It was a bad dream, only Jason Myslicki was wide awake and sobbing. Sobbing so hard he could not speak. His head was resting against his jumping skis. His heart was breaking. "My dreams were shattered right from the takeoff," Myslicki says, through tear-stained eyes.
WHISTLER, B.C. -- It was a bad dream, only Jason Myslicki was wide awake and sobbing. Sobbing so hard he could not speak. His head was resting against his jumping skis. His heart was breaking.
"My dreams were shattered right from the takeoff," Myslicki says, through tear-stained eyes.
His jump was a joke. An embarrassment, a performance not even Eddie the Eagle would applaud. Myslicki flew 60 metres off the big hill in front of his friends, in front of his family -- in front of his entire country. Now he was looking at climbing a massive hill in the cross country portion of the event, if he had any hope of finishing anywhere other than dead last in the Nordic combined at Whistler Olympic Park.
It was a nightmare, until Myslicki was yanked from his impossibly bad dream. Changing weather conditions prompted officials to stop the jumpers mid-competition and call for a re-start. It was a do over -- for everybody. It was a prayer answered for a Canadian. Almost before his tears could dry Myslicki was perched at the top of the ski jump, peering down at his second chance.
"That was the toughest thing that I have ever, ever had to do," Myslicki said shortly after landing a perfectly respectable 99.5-metre jump in his second try.
"It felt like I died, and now, walking around, I feel alive again, but more like a zombie than anything. Lose everything, get a second chance."
Myslicki is no stranger to competitive hardship. He might just be the loneliest Olympian of all, a barely funded, one-man band competing in a sport nobody in Canada -- at least nobody with a government ID badge in a position to help pay the bills -- cares about.
Myslicki is Own the Podium's forgotten little brother. The 32-year-old Thunder Bay-born, Calgary-based athlete is a living symbol of a simpler Olympic age when doing your best for your country was not so bad at all. Personal bests were not part of the budget in 2010. Only medals mattered, and Myslicki never had a prayer.
He finished 41st in Turin in 2006, and 45th in a field of 45 in his first event at Whistler. Own the Podium treated the two-time Olympian like a pauper before the Games, targeting the "team" for $35,000 in funding.
Ski jumping was the next poorest sport in the mix, with $82,500 in funding. Alpine skiing, with all its lofty expectations and marquee names, was given $3.5-million and has, like Myslicki, not produced a single medal.
The one-man band was so beaten down by the battle to get by that he quit competing after Turin. He took up a hammer and starting renovating houses in Calgary and coached the kids at a local Nordic club. He was making money, for once, but watching the next generation fly off the jumps reinvigorated his competitive spirit, while the promise of competing at home brought Myslicki all the way back to the sport. And so off he went, on the World Cup circuit, a lonely Canadian hobo with a maple leaf in his heart.
"Other countries can see the difficulty we are in, and they are surprised by it," Myslicki said before the Games. "They see the Olympics and know the Olympics are in Canada, and they can't understand why I could be facing such tough times given the scenario.
"They see me as the underdog."
Myslicki would bum rides from event to event with the big European teams, and befriend their technicians so they might take pity on him and add his skis to their waxing piles. (After Air Canada lost his luggage -- for the third time -- the French world champion loaned him some skis).
"Some Canadian friendliness and a case of beer can go a long way on a World Cup weekend," Myslicki said with a laugh. "And it was not a two-four, it was more like a six-pack. It is not about your taxpayer dollars when it comes to me."
Myslicki made it to Whistler in the end, and he did it on his own. Winning a medal was never an option, but Thursday was still his big shining moment. Even with the do-over at the ski jump, Myslicki's terrible morning was tearing away at his heart as he lined for the 10-kilometre cross-country portion of the two-event sport.
All the years, all the nickels and dimes he had to beg and borrow along the way, all the hard work he put in when nobody was paying attention -- what was it worth? And would he do it again?
"Before the race, I probably would have said no," Myslicki says. "I couldn't even control myself and my thinking, my breathing and everything."
One of the things Myslicki had always loved about cross-country skiing was the loneliness of the woods. The forest was a place to think. But he was not entirely alone yesterday. People were cheering for him -- for him -- a guy without a prayer, who finished 44th in a field of 45.
"I've gone through a lot of scenarios in my head that I could have encountered today," Myslicki said. "In hindsight, I think I did all right."
