Ottawa skier Dustin Cook is back home in the Capital, after wrapping up what you could call a dream season.
The 26-year-old won his first super-G race earlier this week at the World Cup finals in Meribel, France.
The top 25 skiers in each discipline qualified for the finals.
Cook says his new-found success is still sinking in.
“I thought about it a little bit on the plane, and I've seen the video a few times of the race, and it's still pretty crazy, for sure,” he said back at his family home in the Westboro neighbourhood.
Cook won a surprise silver in super-G at the world championship in February. He also won bronze in another World Cup event two weeks ago.
His successful season comes after Cook was thinking of retiring from competitive skiing last summer.
“It was still fun, I still loved it, but I was like, ‘can I keep doing this, or should I kind of try to move on and maybe do something else, maybe get a real job,” he said.
A friend convinced him to keep going.
“It took me a lot longer to get to this point than I wanted,” he said. “If you believe in yourself, you can do it, as cliché as that sounds, that's literally what just happened to me.”
He finishes the season ranked fifth overall in the world in super-G.
Cook will compete in the National championships later this week at Mont Sainte-Anne, Quebec.
He’ll take a small break before resuming training later this spring, but doesn’t plan on slowing down. He’s even setting his sights on the Olympics.
“For sure I have my eye on that, but it's in the future, and I have a whole lot to do between now and then.”
