A high-speed crash while training on the brand-new cross-country course in Sochi, Russia, left Canadian Alex Harvey in a pretty bad position Wednesday. In fact, it looked really bad at first, Canada’s LaPresse reported Thursday.
Unable to move his shoulder, Harvey feared the worst — a tear or fracture.
After initial examination by a US Ski Team doctor and a follow up at a local hospital, it turns out that the 24-year-old national-team member should be OK after the dislocation. He’ll miss the Sochi World Cup races Friday through Sunday, and will need at least four or five days of rest, according to Canadian assistant coach Louis Bouchard, who was in Quebec on Wednesday.
With three weeks until the World Championships kick off in Val di Fiemme, Italy, he said Harvey should be recovered by then.
“It’s much less bad than I expected,” Bouchard said, according to a translation. “It was a bad fall down, fairly full-bodied. There was the soft snow. It’s a little bad luck. … Unless a nasty surprise, I think it will be correct and will have time to recover from it all.”
Harvey reportedly sent the radiographs and MRI results from the Russian hospital to his mother, Mireille Belzile, who’s also a doctor. A specialist might also be consulted to look over the images, Bouchard said.
Bouchard will meet up with Harvey and the rest of the Canadian World Cup team on Sunday in Zurich, Germany. From there, they’ll head to Livigno, Italy, for altitude training.
“Alex should start to ski without poles and gradually start to put pressure [on in] ten days,” Bouchard said.
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Alex Kochon
Alex Kochon (alex@fasterskier.com) is the former managing editor at FasterSkier. She spent seven years with FS from 2011-2018, and has been writing, editing, and skiing ever since. She's making a cameo in 2020.
