Passion and Courage
Nottawa’s Kandace Kriese has become one of Ontario’s promising athletes dreaming Olympic dreams. While we were meeting Kandace’s parents, Kandace found some time to share her own thoughts on her journey so far.
“When I first started racing I loved the thrill of the speed”, she expressed in an email from her NSA training camp in Switzerland, “but initially I found myself less familiar with some of the technical details: like tuning, pole lengths etc. Lets just say I wasn't the one people would come to with equipment and technical problems!”
Kandace first skied when she was 2, but immediately realized that her “joy for skiing was short-lived.” (see Snow Angels). When she was 11 her parents signed her up for ski racing: she began in the K1 Category and now, at 17, has become a Giant Slalom specialist.
“I met Kandace a couple of years ago at dry land training. She was full of piss & vinegar: exercising between exercises, being goofy tossing the football around. She had a vivid personality – more than just skiing - and that is the philosophy at Head. I hadn’t even seen her ski yet.” ~ Todd Brooker, Canadian Race Program Director, Head Canada Inc., now Kandaces sponsor and family friend.
“I just tried to do what the coaches told me with whatever equipment I had. During the first years it was extremely difficult to fit in because I was not like the others that came from a family of skiers. I was not familiar with the specialized equipment, and neither were my parents. I just took my old skis and did the best I could with the equipment I had.”
Despite not having come from a ski family, at 17 Kandace has already enjoyed a great deal of on-hill successes, but when asked about challenges she confessed that many of them were off the course. “My challenges were mostly trying to make friends being the new girl. Usually the best thing for me to do was to stand back and observe - which turned out to be the best way to learn. Along the way I made mistakes, mostly learned the hard way, but I think because of that, I have also had huge successes physically and mentally.”
“My favourite memories involve my family attending my races and the moments that I had the opportunity to meet with the best of the best.”
Kandace is currently a member of the National Ski Academy based in Collingwood, a unique and well respected program created to provide students the opportunity to excel both academically and athletically. “Balancing it all is definitely a lot tougher than I had imagined but it helped me make the most amazing friends, and meet so many different people. Of course you win and you lose - certain situations and certain people - but I am very proud of where I am. The main struggle is to keep everything moving, to keep everything constant with no interference and no distractions: to keep things simple.”
“When I first started racing I loved the thrill of the speed”, she expressed in an email from her NSA training camp in Switzerland, “but initially I found myself less familiar with some of the technical details: like tuning, pole lengths etc. Lets just say I wasn't the one people would come to with equipment and technical problems!”
Kandace first skied when she was 2, but immediately realized that her “joy for skiing was short-lived.” (see Snow Angels). When she was 11 her parents signed her up for ski racing: she began in the K1 Category and now, at 17, has become a Giant Slalom specialist.
“I met Kandace a couple of years ago at dry land training. She was full of piss & vinegar: exercising between exercises, being goofy tossing the football around. She had a vivid personality – more than just skiing - and that is the philosophy at Head. I hadn’t even seen her ski yet.” ~ Todd Brooker, Canadian Race Program Director, Head Canada Inc., now Kandaces sponsor and family friend.
“I just tried to do what the coaches told me with whatever equipment I had. During the first years it was extremely difficult to fit in because I was not like the others that came from a family of skiers. I was not familiar with the specialized equipment, and neither were my parents. I just took my old skis and did the best I could with the equipment I had.”
Despite not having come from a ski family, at 17 Kandace has already enjoyed a great deal of on-hill successes, but when asked about challenges she confessed that many of them were off the course. “My challenges were mostly trying to make friends being the new girl. Usually the best thing for me to do was to stand back and observe - which turned out to be the best way to learn. Along the way I made mistakes, mostly learned the hard way, but I think because of that, I have also had huge successes physically and mentally.”
“My favourite memories involve my family attending my races and the moments that I had the opportunity to meet with the best of the best.”
Kandace is currently a member of the National Ski Academy based in Collingwood, a unique and well respected program created to provide students the opportunity to excel both academically and athletically. “Balancing it all is definitely a lot tougher than I had imagined but it helped me make the most amazing friends, and meet so many different people. Of course you win and you lose - certain situations and certain people - but I am very proud of where I am. The main struggle is to keep everything moving, to keep everything constant with no interference and no distractions: to keep things simple.”
She says her journey so far has been a mixture of frustration, success, mistakes and learning. “I have had to conquer probably some difficult obstacles to get here, but I still have a smile on my face. The passion I see in my fellow competitors, my family, and the friendships I have made have helped me build this strong platform.
It has given me the passion and courage I needed to deal with the most difficult most critical most negative and most positive person in the world - myself.”
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