GANGNEUNG, South Korea — Alex Harvey had minutes ago finished the most treacherous test on cross-country skis, and he stopped walking at the end of a row in the stands that overlooked the track he’d just conquered in the last Olympic race of his career. Harvey removed his backpack and then he doubled over, bent at the waist, face near his knees, and he cried.
When he straightened up on this foggy Saturday afternoon, Harvey pulled red-rimmed sunglasses over his eyes and his strained face and he kept walking on the legs that had just carried him 50 kilometres on snow.
Fourth. His best race ever at the Olympics and his last race ever at the Olympics and Alex Harvey was fourth. He’d crossed the finish line 6.1 seconds after the bronze medal-winner did, clocking 2 hours and 11 minutes and a bit of change.
Later, when his legs somehow brought him up to the top level of the stands for interviews, Harvey paused to consider whether it mattered that two Russian skiers had come second and third.
He paused, even though he knew the answer. “Yes and no,” the 29-year-old said. “Two Ru … yeah. That’s the hard part. But you want to believe in the new generation of Russians, so you’ve got to give them the benefit of the doubt, for sure.
“But it’s one of the reasons why it’s so hard to be fourth, with two Russians ahead of me, I’m not going to lie. But I do believe that these younger guys are doing it clean, but with everything we’ve seen, I mean, even here, we’ve seen some doping cases here, so. But I do believe they’re clean, but in the back of my mind, of course, there’s a bit of a doubt.”
But. Doubt. Of course.
Already, the team stripped of its flag and colours and right to call itself Russia at the Olympics has had two athletes test positive for doping. This, after a state-sponsored doping program unlike any in history was exposed, some Russian athletes banned, others banned and then re-instated and competing here.
The silver and bronze medallists in this 50-km mass start classic, OAR’s Alexander Bolshunov and Andrey Larkov, may well be clean. But what a shame that the thought that maybe they aren’t is tainting the last Olympic race for one of the best skiers in the world. What a shame that Harvey has to have that doubt.
There’s nothing the Quebec-born skier would have done differently had he raced this 50-km again, his last and best finish at his third Olympics, his third top 10 in Pyeongchang. “I feel good,” Harvey said. “It’s all I had today and there’s no regret, but fourth is kind of hard to accept.”
And so an Olympic medal will remain the only piece of hardware the reigning 50-km world champion never won, but count his fourth place at Alpensia Cross-Country Centre as meaningful and as impressive as many podium finishes. It was a gutsy, painful fourth place in the toughest race in his sport. It’s the best a Canadian man has ever fared in cross-country skiing on this stage.
Harvey was in this from the start, seventh through 12.5 km, up to sixth through 30.7 km, in fifth through 40 km. The pack broke earlier than it usually does, led by eventual gold medallist Livo Niskanen of Finland. Harvey was always in the hunt for bronze, at worse little more than two minutes back. Even then, he said a shot at the podium was never in doubt.
“Oh yeah, we knew at one point, going with Niskanen is such a hard pace, we knew that some of these guys would pay the price later on,” he said. “We still believed.”
Coach Louis Bouchard was in Harvey’s ear, updating him on timing throughout the race, his distance from the lead, from that podium, as he began to close in on the third-place position held by Kazakhstan’s Alexey Poltoranin.
Harvey hurt all over, had cramps in his stomach, his calves, his triceps. He told himself to maintain his technique, to keep one foot in front of the other, to stay relaxed. He focused on the movement of skis in front of him.
“I knew Poltoranin was not feeling great at that time,” Bouchard explained. “We know the podium is there, it’s possible.”
Harvey and a small pack of skiers did catch Poltoranin, and overtook him. Then it was Harvey and three others in a fight for bronze, with just a couple of kilometres to go. Larkov eventually broke out and he crossed the line comfortably in third, leaving Harvey and Norway’s Martin Johnsrud Sundby in a race for fourth. Harvey dug and he somehow found power in those legs, he pumped his arms and he stuck out a ski to edge Sundby by a hundredth of a second before he fell to the snow, gassed.
There’s beauty in this, even at the end of a 50-km race, Harvey swears. “I mean, the beauty of really leaving everything out there, leaving every ounce of energy your body has on the track, in itself, that’s something pretty nice,” he said. “It might not be beauty for everybody, but for us, it is.”
Harvey has more races in him, even one next week, and he has plans to ski well into next year. This Olympic finale, though, leads to reflection of a 13-year career with the national team.
“I think we were able to — my teammates Devon [Kershaw], Ivan [Babikov], George [Grey] — we were able to raise the bar for men’s cross-country skiing in Canada, and I think just the fact to have expectations set for ourselves, to have realistic expectations of believing in a podium, that’s something that was never really done before,” he said. “I think that’s good for the future generation to believe that it’s possible to fight for the top 10, top five, week in, week out on the World Cup, world championship, at the Olympics. So that’s something that I’m really proud of.”
As bad as this fourth place stings, he’s proud, too, of all the wins and podiums he achieved in the races many weren’t watching. The field where he won his world championship at this distance last year, he says, is “all the same guys.”
“I know it has the same value,” he said, of those other podium finishes, “but I understand fully that in North America, that’s not the case, the Olympics are so special. But that’s why I’m extremely proud of the other races I’ve done in the past.”
Bouchard believes he’ll be extremely proud of this fourth-place finish in the future, too.
“He’s been one of the best cross-country skiers in the world for sure,” the coach said. “It’s sad, one more success at the top, but at the end you finish fourth, you’re one of the best athletes in the world, it’s been 10 years. I think he will be really happy with this.”
Really happy with fourth? Perhaps not, but he’ll try to come to terms with it. “I’ll just have to accept it eventually,” Harvey said.
Was there anything he could have done differently on Saturday, anything to make up a little over six seconds, to get on that podium?
“No,” Bouchard said, shaking his head. “It was perfect. You cannot control the other players, you control yourself.
“It was the best.”
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