SKI CROSS:

Del Bosco goes for broke, leaves empty-handed

Feb. 21, 2010 — The Canadian Press          ►Photo: Chris Del Bosco (Canada Ski Cross)

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WEST VANCOUVER, B.C. — Chris Del Bosco's storybook ending was out there, a few yards ahead, just a gamble or two away.

The recovering addict who grew up in Colorado and now competes for Canada could see Switzerland's Michael Schmid leading the men's ski cross finals Sunday. He could sense the heavily pro-Canadian crowd at the bottom of sun-splashed Cypress Mountain in full throat as it willed him toward the finish line.

Sure, he could have tried to protect his spot in third and gone home with a bronze medal.

Yet he'd overcome too much, trained too hard, battled too long to settle. That's just not what he does.

So Del Bosco went for it, roaring over the second-to-last jump in an effort to gain ground on Schmid and Austria's Andreas Matt.

And in a flash, the gold medal was gone. Silver and bronze, too. Del Bosco crashed spectacularly, his skis flailing in the air after losing control. He fell in a heap and stayed there for several minutes before skiing gingerly down the hill and into the arms of his girlfriend, Canadian ski cross teammate Ashleigh McIvor.

"I wasn't content," Del Bosco said, fighting back tears after taking more than an hour to collect himself following the race. "I don't know. It's all right for some people ... but I wanted to give 100 percent for the sport and for the country."

The sport had given him every bit as much over the years, keeping him alive, giving him a purpose and an opportunity to survive after he spent a decade battling addiction and wasting his considerable talent.

Del Bosco tested positive for recreational drug use at the U.S. National Championships in 1998, which started a tailspin that included a near-death experience in a ditch five years ago, a stint in rehab and jail time for drunken driving.

He still competed, but the junior wunderkind was gone, and so was the trust of his fellow racers.

"People would laugh when they heard that I was racing against Del Bosco because he was such a mess in his earlier years," American Casey Puckett said.

Del Bosco finally came clean in 2007 and managed to get his life back on track, becoming one of the best skicrossers in the world in the process. Puckett praised the way Del Bosco has grown up, calling his turnaround "remarkable."

He won the Winter X Games last month and came to Cypress as one of the favorites. Racing for Canada — his father is Canadian — Del Bosco wanted to give the host country a golden moment in ski cross' Olympic debut.

Sorry, silver just wasn't going to cut it.

He cruised through qualifying and the first two elimination rounds before a slow start in the semifinals forced him to play catchup. He made it through that one, but the final was different.

After another misstep on the second "Wu Tang" jump, Del Bosco had to work hard simply to get to third. He made it, but admittedly got greedy near the finish. He knew he was carrying too much speed into the jump. And he didn't care.

"I race to win," he said. "I think I would have been frustrated with second."

So he ended up fourth instead. Down but hardly out, his go-for-broke mentality is a part of the culture in ski cross.

"He was committed to doing his best here," said Dave Ellis, high-performance director for Canadian Ski Cross. "You can ease up and settle in for a medal or try and prove how good you are and I think, yeah, he made a risk and it's another fourth-place story for Canada, but for us I'm happy to see that he has clearly proven his talent out there."

Still, it marked another medal lost for the hosts, who thus far have struggled to meet the lofty expectations set by their "Own the Podium" program.

Canada has just eight medals — four gold — during the first 10 days of competition, good enough for only fifth overall and 16 behind the leader, the United States.

Yet there were no apologies necessary on Sunday. Del Bosco did what he came to do, and he went down swinging.

"That's just how I am," he said. "Sometimes that's just how it goes when you're going for it."  SRC