Jan Hudec

Biography

One of the founding members of the Canadian Cowboys, Jan Hudec has persevered through multiple major knee surgeries to remain among the top skiers on the men’s national alpine team. At Sochi 2014 he came back from herniating a disc in his lower back in mid-January to end a 20-year Olympic medal drought for the Canadian alpine skiing team, tying for the bronze medal in the super-G.

At the 2007 World Championships, Hudec won silver in the downhill. It was the first medal by a Canadian male alpiner in world championship or Olympic competition since Edi Podivinsky’s downhill bronze at Lillehammer 1994. Hudec made more history in November 2007 when he became the first Canadian man to win the Lake Louise World Cup downhill.  But his 2007-08 season came to an early end when he tore the ACL in his right knee in January 2008 . That forced him to undergo knee surgery for the fourth time in his career. He had previously torn his right ACL in December 2003 and then re-tore it in December 2004. That kept him out of competition until January 2006.

Hudec’s return from the fourth surgery was short-lived. He had made just four international starts in January 2009 when he blew out his left ACL during the downhill at the world championships in Val d’Isere and was forced to undergo more surgery. He returned for the start of the 2009-10 season and was able to make his Olympic debut at Vancouver 2010.

Hudec finally returned to the World Cup podium in February 2012 for the first time since December 2007 when he led a 1-3-5 Canadian finish in the downhill at Chamonix.

Getting to know…

Getting Into Sport: Learned to ski while living in Germany and his family would go to Austria every weekend to ski… He knew he would be a ski racer after watching his father compete and coach… In 1993 the family moved from Red Deer to Banff so his parents could work at the Mountain Ski Academy… He moved to Calgary in 2002 to pursue more dryland training… Outside Interests: Has played drums since he was 15 and sometimes performs after World Cup races in Europe… Bought his first drum set with money earned from his first real job bagging groceries.