Calgary’s Pathway to the Podium Series highlights 10 local Canadian athletes on their backstories and hopes in Pyeongchang. Brady Leman is one of them.
Brady Leman was practically born with skis on his feet.
His mother Maureen worked at different ski facilities, while his father Chris owned a shop and was a coach. It’s no surprise he first got on skies at just 18 months old.
Now 31 and heading to his third Olympics, he visualizes looking out into the crowd after winning a medal in Pyeongchang.
“That would be the biggest, that would be the first thing,” he said. “My parents have invested so much time and now I get to race for them as well.”
Leman spent much of his childhood at WinSport and when he wasn’t actually skiing, he was killing time while his mother worked. He would play on the simulators and watch videos of the 1988 Calgary Games. Highlights of Eddie the Eagle, the Jamaican bobsled team and the closing ceremonies.
“I just remember thinking, man that looks really cool, wouldn’t that be cool to be a part of it?” he said.
Ironically for someone who seemed destined for skiing greatness, Leman saw himself as a step behind everyone else his age. Starting in alpine, he was good, but not great. He’d have his last chance to make the provincial team and made it. Then it was a last chance at the national team, but he’d make it again. It wasn’t until his late teens that he realized his full potential.
“That’s when you realize, okay I really have a chance to be pretty good,” he said. “That’s also the time it turns into a full-time commitment.”
While competing in alpine, Leman said he had a knack for getting into trouble, because he always wanted to do tricks on ski jumps and cliffs.
“Coaches would hear about it and they’d get pretty pissed,” he said.
He’d always watch ski cross when it was on the X-Games and when Canada was one of the first countries to enter its own team when it became an Olympic sport, Leman was a natural fit, making the full transition in 2008. He wasn’t expecting it, but two years later, he’d make his Games debut.
He was named as an alternate for Team Canada in Vancouver and after Dave Duncan broke his collarbone, was called up. But he crashed himself the very next day during his own training run. It reaggravated a broken tibia from March 2009 and he wouldn’t be fully healthy until the 2012 season. He had great success from then on, making multiple World Cup podiums ahead of the 2014 Games.
In Sochi, he was in the finals and at one point was in third place among the four racers. After dropping back to fourth near the end of the race, he made a move to get back into third.
Disaster struck and he fell.
One would think the ultra-competitive Leman would be obsessed with the result, fuelling his every training exercise since as motivation for his next chance just around the corner. One would think he’d feel cheated by the misfortune after all of the injuries.
Not so.
“It’s not something hard to look back at,” he said. “It was a great performance and it was just a little bit short of a medal.”
“It’s a little motivating for sure that I was that close, but I’m not hung on trying to avenge my fourth-place finish or something like that. It’s always something that I draw confidence from.”
While he knows he’ll never make the same mistake he made in Sochi, there’s still so many others he could’ve committed and didn’t, which he sees as a positive moving forward. Now with another opportunity, he’s not nervous, just excited.
“I know going into Korea that I have what it takes to put myself in that position and next time, it’s just going to be executing,” he said.
He’s certainly been executing well since Sochi. After gold at the 2016 X Games, he finished second overall in the World Cup standings in 2017 with seven podiums. He’s undisputedly one of the best in his sport and while he admits there’s pressure from the outside regarding the Games, it’s nothing compared to his own.
“I want to win more than anybody else wants me to win, that’s for sure,” he said. “But I really take the view that last year means nothing. Being second in the world last year gives no better or worse chance in the next race than the guy that was 20th”
Perhaps he doesn’t feel the outside pressure as much because of the people closest to him. His family was there during the broken legs and the surgeries. He still lived with his parents while trying to find sponsors ahead of the Sochi Games and taking business courses.
“They just want me to be healthy and come home in one piece,” he said. “I have no idea how they made it work. Skiing’s an expensive sport, but they never let us (his sister also skied) see that and we just got to do what we wanted to do and as long as we were committed to it, mom and dad found a way.”
While the Olympic medal may be all that’s left to win, Leman says there’s nothing left to prove.
“I remind myself not to take for granted because you the job that everyone wants and nobody gets to do,” he said.
Not only are his parents still volunteering and working in the industry, his sister now has two young nephews, who are of course getting on skis themselves. Maybe the day will come when they’re 10 or 11 watching old Winter Games highlights. Except instead of Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican bobsled team in Calgary, it’s Uncle Brady in Pyeongchang.
And instead of just coming home in one piece, he has a piece of hardware too.
Lucas Meyer is a reporter and producer for 660News in Calgary. He is also the play-by-play voice of the University of Calgary Dinos basketball teams. Follow him on Twitter @meyer_lucas.
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