At 17 years old, Graeme Eder’s sporting aspirations are already going downhill.
Which is just the way he likes it.
The senior at Port Coquitlam’s Riverside Secondary School is on his way to Wittenberg, Germany — between Hamburg and Berlin — where he'll train at an indoor ski resort with the B.C. men’s alpine ski team ahead of a busy winter of competitions in British Columbia, Alberta and the United States.
In September, Eder was with the team in Chile where they were able to strap on their skis for pre-season preparation at the El Colorado ski resort, 36 km from Santiago.
That followed a month of dry-land training in Whistler in July.
It’s a busy time for the Coquitlam resident who first glided down a slope when he was two years old.
But it’s also a critical step toward his goal of someday representing Canada on the World Cup circuit and at the Winter Olympics.
Eder’s ascent from successful club and junior racer to the developmental program that produces BC Alpine’s elite men’s skiers has been a bit of an eye-opener to the work that’s still ahead of him.
“It requires a whole different work ethic,” Eder said while spending a few days relaxing and catching up his schoolwork online before jetting off to Europe.
That commitment starts early in the morning when Eder gets a start on his school assignments before heading off to the gym to work on his strength and conditioning.
There’s time for more schoolwork before dinner, but afterward it’s early to bed so he can do it all again the next day.
Eder said he’s also working to improve his diet and eating habits.
“It’s almost 24/7,” he said. “I’m either doing schoolwork or preparing for skiing.”
Not that such a routine is totally unfamiliar.
As part of a family of avid skiers, Eder’s mom, Lauren, said Graeme had little choice but to come along on outings to the North Shore mountains and Whistler as soon as he could walk. They enrolled him in lessons, so he could have the skills to find his way down any slope on his own and, by three, he was already carving his way through gated courses.
But the northeastern corner of Coquitlam where the family lives isn’t exactly handy to ski hills, so as Eder became more involved with the Mount Seymour Ski Club and then the Grouse Mountain Tyee Ski Club, getting to training and competitions meant long car rides right after school and almost every weekend through the winter season.
Doing homework and eating dinner from a thermos in the back seat of the family vehicle became commonplace for Eder, as were snoozes on the way home in time for bed at 10 p.m.
Annie’s macaroni and cheese fortified with peas and sliced ham were the fuel for winning races as a U12 racer like the Dual “Glalom” and “Kombi” events at the Nancy Greene Ski Festival at Sun Peaks, and the slalom at the Tyee Cup at Grouse.
As a ranked FIS U19 racer, Eder finished first in the slalom at the BC Cup on Grouse last year and third in the Super G at the Alberta GMC Cup at Lake Louise.
Eder said being able to train and learn alongside veteran members of the BC Ski Team, like Tait Jordan, Heming Sola and Dylan Timm, will be invaluable to his own continued development as a competitive racer, where the difference between a podium and the bottom of the pack can be measured in tenths of a second.
It’s all about finding efficiencies in movement and carving through turns the fastest way possible, much like a race car navigating a track.
That’s not a bad way to describe his sport, agreed Eder, who recently launched a fundraising campaign to help offset some of the costs of equipment and training that haven’t already been covered by sponsors like sporting goods retailer Sporting Life and home renovation company Hiar Homes.
