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Local resident with Olympic aspirations
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 by GetawayBC.com
This is the story of one Golden resident and his dream to compete in the Olympics.
Dave Duncan, a resident of Golden, is currently working with the Canadian National Ski Cross team to make it to the Olympics in 2010.
Duncan says he first started skiing at the age of three.
“My mother took me out to the ski club which was only five minutes away form our house. I guess I fell in love with it because the story is that I left the hill kicking and screaming that day.”
The next day Duncan says his mother brought home brand new skiing equipment for him and he was ecstatic.
“I started jumping up and down and apparently I fell off a piece of furniture and broke my arm. So the I spent the first year learning to ski with a broken arm. It was the first, but not the last of injuries in my career.”
Duncan says that’s how he got his start.
“The hill was tiny in comparison to what I ski now, but I went every day after school. I was skiing all the time, seven days a week.”
Duncan says at a young age he joined the Nancy Green system and began to compete with the Mackenzie Mountain League. He then found that he was making podium finishes more often than not.
“From there I decided to get more serious, so I moved to Collingwood, ON to attend the National Ski Academy. It was a great school that focused as strongly on our academic skills as on our skiing skills. There were big on trying to instil ethics and were the key to my future success in the academic world.”
Duncan says he attended the academy from grade nine to 12 and he did well enough to qualify for the Ontario Provincial Ski Team.
“In my OAC [grade 13] year I moved home to London, ON to finish high school while still competing. I would take off the whole winter to travel with the team. It was great to be introduced to travel at that time in my life too.”
After he graduated high school, Duncan says he made the decision to focus all his energy on skiing.
“I put all of my efforts into making the National team. I figured school was done so I could put all my energy into skiing. I spent the first year post college on the Ontario Provincial team and eventually I started exploring the option to attend post secondary school in the U.S.”
He says he looked at a variety of schools, but the best offer he found came from the University of Alaska.
“UAA came back with the best offer where I could ski at the NCAA division level and obtain a degree in aviation which was my other passion.”
Skiing at the NCAA level was some of the highest level of skiing that /duncan says he’s ever done.
“There was a high level of competition and I found that I had a couple of podium results, but my finishes were all over the place.”
While attending UAA, Duncan says he was the ski team captain for two terms and was MVP for two terms as well. He was also an NCAA all American for 3 terms and spent three semesters on the dean’s list.
“I was doing something that I wanted to do so I found it very easy to apply myself.”
In December 2006, Duncan received a Bachelor of Science in Aviation Technology.
“At that point I was at a cross roads. I realized that my Alpine career had come to an end and while looking to the future I I had three options. To work for a heli-ski company, to be a guide for a blind competitive skier or to start dabbling in ski cross which had just started to pick up steam. I was in a dilemma. I thought, which one should I do?”
Eventually Duncan picked the job with a heli-skiing company in 2007.
“I was loving life and getting paid to do it.”
That same winter, Duncan says he travelled to the Sugar Bowl in California.
“There I met Cam Bailey who’s now the CEO for the National Ski Cross team. He saw me compete and told me he wanted me to come and try out for the ski cross team.”
That summer, Duncan said he went to the tryouts held at Farnham Glacier, near Radium for the first tryout camp for the National Ski Cross Team.
“It was so new to me. I was definitely questioning my capability for the sport.”
Duncan need not have been nervous. He ended up ranking first in the camp.
“At that time I thought to myself, this is your second lease on going to the Olympics.”
Duncan says he was hooked. He immediately made plans to move back to Canada and pursue his new dream.
“I stayed in Vancouver for a few months at first and quickly realized that I was not a fan of city life. I started looking for the perfect mountain town that had a variety of winter and summer events and a small population.”
That’s when Duncan discovered Golden. In September 2007, he says he decided to come to the perfect mountain town.
“I checked it out, fell in love, packed my Neon with all of my stuff and drove out here and I haven’t left since. Home is supposed to be where the heart is and Golden is that to me.”
Duncan says that while in Golden he continued to strive to make the National Team.
In November 2007, while at another tryout camp held at Powder King Mountain in Pine Pass in northern B.C., Duncan says he found out that he had made the National Team.
“I was ecstatic. After all the years of hard work, it was a great feeling to be named to the team.”
Duncan says he spent his first season on the team competing all over the world. He said he had some good finishes and even became the National Ski Cross champion in Spain while competing there.
“I was feeling pretty good at the end of my first season. I didn’t want it to end and I continued to progress through the summer of 2008.”
Nowadays, Duncan says he is focusing ahead on the season.
“I have to stay competitive. to stay on the team you have to keep achieving goals and show that you are improving every day. You have to prove that you are a force on the world circuit.”
Duncan says his goal this year is to be ranked top ten in the world.
“What I am focusing on now is setting me up for the future.”
Duncan ’s first competition of 2009 was on January 5 at a competition in Austria. Before the competition, Duncan said he was looking forward to competing and seeing some good results.
“Everything as of September 2008 has been judged for the Olympics. Unfortunately we won’t be officially notified until two weeks prior to the games as to whether we are going. If I continue to do well in competitions throughout 2009 and rank among the top ten in the world, then I would feel pretty good about having a spot on the Olympic team.”
Duncan said that three or four men and three or four women will get to represent Canada in 2010.
2010 will be the first year that ski cross will be an event in the winter Olympics. Duncan is the youngest member of the National team at 26.
Duncan says it’s important to him to gives a big shout out to Kicking Horse Mountain Resort who have become his official sponsor in his Olympic bid.
“They have definitely come to the plate as my official sponsor and I would like to thank Steve, Mark and Jordan for all of their help and support.”
Duncan said he would be back in Golden on January 21 and he is excited to get back on his home mountain.
“Kicking Horse is my playground. I can’t wait to get back to ski my home hill.”
Keep an eye on the Golden Star as we follow Duncan’s Olympic bid throughout this year.