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By Dan Plouffe
Alicia Blomberg has experienced her fair share of adrenaline-pumping moments in a hockey career that included five years as a University of Ottawa Gee-Gee, but standing atop an icy chute about to descend a 500-metre track on a pair of skate blades, with 150,000 spectators cheering in anticipation, that’s a different proposition altogether.
That was the scene for the March 20-22 Red Bull Crashed Ice race in Quebec City (click to see a video of Blomberg’s final race).
“Quebec City is crazy about Red Bull. Everyone is really passionate,” says Blomberg, describing the emotion of the moment when four athletes are given a five-second warning before their gates open and the downhill ice race is on.
“The five seconds you’re in there seem so long, honestly,” she continues. “It’s only five seconds, but you can hear everyone and you’re just waiting for the door to open. It’s very motivating. I couldn’t have experienced that feeling anywhere else, I don’t think.”
The first run down a Crashed Ice course is “mostly scary,” with so much to learn such as the fastest line to take, where it’s better to be slower to handle a corner, if it’s better to ride a mogul or jump it, and how to it all while staying safely in one piece.
“I definitely had to overcome failure. The first few runs were discouraging. You’re falling a lot,” details Blomberg, who struggled mightily before opponents were even added to the mix. “You’re in a race with four people. You don’t always get the best part of the track. It’s happening so fast, so it’s really difficult. But I love it.”
The Timmins native played hockey all her life, but Crashed Ice is “different from anything I’ve ever done,” she explains. “It’s not like hockey or skating on regular ice. It’s much more like downhill skiing.”
Blomberg was introduced to the sport by Gee-Gees hockey teammates of hers, including past champion and bronze medalist Fannie Desforges, who missed this year’s event because she was chasing a Canadian Women’s Hockey League title with Montreal at the Clarkson Cup in Markham on the same weekend.
“They’d all had really positive experiences,” the hockey forward notes. “It became a competition within the team.”
In her first Crashed Ice competition, Blomberg finished in fourth place last year, which is hard to swallow for any athlete getting so close to the podium, she attests.
“Being in that last race and having all that intensity and then coming fourth is a really tough thing,” signals Blomberg, who fell last year and just wanted a clean run this time around. “My goal was top-8 and I got third, so I was really happy.”
Downhill ice cross: a future Olympic sport?
New sports and disciplines within sports continue to be added to the Winter Olympic Games in an effort to create more events, including the likes of snowboard slopestyle, which seemed a long way from the mainstream not so long ago.
Crashed Ice, or downhill ice cross as it’s starting to be known, may appear like a cult phenomenon on first look, but Blomberg says it most certainly shouldn’t be dismissed as a potential future Olympic sport.
“It’d be great. I’ve never had to apply so many skills into a sport as I have in Red Bull,” she highlights. “You have to be a great athlete and it’s a competition that requires a bunch of skills put together. I know the athletes that go all train really hard.”
With crowds in the hundreds on thousands, there’s no doubt the sport would be popular and bring out as many spectators as an Olympic event, she adds.
“I think it would do well,” Blomberg underlines. “I don’t know if that would ever happen though.”
Being a sport that’s essentially owned by Red Bull presents challenges to getting it into the X Games – a breeding ground for many of the new Olympic sports with an “extreme” kick to them – but Blomberg is never going to complain about having a sponsor’s backing.
“As a female athlete who’s competed in other national events and had to pay my own way, I’ve got to say, Red Bull treats their women really well,” indicates the 2013 Team Canada 2013 ball hockey world champion. “I go there and all my accommodations and everything is done for me, which is nice. I’d go back any day. It’s a lot of fun.”