By Pablo Medina & Dan Plouffe
They were just rookies very recently, but as Kalle Eriksson and Ottawa alpine skiing guide Sierra Smith enter their first Paralympic season, the Canadian pair most definitely have a chance to be on the podium come their sport’s pinnacle competition.
Eriksson and Smith have quickly built a strong track record of making dazzling debuts since they first joined forces and won the vision impaired category at the PEI 2023 Canada Winter Games.
The custom grew when they won the slalom event in their first World Cup race in February 2024 at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, which will welcome the planet’s top winter sports athletes for the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
And the streak continued in February 2025 in Slovenia when they won silver medals in both the slalom and giant slalom at their first World Para Alpine Skiing Championships.
“That one was super exciting,” Smith underlines. “It was our first big event — we’d only done a handful of World Cups before the World Championships, so it felt like a much bigger stage with more weight behind it.”
Kimberley, B.C.’s Eriksson and Smith had the fastest runs in one of the two heats in each discipline, but missed out on the gold medal with combined times that were just .32 and .25 seconds off the pace respectively in the giant slalom and slalom.
But it was the gap ahead of the fourth-place finisher – 2.42 seconds in the giant slalom and 2.75 in the slalom – that most definitely illustrates their Paralympic podium potential.
Those performances were the highlight moment of the pair’s “meteoric rise over the last two seasons,” as the Canadian Paralympic Committee described it.
It was “a great season” overall in 2024-2025, says Smith, as she and Eriksson captured nine medals in their 12 World Cup series starts, with a “cherry on top” coming when they won their last giant slalom race of the year.
While the Paralympics promises to offer another level of stress, Smith notes that they’ve felt a little extra pressure to perform each time they’re in a global event, having only attended half of the World Cup stops last season.
“It’s costing a lot to make all the races in Europe,” highlights the Mont Ste-Marie racer. “And that just goes to show, hopefully, what we can do if we attend all the races in the future.
“It gives us the confidence going into next year — especially with the Games — to perform and hopefully build on that.”
This season’s first of eight World Cup events starts on Dec. 10 in Austria, with Eriksson and Smith keenly focused on continuing their tradition of standout debuts come the Paralympics from Mar. 6-15.
“That’s kind of what everything’s leading up to,” smiles Smith. “We’re feeling super strong after [last] season. Really excited building toward what’s next.”
Smith finds new journey in guiding
Reaching for the Paralympic podium as a guide skier was never something Smith had envisioned.
The Louis-Riel high school grad had represented Canada in her youth at the Trofeo Topolino and Whistler Cup, where she won a bronze medal. She was later part of the national team program, but injuries and the pandemic put a halt to her competitive pursuits.
Smith didn’t expect to return to the sport at a high-performance level, but she still had a strong desire to stay connected to skiing. Smith continued to coach, including with the University of Calgary Dinos program while she was studying kinesiology at U of C.
But once she met Eriksson, a new pathway opened itself. Eriksson, 21, had lost much of his vision in 2020 after sustaining rare and severe damage to his retinas from the sun’s reflection while skiing without goggles on a glacier in Sweden.
“He didn’t have a guide, so I decided to ski in front of him,” recounts Smith, who is one of the few women guiding on the men’s side of the sport. “He was really fast, and we got along great. That’s when I realized how much I missed it, and I found a way to get back into skiing for something bigger than just myself.”
After competing together internationally for two seasons, Smith and Eriksson’s connection has developed rapidly. In a recent social media post in collaboration with the CPC, Smith said she was “so proud to be from Canada.”
“Getting the opportunity to wear the maple leaf alongside my best friend – nothing will match that,” added Smith, who communicates with Eriksson through a two-way headset system as they tackle courses at speeds nearing 100 km/h.
On top of her habit for strong debuts, there’s another tradition Smith is proudly carrying on as the third generation in her family to wear the maple leaf skinsuit.
Smith’s mother Julie Klotz was a slalom forerunner at the Calgary 1988 Olympics and a past national team member, as was her grandfather Trevor Klotz, who once raced (and crashed in fog) at the famed Kitzbühel downhill in 1958.
“It’s a family affair,” the 25-year-old noted with the CPC. “I’ve been on skis as long as I can remember. I grew up skiing on Mont Ste. Marie, and the community is one big family where everyone knows and supports each other.”
Capital could have half-dozen alpine skiers at 2026 Games
There will be several more skiers from the area shooting for spots on the slopes for the Milano-Cortina Games.
The group includes another pair of past Paralympians from the area – Merrickville’s Brian Rowland, who made his Paralympic debut in Beijing at age 35 and earned a top-10 finish in the super-G, and Gatineau’s Alexis Guimond, who won a bronze medal in his second consecutive Games in 2022 and has been named one of the Canadian Paralympic team’s five captains for 2026.
“Being co-captain and representing my team and Canada at these Paralympics means carrying the dreams of a nation on my shoulders, fuelled by a passion that turns every obstacle into opportunity,” Guimond posted in collaboration with the CPC.
“With my family at the upcoming Milano Cortina 2026 Games, I just want to ski my best and deliver the performance of my career,” he added in another Instagram post with the CPC.
Ski cross siblings Hannah and Jared Schmidt will be looking to make a return to Olympic competition for a second straight Games, but that is not a simple task among the highly competitive Canadian team.
There are many possible twists in Olympic qualification procedures, but the Schmidts would most likely book their tickets to Milano Cortina by being one of Canada’s top four skiers in their team’s respective men’s and women’s rankings after a Jan. 24 World Cup race.
They’ve got their first qualification runs on Dec. 9 for the season’s first World Cup event in France.
Jared enters the season 15th in the world for Olympic qualification rankings and third among Canadians, while Hannah is 12th in the world and fifth among Canadians despite missing the last two-and-a-half months of last season with a knee injury that required surgery.
Read More: Untimely crash crushes ski cross season, but not fighting spirit for Hannah Schmidt
The day after her first win on Jan. 16, Hannah won her third World Cup medal of the season in strange fashion after she got entangled with Canadian/Mont-Tremblant teammate Brittany Phelan.
The 31-year-old progressed well through rehabilitation and was back on her skis in time for a regular start to this season, including a second-place finish at a September South American Cup race in Chile.
“Heading into race season baby!” Hannah wrote on Instagram. “Good pre season in Chile and Whitehorse, feeling ready and the team is firing.”
Jared, meanwhile, was ninth and the top Canadian man at last season’s world championships. The 28-year-old was also a bronze medallist on last season’s World Cup circuit.
“Whole Canada ski cross team is firing,” Jared echoed on Instagram. “Excited for what’s in store.”
And Valérie Grenier, another Mont-Tremblant skier from St-Isidore east of Ottawa, got her World Cup season underway in the biggest of ways with a bronze medal win on her home course in the women’s giant slalom.
“It feels like a dream,” Grenier said via Alpine Canada with tears of joy in her eyes. “I’m so proud to podium in front of my parents, my friends and this amazing crowd. We could hear the crowd from the start and to know that all these people were here to cheer us on helped charge me up.”
