Manny Osborne-Paradis has been a mainstay of Canada's Downhill and Super G teams since way back in 2005. For an Alpine skier, that's an eternity. So it's kind of amazing to see how hungry Manny still is, 14 years later. Having a no-compromise drive to win at 35 years old is even more rare when we also consider that Manny is also a full year into recovery from an injury that almost cost him his left leg.

A blunt assessment would be: he's old and he's banged up. But you still won't find anyone betting against a podium for the irrepressible Osborne-Paradis on any given day. There's a silver lining in all that rehab too, which is that instead of a year in competition, with all the nagging bumps, scrapes, tweaks and wear & tear on a skier's body, Osborne-Paradis has actually had twelve long months of rest and recovery. Athletes hate to admit it, but there's nothing quite like rest on the road to hitting new performance highs.