Warner’s World: Flying Solo

How Julien Couisineau, cut from the Canadian team, staged his World Cup comeback

After only eight days of training and a total of 13 days on snow since ACL surgery in late March, Julien Cousineau spectacularly finished 16th in the World Cup slalom season opener this month in Levi, Finland. It’s awesome to see Cousineau hit his stride so quickly after not only his fifth knee surgery, but also a long string of bad luck with injuries and his national governing body.

Cousineau’s most recent injury almost cost the 33-year-old his career. After tearing his ACL in January in the Schladming World Cup slalom, he questioned whether or not he could continue racing. The Canadian national team cut Cousineau, and the fate of his career was entirely on his own shoulders.

Hard feelings? Nope. “I’m not mad at the team,” he says. “They decided to go a different route. I wouldn’t have made the qualification.” There’s no question that his great attitude and experience led him to his second-best result of all time in Levi. (In 2010, he finished eighth.)

After his injury and before surgery, he took two months off and just stayed at home. “I just enjoyed being a dad,” says Cousineau, who has two young children, “and being home with my family.”

For the most recent ACL surgery, Cousineau also did something different. He decided to use a cadaver graft rather than using tissue from his body. It turned out to be a superb decision. “After my surgery I woke up the next day and I was walking,” says Cousineau, still sounding amazed. “I realized that I would be able to make it back quicker than I thought, so I started looking for some funding.”

Cousineau, like many Olympic athletes, found himself with no financial support. But when it comes to fundraising, Cousineau is a seasoned veteran. (I even modeled my own long running golf classic after his successful tournament.) “I went [directly] to companies rather than doing a fundraiser,” says Cousineau, who enlisted the help of Fischer, Karbon, Leki and Uvex along with Canadian companies Max Ski Service, Bariatrix Nutrition, Cogela and Lelys. “I’ve done that so long. I wanted to ask for money differently.”

With his limited skiing plan, it was a relatively inexpensive prep period. Right now, through his sponsors, Cousineau has enough money to get him through January. He is hoping — and, I suspect, correctly — that his recent performance in Levi will bring in more sponsors.

For his summer training, Cousineau had to get creative as his son Benjamin (20 months) didn’t have daycare, so Cousineau was a full-time, stay-at-home dad. “I would walk for three hours with my son and go to the park and play,” he says, recalling how he’d pick and choose different dryland training from his 16-year career with Alpine Canada. “I don’t believe that there is a set formula to to make ski racers fast or good.”

Cousineau then joined the British Columbia Ski Team in Hintertux. “There are a lot of things that could have gone wrong that went right,” he admits.

But with BC Alpine, Cousineau was able to work with two of his favorite coaches, Nick Cooper and Johnny Crichton, for eight days on snow. “It was funny — like nothing changed,” he says. Indeed, Cousineau was bunking with his longtime friend and World Cup roommate Mike Janyk, who recently retired from an impressive 12-year World Cup career and was coaching at the camp.

“Everything was easy,” says Cousineau, adding that because he didn’t have time to test equipment, “I didn’t have to make such decisions.” He asked Fischer, his longtime ski sponsor, for a model ski that most World Cup guys were having success with — and immediately liked them more than his skis from last season.

But there was one drastic difference: for the first time in 16 years, Cousineau had to prepare his own skis. Luckily, he was able to get some tuning equipment from his local ski shop. “By the last day, I knew I was skiing at a better level then the past few years,” he says, “with more consistent balance and more power.”

After his successful camp with BC Alpine, Cousineau was ready for Levi, and made arrangements with the Canadian ski team to join their five-day prep camp leading up to the season opener. In Finland, the Canadian team tech helped with Cousineau’s skis and put a machined edge on them for the race, but as Cousineau explains, “I’m not a priority.”

Now, as an independent skier and the only Canadian man to score points in Levi, Cousineau has an open-door policy to train with the Canadian national team. “I like the position that I’m in,” he says. “It’s exciting, mentally.”

Taking ownership of your career is an amazing feeling when everything falls into place. Cousineau will be one to watch at the World Championships in Vail as I’m convinced his best skiing is yet to come.

“I feel fresh with all the time away from skiing and traveling,” he says before taking time to reflect on his powerful Levi performance. “It did feel a lot better, because I was on my own.”