Special Olympics Ski Racing - The Beginnings...

This photo was taken on Mount Hood in July 2007, when Cory attended Bob Vial's Hurricane Ski Camp.

It was a very challenging week for Cory. It was hard work, it was very confusing, and it was under harsh conditions. But he came through it, both a better skier and a better young man.

But let's start at the beginning....

Cory is an 18 year-old young man with a condition called Pervasive Development Disorder, a form of autism. He was diagnosed early, at around 4 years of age. So he has benefitted from a lot of support from speech therapists, special ed teachers, etc. He is considered "high-functioning", and if you met him, at first you probably wouldn't realize that he is autistic. But he does have difficulty understanding complex instructions, especially verbal; has short-term memory problems; he finds it difficult to make decisions; and he must take medication to control seizures.

So it is more difficult for him to do a lot of things that other 18 year-olds do - drive a car for example. He does not enjoy most movies and television, since the plot lines move too quickly for him to completely understand. He communicates well, he can read and write, but has difficulty comprehending what he is reading, so he does read a bit slower.

So when he was in Grade 7, and said he wanted to go on the school ski trip for a day, even though he had never skied before, we were more than happy to let him go. We were anxious about it of course, and another student did break his arm that day on the ski hill, but Cory did fine.

So, thanks to Sid Sharp and Lesley Crystal, Cory's Grade 7 teachers, Cory's ski racing career was off to a good start.

A year or two later, we learned about Special Olympics and there was a skiing program based in a neighbouring community. Special Olympics offers competitive opportunities to individuals with an intellectual disability. It is not the Paralympics - which is for individuals with a physical disability and hold their Olympic Games at the same time as the regular Olympics. But Special Olympics uses a four-year cycle too - year one for local competition, year two for provincial competition, year three for national competition, and year four for international competition. Athletes must qualify for each of these stages. More on that later.

So Cory joined the Special Olympic Alpine Skiing program when he was about 13, and at that time, I had never skied either - and I'm in my 50's. This program uses Cypress Mountain, just north of Vancouver, BC, as its home mountain. My wife and I would drive Cory to the mountain every Monday night, and sit in the lodge for a couple of hours while he skied. We were told he was doing quite well on the "bunny-hill", the beginners' hill, and he liked to go fast.

One Monday night in that first year, we were told that we could climb up the mountain a bit to watch him. So we trekked up and stood behind a fence looking for him in the night-time gloom that is called night skiing. Soon enough, we saw what appeared to be Cory, but we couldn't really tell, 'cause to us he was just a blur - skiing much too fast for our liking and it appeared he was heading right into a small building. Turned out he skied behind that building so no harm done, but we were stunned at how fast he was going!

So that was the first time I saw him on skis - just a blue blur whizzing by in front of me.

I have a photo print (taken before we had a digital camera) of him back then. I'll have to get it scanned so we can add it to this blog.

Next up, from beginner to racer.