12 Days of Triumph: Frédérique Turgeon pays homage to her father with brilliant season

For this holiday season, we will be celebrating some of our favourite sport memories from throughout the year. Canada’s Para athletes achieved a lot in 2019, and we will be remembering one performance each day for 12 days.

On December 17, 2018, Frédérique Turgeon returned home for the holidays from a training camp in Europe.

She was picked up by her father Ronald at the airport. The family, including Frédérique’s mother Sonia and older sister Raphaelle enjoyed a reunion dinner at their home in Candiac, Que.

That evening, a by-all-accounts fit Ronald shockingly died of a heart attack. Less than a month later, in early January 2019, Frédérique earned her first two victories on the Para alpine skiing circuit in Zagreb, Croatia.

‘’My father and I were connected by skiing,’’ Frédérique said about her father who was also a coach, mentor and cheerleader for her. ‘’It was a common passion. He followed my races online even those at 3 a.m.

‘’I raced in his honour.’’

What followed was simply a super season for the 20-year-old Turgeon, who was born with her right leg 50 percent short than the other.

She earned her first Crystal Globe as the overall slalom points leader in the ladies’ standing category at the Para alpine skiing World Cup Final on March 21. She ended the 2018-19 season with four World Cup slalom podium performances (two gold, two silver), and two fourth-place finishes to lead the field.

She was also third in the overall standings.

Two months earlier at the 2019 World Para Alpine Skiing Championships she won the silver in the slalom and captured bronze in both the super-G and the super combined.

‘’I wasn’t expecting it at all, so I’m really happy with how everything turned out,’’ she said about 2019, in which she showed she could brilliantly negotiate emotional and competitive slopes.