Amidst the biting wind and the swirling snow that challenged visibility to nearly white-out conditions, Val Grenier, one with the Laurentian Mountains she’d known since youth, barreled down the giant slalom course set on the familiar slopes of Mont-Tremblant. Her descent, a blend of nostalgia and ambition, clocked at two minutes and 12.68 seconds, was enough to secure her an impressive sixth place among the thirty elite finishers. The narrow gap of just 73 hundredths of a second separated her from the champion of the day, the Italian virtuoso Federica Brignone, who clinched the top spot with a time of 2:11.95.
The pages of Mont-Tremblant’s history turned briskly with the Italian’s second consecutive victory, a statement of prowess in the alpine world, and the perfect sequel to her previous day’s gold. It was a watershed moment for Brignone, who had just enshrined herself as the oldest female victor in a World Cup giant slalom race.
The chilly Canadian tapestry set the stage for Grenier’s dream to unfurl—a dream that was now vividly alive as she zipped down the course that had been her cradle of skiing. The 27-year-old St. Isidore native had climbed an arduous five spots from her eleventh placement after the opening run. The giant slalom in the heart of Quebec had bloomed into a mesmerizing homecoming.
The coach’s prophetic vision had teased the possibility of her reaching the podium, further intensified as she flew to thirdquickest in the day’s second run. But skiing is a sport where fractions rule, and the watch never lies. And so, despite Grenier’s masterful dance with gravity and speed, she remained a breath away from the podium yet reveled in the accomplishment.
Grenier’s odyssey was marked with adversity as she contended with elements that veiled her path gate to gate, transforming her descent into what she described humorously as a “wild ride.” Yet, she deemed it pure fun—an athlete’s contagious love for their sport played out in each turn, in every heart-stopping moment where the world blurred into streaks of white and ice.
The course, flaunting its steep drops and deceptive flats, catered to Grenier’s unique finesse—the seamless transition from the vertical challenges to the horizontal sprints, a skill she possessed in abundance, perhaps as the finest in the world.
Her performance at Mont-Tremblant echoed the echoes of her prowess from just a week prior in Killington, Vermont, where she missed the podium by a tantalizing fraction, trailing behind the swift Swiss skier Lara Gut-Behrami.
Spectators had flocked, populating the slopes of Mont-Tremblant, which had waited decades since 1983 for the return of women’s World Cup giant slalom races to its embrace. And there, in the electric air and the tangible exhilaration, Grenier basked in the moment, uplifted by the crowd’s warmth—the kind of spirit, she declared, that made racing truly exhilarating.
Cassidy Gray from Panorama, British Columbia, etched her name upon the grand stage as well, securing the 24th spot with a time of two minutes and 14.49 seconds. Both she and Grenier advanced to the coveted second run, a standing testament to their prowess and promise as the Canadian representatives.
Gray expressed a newfound buoyancy, with Mont-Tremblant serving as a threshold for bolder dreams, a springboard to a season of anticipation. Though others, like Justine Clement and Justine Lamontagne, fell short of the mark, and Sarah Bennett, alongside Britt Richardson, did not see the finish line, the spirit of competition and camaraderie remained untarnished.
In the wintry Quebec theatre, where the script was written not on paper but etched into the snow by skis, athletes like Val Grenier defined more than placement. They became testaments to resilience, representatives of their roots, and the cascading inspiration for tales that transcend time and the race itself.
