Sports: Skiing Blind

Originally published in Reader's Digest Canada. Read the full text here.

Paralympic skier Brian McKeever has completed some of the most gruelling courses in the world. This March, at the Sochi Games, he'll be working with a new guide-and a new energy

Brian McKeever is swooping down an incline, a few centimetres behind his partner, Erik Carleton. The two cross-country skiers are training in the jagged-peaked Italian Dolomites, and McKeever-who is 90 per cent blind-is waiting for Carleton to tell him when to slow down.

McKeever can smell the cold mountain air. He can feel the wind hitting his face and the tilt and dip of the slope beneath his boots. He can hear his skis slice through the hard snow. But he needs Carleton to be his eyes. McKeever depends on the one-time Olympic prospect to lead him to victory on the course by using intimate knowledge of his strengths and weaknesses. The two men live in Canmore, Alta., and between races they often embark on week-long runs where Carleton-a year older than 34-year-old McKeever-practises the speeds at which the para-athlete burns out and the speeds at which he can conserve energy and put the screws to his competitors in the final lap. 

The bond produced by the pair’s intensive and meticulous run-throughs-they try different time trials, after which a physiologist takes blood samples and records heart-rate data-has helped McKeever and Carleton dominate the sport since first teaming up in 2011. Last February, they won their second straight IPC World Championship title in Sollefteå, Sweden; in one race, they finished nearly a full minute ahead of the silver medallists.

“If you’re guiding a blind guy, you’re making split-second decisions with somebody else in mind,” McKeever says. For Carleton this means achieving a level of familiarity that allows him to anticipate McKeever’s strategy. He needs to know when to hold back and let opponents take the lead, negotiating perilous stretches of the course carefully but without giving up precious time, and when to burst ahead at the optimal moment. This hard-won synchronicity will be vital if the duo hope to maintain their No. 1 ranking at the 2014 Sochi Paralympics, where the field will be crowded by a cohort of fierce young Russian and Scandinavian rivals. 

But to help make McKeever unbeatable, Carleton needed to do more than face a steep learning curve. He had to replace the previous guide: McKeever’s brother, Robin.

This is an except. Read the full text here.