DEVELOPING Latest updates on the major wildfires currently burning in Canada
Thousands of Canadians have been displaced as fires burn in Alberta, B.C. and Manitoba. Here are the latest updates.
Nick Burri clicks into his ski bindings, squats to stretch his knees and scans the snowy race course. Moments later, he's zipping past a series of gates at high speed and hurtling off jumps. But it's not gravity pulling him toward the finish line: It's the brute force of a quarter horse named Sirius.
Welcome to skijoring: An extreme — and quirky — winter sport that celebrates the unlikely melding of rodeo and ski culture in the U.S. Mountain West.
It’s a heart-pumping, white-knuckle competition in which horses — and sometimes dogs, snowmobiles and even cars — tow skiers by rope at speeds that can top 40 mph (64 km/h) over jumps as high as 8 feet (2.4 metres) and around obstacles as they try to lance suspended hoops with a baton, typically a ski pole that’s cut in half.
Every winter, thousands of people converge on the old mining town of Leadville, Colorado, high in the Rocky Mountains — elevation 10,158 feet (3,096 metres) — lining downtown’s main street and packing the saloons to witness one of the most popular skijoring races in the country. The spectacle, billed as “The Granddaddy of ’em All,” has been a tradition here since 1949.
“It’s just the pure adrenaline that gets me to do it. ... And then getting these two different groups of people together with the riders and the skiers. Usually they don’t hang out, and getting them together, we mesh pretty well," said Burri, who wears fringed leather pants with his ski gear in a nod to the sport’s Western vibe.
Skijoring draws its name from the Norwegian word skikjoring, meaning “ski driving.” It started as a practical mode of transportation in Scandinavia and became popular in the Alps around 1900.
Today's sport is inherently dangerous, and injuries are not uncommon among riders and skiers alike. Indeed, one of the first riders in the Leadville race earlier this month toppled off his horse and had to be helped off the track as he shook his head in confusion. Burri did well in the competition despite skiing with a separated shoulder from a hard spill during a race two weeks earlier.
“Wrong turn, taking a jump wrong, go down wrong. You could end your season. Then hospital bills rack up, but it’s just for the thrill of it,” said Burri, a 26-year-old from Meeker, Colorado.
Another skier, Jason Decker, pulled out of the race at the last minute because he broke his collarbone in a crash during a recent contest. He sometimes wears a protective cup, a valuable lesson learned after being hit in the groin by a flying chunk of snow flung by a horse's hoof.
“It’s not uncommon that my hands are shaking a little bit even after all this time, because that horse’s nostrils are flaring and I'm about ready to grab a rope that's attached to that saddle. And if I’m not ready to go, then things can go bad real quickly," said Decker, a 43-year-old engineer from Pagosa Springs, Colorado, who has been skiing since he was 2 and skijoring for 14 years.
Savannah McCarthy, a competitive skijorer since she was 12, describes a similar nervous energy before she mounts her horse for a race. But once she is speeding down the course, her world goes silent.
“I don't hear a thing when I'm running,” she said. “When it's happening, you really don't have time to think about anything. But when you get done, you’re like, ‘Holy cow, that was insane,’” said McCarthy, a 24-year-old financial broker from Durango, Colorado, who has won the Leadville race nine times.
One of her more memorable moments was when her horse slipped, pulled back and head-butted her, breaking her nose. Then there was the time she lost control of her horse following a race and smashed into a minivan.
Both riders and skiers say those moments — the crashes, the speed, the raucous crowd and the camaraderie — make skijoring what it is. And the sport is growing.
Loren Zhimanskova, chair of Skijor USA, which promotes the sport and helps organize races across the country, said skijoring is becoming more mainstream with the rise of social media, and she hopes it will one day be featured in the Winter Olympics. Skijoring is particularly popular in Poland and Switzerland, as well as in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana in the U.S.
Five years ago, the sport fielded about 350 teams of riders, skiers and horses in the U.S., she said. Now, about 1,000 teams are competing, and the number of races has increased from about 15 a year to more than 30. One event in Shakopee, Minnesota, consistently draws a crowd of 10,000 spectators.
Despite its growing popularity, getting the sport into the Olympics has proven challenging.
There is no official governing body, no uniform set of rules and regulations and no point system that would allow riders to advance to the Winter Games. Plus, every track is different, and every race has its own unique traditions and sometimes stubborn organizers.
Still, Zhimanskova is pushing to include skijoring as a non-competitive demonstration sport or to be included in the torch relay at the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
“I think it’s one of the most romantic and visually pleasing sports that you could see. It’s just magnificent,” she said. “Everyone loves snow ... and then you add horses to that. And then you add cowboys and cowgirls to that. And then you add skiing to that and bonfires and fun music. I mean, all the elements that go into a skijoring event, in my opinion, are really feel-good elements.”
Thousands of Canadians have been displaced as fires burn in Alberta, B.C. and Manitoba. Here are the latest updates.
Veteran TSN broadcaster Darren 'Dutch' Dutchyshen, one of Canada’s best-known sports journalists, has died. He was 57. His family says 'he passed as he was surrounded by his closest loved ones.'
A ‘lifetime of abuse’ led Dallas Ly to snap and repeatedly stab his mother inside their Leslieville apartment in 2022 but he never intended to kill her, his defence lawyers argued during at his murder trial in Toronto on Thursday.
A Montreal father who kidnapped his daughter who has autism and lied to police when they asked where she was should serve three years in prison, a Crown prosecutor said.
Loblaw Cos. Ltd. said Thursday it's ready to sign on to the grocery code of conduct, paving the way for an agreement that's been years in the making.
To give Canadians a break on their summer road trips, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to suspend all gas and diesel taxes from Victoria Day to Labour Day.
A medical examiner says a Massachusetts teen who participated in a spicy tortilla chip challenge died from ingesting a substance 'with a high capsaicin concentration.'
Ontario’s so-called ‘Crypto King’ Aiden Pleterski was soliciting new investors as recently as February – a year-and-a-half after he was petitioned into bankruptcy for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme worth more than $40 million - police alleged on Thursday.
Many Canadians found a message from the Canada Revenue Agency this week as they received their first direct deposit for the Canada Carbon Rebate.
A Starbucks fan — whose name is Winter — is visiting Canada on a purposeful journey that began with a random idea at one of the coffee chain's stores in Texas.
Members of Piapot First Nation, students from the University of Winnipeg and various other professionals are learning new techniques that will hopefully be used for ground searches of potential unmarked grave sites in the future.
ALS patient Mathew Brown said he’s hopeful for future ALS patients after news this week of research at Western University of a potential cure for ALS.
When Adam Kirschner wrote 'Slap Shot,' he never imagined the song would be embraced by his favourite team.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.