a beer-leaguer coming out to mess around. “It’s a very dangerous sport. You have to take it seriously.”
That’s what the detailed legal waiver says too. Dangerous. Serious. It’s on you.
But you ignore the signs and sign anyway.
You will be skating downhill for a kilometre and a half on frozen ice, navigating a 300-foot vertical descent through a series of drop-offs, step-ups, hairpin turns, and frozen moguls. Full equipment, half a brain, no warm-up. All in the name of finding out what it’s like for an Average Joe to experience what younger, fitter athletes do after months of training.
Watch Red Bull Crashed Ice Saint Paul on Saturday, Jan. 26 live on CityTV at 8:30 p.m. ET and replayed on Sportsnet at 11 p.m. local.
You will have a guide offering you tips through the course. Claudio Caluori, a Crashed Ice and downhill mountain bike expert and veteran competitor, has now been charged with the task of test-running the five-stop series’ courses and occasionally “touring” common folk like yourself through the track.
There is some vague discussion about skipping the start: a 75-foot-high, 30-degree drop and the steepest entrance to a Red Bull crashed Ice track in the sport’s 13-year history. You seem amenable to this idea, but it doesn’t take.
So with shaking knees and perhaps a small prayer, you hit record on your GoPro, kick off your skate guards and follow the Swiss speedster down the drop. You fall; he doesn’t.
He tells you to bend your knees and place one foot in front of the other; having your feet offset, not parallel, adds balance. He also tells you that one guy broke a collarbone on his watch.
“Most important on the whole track, no matter where you are, always lean forward — no matter how steep it is,” Caluori advises.
You follow Caluori through the course, taking his tips and struggling spectacularly. But there are moments of success — a landed jump here, a well-navigated turn there — that give you an adrenaline jolt and an idea why the spectacle/sport continues to grow in terms of viewership, participation and credibility. It’s now an official World Cup discipline.
Skating downhill is strikingly difficult and more physically taxing than you imagine. It is nothing like throwing yourself down a waterslide and hoping for the best. (And this is without four other burly dudes jostling you for position.)
But the most surprising thing about skating Crashed Ice is how rugged and rutty the actual ice is. Makes sense when you think about it, but the track looks relatively shiny and slick on television. In real life, it’s like cutting strides into four inches of bad pond ice. Except catching the edge of your Bauers when zipping downhill at upwards of 60 km/h (the pros’ speed) has more drastic consequences.
You survive the experience collarbone intact, and despite the bruises, love every humbling second of it.
But you are no Claudio. Test-driving Crashed Ice is a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Watch: Helmet-cam view of Claudio Caluori bombing the Niagara track at a more respectable speed
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2012-13 Ice Cross Downhill World Championship Series
Dec. 1: Niagara Falls, Ontario (won by Canada’s Kyle Croxall)
Jan. 26: Saint Paul, Minnesota
Feb. 9: Landgraff, Netherlands
March 2: Lausanne, Switzerland
March 16: Quebec City, Quebec