Former coach Phil McNichol has watched Macartney’s phoenix rise from the ashes again and again. He stood in “utter awe” at Macartney’s return after the Kitzbühel crash in 2008. “He’s shown tremendous fortitude and ability to come back.”
Macartney’s first goal: Make the 2010 Olympic team. Second: Win the gold. To call Macartney a medal contender would be a stretch. But when it comes to the Olympics, you never know. It’s been done. In 2006, 13 months after wrecking his knee, France’s Antoine Deneriaz, 29, won the Olympic downhill despite starting 30th that day. Bill Johnson came from practically nowhere to win the 1984 Olympic downhill in an otherwise inauspicious World Cup career.
Known for his gliding and jumping ability, Macartney may pull off his best performance in super-G. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, Macartney placed 15th in downhill and seventh in the super-G. The difference between Mac and a medal? Less than three-tenths of a second.
The magic—and the curse—of the quadrennial Olympics is that you don’t have to be the world’s best skier to win Olympic gold. Just the best on that day. Maybe that magic will be on Scott Macartney’s side February 13, 2010, the day of the men’s Olympic downhill in Whistler. Maybe the story of the guy who crashed at Kitzbühel will have a happy ending.
Back in February 2009, Macartney was driving I-70 in Colorado after knee surgery, leaving the mountains for the Denver airport and home in Seattle. The snow came down hard. The sedan was a rental with tires unfit for slick road conditions. To the side, a half-dozen cars, mostly SUVs, had slid off the freeway and into ditches.
Macartney suppressed his usual need for speed and eased off the gas as he thought about the challenges ahead. He came to this conclusion: “The more I ski race the more I realize that you can go out and prepare impeccably and be focused and have everything going, and still have stuff go wrong.”
Moments later a guy in an SUV passed him—then slowed down. So Macartney passed him, keeping an eye in the rearview mirror. Suddenly, the SUV spun out of control and smashed into the median. “Lucky,” Macartney thought. “That could have been me.”
Published: January 2010
Send your video clips, taken by your cell phones or any other video device, of the Olympic, Paralympic, Torch Relay and Celebrations to weRwatching2010 [at] gmail.com to participate in my video art installation. Video clips will be projected onto the side of a building in downtown Vancouver during the games. See details at www.liddlethought.blogspot.com
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