The man Canadians know as the ski cross racer who didn’t want an Olympic bronze medal wants to be a two-sport athlete for his adopted country.
Chris Del Bosco is the reigning world men’s champion in ski cross racing. The 29-year-old from Vail, Colo., will race in World Cup mountain bike events next month with an eye to qualifying for the world championships in that sport.
In the men’s ski cross final of the 2010 Olympic Games, Del Bosco was comfortably in position for a bronze medal, but gambled on a jump in an attempt to win gold and crashed.
After the Games, Canada’s top sport administrators held Del Bosco up as an example of a new attitude among the country’s athletes. They were willing to risk it all for gold.
Del Bosco is taking his all-or-nothing philosophy to mountain bike racing. He’ll race for Canada at World Cup downhill races in Mont-Ste-Anne, Que., and Windham, N.Y., in July.
“It’s the same thing I do on skis. It’s just on a bike,” Del Bosco said from Montreal this week.
“I’ve always done it and I think that’s part of the reason I’ve developed the skills I have in ski cross. I’m in a unique position where I can compete at a pretty high level in both sports.”
Del Bosco finished second in the overall ski cross World Cup standings the last two years and is looking for an edge to get to No. 1. Racing hard downhill on a mountain bike this summer he believes will help him retain a racing mindset for the ski cross season.
“You can’t train racing unless you are actually racing,” he explained. “I think I can find a way to improve my skiing if I can do this in the summer. I’m looking to have a better start to the season. Hopefully this gives me that extra little edge to get it moving on the ski side of things.”
Getting back to mountain bike racing is another step on the road of sobriety for Del Bosco. He won the U.S. downhill mountain biking championship at 22, but was stripped of his title for failing a drug test.
He battled alcohol and drug addiction and nearly died while passed out in a frigid creek in Vail seven years ago. Del Bosco served time in jail for a third impaired driving charge in 2006.
About the time he entered a treatment centre for his addiction, he made contact with the Canadian ski cross team, which was building a team for the debut of ski cross in 2010. The U.S. didn’t have a team at that point and Del Bosco has dual citizenship because his father is Canadian.
Del Bosco built his recovery around preparing to race ski cross for Canada at the Winter Olympics. He felt ready to incorporate mountain bike racing back into life last summer, but knee surgery delayed it until this year.
“I kind of got back on track in my personal life and had a lot of goals in skiing I wanted to do and biking was always part of that,” he said. “I was going to get back into the two-sport thing. This is kind of the second part of the return.”
Del Bosco is coming up on five years of sobriety in September. He’s living in Montreal with his girlfriend Michele L’Africain, a model and actress, and trains in nearby Bromont.
“It just gets better,” he says of his life. “I couldn’t have told you five years ago I would have had any of these opportunities and be where I’m at. The last few years I felt there was something missing and once I got back on the bike, that was it. It’s always been a part of me.”