Late addition to Olympic team sends Biggs to Whistler

After being left off the original list of 19 athletes, the 27-year-old was chosen to fill one of three additional Olympic berths granted to Canada – a gift from other countries who declined some quota positions they earned.

“To compete at home in front of friends and family, it’s something we don’t really ever do in our sport,” says Biggs, who will have his parents and former coaches from Camp Fortune in the Whistler audience. “Especially as a slalom skier, we don’t have any competitions in Canada, let alone even in the U.S. any more – it’s all in Europe. So I’m pretty excited.”

It’s been a bumpy road for Biggs since he made his Olympic debut at the 2006 Torino Games with piles of serious injuries suffered in recent years – knee, back and concussion amongst the worst of them.

He was a definite underdog to earn an Olympic spot on the strong Canadian team, especially considering others were selected ahead of him to compete in last year’s world championships.

A nagging hip/back injury contributed to did-not-finish results in the past four World Cup events – which cost Biggs one of four Olympic spots available to Canadians in his preferred slalom event – although he was selected to race the giant slalom, and potentially also the super combined since not many others from Canada compete in the discipline.

It’s certainly a long way from the start of the season when Alpine Canada made him and a few other lower-ranked skiers cough up $30,000 just to be on the team.

But no matter the hurdle – whether it was health-related or financial – Biggs maintained a positive outlook throughout and felt confident an Olympic berth would come.

“You develop that in ski racing just from being involved in the sport,” he notes. “You’ve got to look at the long-run – over a career, and not be worried about your results a previous week. That’s definitely something you need to have as a ski racer.”

In the lead-up to the Games, Biggs will be in Calgary, where he may get into some speed training if the super combined (one downhill run and one slalom) ends up on his plate.

It’s been years since Biggs has competed in downhill, but he feels “quite comfortable” on the Whistler Creekside track thanks to many previous races there.

Biggs has raced the GS on-and-off for the past three years, never cracking the top-30 on the World Cup circuit despite being close, although he does own a second-place Nor-Am GS result from 2007.

With his latest injury problems “settled down,” Biggs plans to “compete and not just to be a participant” by bringing the same mindset towards GS as he does with slalom to produce “a performance that lives up to an Olympic calibre.”

“It’s something very special to compete in front of Canadians, to have them behind you, instead of 40,000 (foreigners),” adds Biggs, who pinpoints age nine while watching ski racing on TV as the moment he decided he wanted to become an Olympian himself. “It will be very neat. It’s really exciting.”