Special Olympics Ski Racing - Hurricane Comes to a Wonderful End

So Cory and I are now into our last two days of his training at Hurricane Ski Camps on Mount Hood, in July 2007.

We're used to the routine, we make sure we leave a few minutes earlier than the others and we are the first in line for the first lift of each of the last two days.




Here's Max arriving at the lift, a few minutes after us, with Samantha behind him:


Then Samantha and Ben:

And then Bob Vial walking by us on his way up, with Max in the foreground and Samantha right behind him.


Today we switch from Giant Slalom training to Slalom, so we need a different set of skis. We returned the GS skis to Atomic the day before to learn that they had no SL skis available in Cory's size, but he can keep the boots for at least another day. So off we go again to all the other manufacturers' shops, until we find a pair at Volkl's out of the way location - around a corner and up some rickety stairs. A pair of Racetiger World Cup Slalom skis, 155 cm to be exact.

It's a good day of training - Cory is faced with some new slalom-style layouts but he does fine and the Volkl skis seem to be particularly good for him. He's making good pole-plants and getting more aggressive on his turns. Bob talks to him about keeping his eyes further down the course - not watching the tips of his skis, but to use his peripheral vision to see directly in front of him and keep his head up looking towards the next gate. Cory is always impressed when someone uses a big word - "whoa, peripheral", and I take a few moments to show him what Bob means by putting my finger at the side of his head and telling to keep looking forward. As I move my finger forward, he now begins to see it in this peripheral vision, and that's how Bob wants him to see his ski tips.

Doing this kind of demonstration is important for autistic people to understand what is being said. And he begins to ski with his head up a bit more.

It's a bigger crowd of athletes today, so it makes for longer lift lines. During one of our waits, I begin talking to Cory about his week at Hurricane and he talks about how much hard work is involved - the early rising, the organizing and carrying of all the equipment up the mountain and back down again.

I laugh when he says he's more of a "baggage handler" than a skier while at Hurricane, that there's more baggage handling than actual skiing. It's a funny comment and underscores a certain ability to correlate that I didn't realize he was capable of - so that was pretty cool. But it also highlights his difficulty in understanding the real value of the camp. It's true there really wasn't a lot of skiing - when we ski together we'll often get in more runs in a couple of hours than we did in a half-day at Hurricane. The value was in the learning and how much better a racer Cory was becoming, but he really couldn't see that, he just couldn't understand why there wasn't more skiing. It was the first of many conversations that we've had, and continue to have about Hurricane.

Another really interesting aspect of the week that he did not really notice, but I sure did. I realized how much he wanted to do things for himself. As parents of an autistic child, albeit a highly-functioning one, we constantly walk a fine line between needing to do something for him or letting him get on and learning the activity for himself. Obviously, we try to let him learn as much as he can (try teaching tying a shoe lace to a young autistic person!), but we also don't want him to reach a frustration level with the many challenges he faces every day. And real life steps in too - there just isn't always enough time to let him do things that the rest of us can do in a few seconds.

For example, he can take a lot of extra time just putting on a hoodie - he wants to make sure that the hood is not caught up in the back of his neck, so he will shake the shoulders of the hoodie several times as he puts it on. The rest of us do that in a moment, but Cory will take 30 seconds or so to make sure it's on properly. He's a bit of a perfectionist in a world that has little time for perfection.

But I realized sometime during our week at Hurricane, that he was trying to do a lot more for himself. I remember packing up our backpack and suddenly his hands were right in there with mine - getting in the way more than helping - but the wonderful thing is he wanted to do it himself. It's pretty cool to watch your son growing up - taking more responsibility - right before your eyes.

So now he's agreed that this winter, he will learn how to get on a chairlift with a backpack. The lift attendents ask you to remove the backpack (so that you are sitting as far back in the chair as you should be, otherwise the consequences can be a real downer, so to speak), so you need to get on the chair while carrying your poles and the backpack. We'll try that this winter at our home mountain - Cypress Mountain just north of Vancouver, BC - so that next summer he'll be carrying his own backpack on Mount Hood. That will sure make my life easier next year.

So a good uneventful day on Mount Hood.

Snack time with Max, Cory (and his Atomic boots), Ben, and Sam, all a-smiling for my camera:



Later that afternoon, the whole gang of us heads out to a local lake, to cool off from the record heat, then a bar-b-que dinner and marshmallows around the fireplace.















Max and Cory on the left;
Ben and Sam on the right

Another of Max & Cory

And a chin-up contest, where Cory holds his own:

























And then it's the last day of training at Hurricane. All goes routinely (it's definitely a routine now), another warm sunny day, until we get to the race course. This time, with each of the 15-16 camps setting up full slalom courses, the hill is a maze of red and blue poles. Cory is perplexed and confused - he can't tell where he needs to ski - and since he is very concerned with not missing any gates, he is starting to panic a bit.


"No problem, Cor, I'll take you through the course and show you". Now Bob is busy with Ben who has equipment problems, so I take Cory through the first couple of gates and then suddenly realize that I can't tell where our course goes either. Suddenly, we hear somebody yell at us "get off our course" and it's clear we're on the wrong course, so we move over, go through another couple of gates, and then hear "get off our course" again from a different group.


So we're totally confused and I decide we might just as well ski down to the lift and try again. Keep in mind that an autistic person has difficulty adjusting to new environments, and is typically much more comfortable in a set routine. But the entire week has been anything but routine for Cory - everything has been very different. An unfamiliar place, a different home and bed, different food, different people, different ski equipment, different training routines and courses, and now a completely different and challenging race course that is nothing like he has ever seen before. And add in extreme heat and wind to the whole scenario too.


So we get back onto the chair and I see that he is so confused and afraid that he has some tears on his face. Now there's never a great time for a melt-down, but this is really not a good scene. Several hundred elite skiers of his own age simply would not understand what Cory is faced with - the real challenge that his autism is presenting him with at the moment - the real difficulty of dealing with the pressure of adapting to so many new things, and now the fear of skiing through the race course and missing some gates. The pressure that he has felt during the entire week is now coming through in real raw emotion.


I have maybe 5 minutes to get him calmed down and re-focused on his racing. Fortunately, he is sitting at one end of the chair and I am right next to him - so the two other racers do not really know what's going on. Keep in mind too that the wind is still blowing hard and it's difficult to be understood, but I tell him that he really needs to get it back together by the time we reach the top. Fortunately, I remember something that happened at breakfast time that made him laugh, so I begin talking about that and just as we get to the top, he has calmed down. But he is still very confused about the race course.


We then ski over to our lane and I quietly go up to Bob to tell him that Cory is really confused about the course. So Bob does his best to explain the course to us, but it's still pretty hard to see exactly where to go.

But within a few minutes, it's Cory's turn and even though he is still afraid and confused, he goes for it.


Well, not only does he go for it - he skis brilliantly through the entire course and nails every single gate. Bob calls him a natural slalom ace and we ski back to the lift.


But this time, it's not Cory, but now I'm in tears - I was just so proud, not just by how he skied, but how he faced his fears, showed a ton of courage, and nailed the course. I caught up to him at the lift line and quietly said to him "you have the heart of a champion". To this day, he still doesn't understand what he accomplished in that moment, but I told him that he proved to me and to anyone that even with autism, he CAN do anything. That he has the heart and the courage to face any challenge and defeat it face on. He truly has that hard-to-define quality of a champion - heart, courage, guts, determination, persistance - whatever you call it, he's got it.


And I cried pretty much all the way to the top of the chair - just like he had a few moments before.


My wife and I were very, very proud when he won his 3 bronze medals in the Provincial Games - setting a goal for himself and achieving it the way he did - but this was an even prouder moment for me, because of the hurdles, the raw fear and obvious confusion , that he had to overcome. The only unfortunate part was my wife was not there to share it, but I couldn't wait to tell her all about it on the phone later on.


I still am emotional as I write this - 3 months later. What a wonderful, wonderful moment in my life as Cory's dad.

Though I don't I will ever need a visual reminder of what Cory accomplished on July 11, 2007, and how I felt about it, here's one of Bob's videos showing Cory going through the slalom course later that day, in his Atomic RT Ti100 boots and on his Volkl Racetiger World Cup skis. And that's me skiing behind him.

Unfortunately, Bob received a cell phone call just as Cory started.







The next day, it was time to say good-bye. I took a few moments the night before to thank Sam, Ben, and Max for accepting Cory as they did and for helping us all week long. They were obviously pleased that everything worked out and I think they were somewhat surprised at what an autistic person was all about (Sam had asked me earlier about autism and I had given her a general outline).

Then it came time to say thank you to Bob. I'm sure that a parent who has no intellectually disabled children can not fully understand how I felt at that moment, but I did my best to express my gratitude to Bob for giving Cory a real opportunity to realize his dream, and for giving me such a special moment in my life.

Many others would have found a way to refuse Cory's participation, for whatever reason. But from the first moment I contacted Bob, he was completely open to making this work, and for that, I am forever grateful.

Thank you, Bob Vial.

Cory, with Bob, at the top of Mount Hood:

So now we're into slow season - July to December - but we have a plan to develop and we need some help to make it happen. Stay tuned.