Page 38 - ESCARPMENT MAGAZINE | Winter 2013

38 Escarpment Magazine Winter 2013
It’s about time!
1989 was a pivotal year for skiing here on the Escarpment. It saw On-
tario’s first high-speed detachable quad chairlift installed at Blue Moun-
tain. It marked the beginning of a new era of high-speed lift access,
increased uphill lift capacity and decreased lift lines. But while a new
era was being ushered in, one was on its way out. 1989 was also the
last time Craigleith Ski Club would win the coveted AlpineOntario South
Druxy’s Masters League Championships… that is until 23 years later.
For those who are not familiar with the AOS Druxy’s Masters League,
it consists of approximately 10 ski clubs in Southern Ontario that put to-
gether a start list of up to 24 racers per club in age categories that span
from 18 to 90+. The season has four regular season races plus the finals
if your team can qualify. Despite the Druxy’s deli sandwiches and
Cameron’s Brewing refreshments provided after every race, it can be
challenging to convince more than 20 of your clubs best adult racers
to mount up, travel to another ski club, slide into a downhill suit and put
it all on the line for 3+ races each season.
Year over year, the Craigleith ski team has been able to draw strong
participation to the Masters league thanks to the strength of the club’s
house league. However, while strong participation is a great formula
to qualify your team for the finals, it takes a completely different strategy
to win the finals. Craigleith was the victim of the Georgian Peaks’ win-
ning strategy for the last seven years and Osler Bluff’s for many more
before that. We learned that if we really wanted to win the coveted
Druxy’s Masters league title we would need to find a way to draw some
of our clubs hidden talent out of retirement.
Twenty plus years of second place finishes left a lot of Craigleith’s team
members scratching their heads. It seemed that we had the talent but
lacked the ability to pull it all together for the main event. Going back
5 years, a small group led by Mark Reidl determined that the best way
to expose the clubs hidden talent was to rebuild excitement in the
Craigleith house league; the Going Downhill League (GDHL).
The GDHL was started in 1985 by Lionel Conacher and Mike Pod-
borski and has deep history at the club. It was determined that if we
could make the GDHL a club priority again and develop a stronger rac-
ing community among the members by providing better events, it would
be easier to recruit talent for our interclub team. With the support of
head coach Dave Campbell’s racing department and the Coyotes
Race Crew, the GDHL has been executing 7 top shelf races each sea-
son (including the Pod Cup Super Gwhere top speeds push 100km/h).
The involvement of key corporate sponsors has also aided in the GDHL
league’s development on and off the hill. Whether it is the World Cup
racing bibs (including a red one for the point leader) or assisting with
two major social events (including a 200 person year end banquet),
the sponsors have been major contributors to raising awareness and
developing the presence of the adult circuit. The improvements to our
house league has resulted in stronger interclub teams that have earned
Craigleith a spot in the finals almost every year, in some cases winning
the regular season title (which has its perks) but the team was always
left asking why they come up short in the finals?
To answer this, you need to understand that the league has become ex-
tremely strategic. Just ask the GP captains John Hethrington and Geoff
Lowe. If you want to win the race, you need to have racers win age cat-
egories that have extremely high participation. Your teammay be lucky
enough to have a ringer like PatrickWright (former Canadian National
Ski Teammember) but you will quickly learn that they are not even close
to being your most valuable point earner if nobody is willing to race
them. To level the playing field of racers aging 18 to 90+ a scoring sys-
tem has been developed that divides all racers into 5 year age incre-
ments and genders. The racer who finishes in the middle of each age
category receives a median score of 21. Therefore, if an age category
has 10 racers, the winner of that group can net their team 26 points
where the winner of an age category with 3 participants will earn only
22. The accumulation of points of the top 18 racers per team deter-
mines the team’s score and the winner.
MASTERS RACING | druxy’s league champs
BY TAYLOR SIMMS-BROWN