Michael Tutton

The little boy who once chased his Olympian father on cross-country skis has grown up, and this winter their roles on the trails are reversed.

Alex Harvey, a 21-year-old rising star of the national team, will be followed at the Winter Games by his 52-year-old father Pierre Harvey, who competed in both the Winter and Summer Games as a cyclist and cross-country skier - and will be in Vancouver as a television commentator.

Pierre Harvey says he's moved to tears sometimes when he observes the end of his son's races, knowing the physical pain he feels at a loss or the joy that comes with a podium finish.

The young man stands tall, his lanky, six-foot frame stretched upwards as he stretches every centimetre of possible glide out of the skis - even when his heart pounds at 180 times per minute during an uphill in a 50-kilometre race.

"I feel very emotional sometimes when I watch him," Pierre says in an interview from the family's home in St-Ferreol-les-Neiges.

"When I was in Vancouver at a World Cup last January (2009) and he was doing the sprint at the finish. I couldn't believe what I saw. I was crying almost. I ran out of the commentator's box to see him and jump in his arms."

Alex claimed a World Cup bronze in the team pursuit on that day, one of two podium finishes that caused World Cup veterans to start taking notice.

The young skier has just returned to St-Ferreol-les-Neiges, where his family lives, after completing his second season on the World Cup circuit in Europe.

So far this year, he hasn't returned to the podium but he's demonstrated impressive improvement.

Harvey began the pre-Christmas season with World Cup finishes in the middle of the 100-skier field, but progressed to the point where he had a ninth place finish in a 10-kilometre classic race in the Tour de Ski series of races in January.

Now he's looking forward to the gradual inclines and slopes of the Callaghan Valley course in Whistler, B.C., which are well suited to his flowing style.

"I know I can ski that kind of course," he says. "You have to ski long and powerfully. You have to ski a long stride. That's how I am naturally."

Harvey has previously seen his best results in March, so this year he has pushed his body earlier in the season, racing in the eight consecutive races in the Tour de Ski in January.

"The results I have in the top 10 and top 15, shows the same kind of conditioning I had two weeks before I won a medal in Trondheim, Norway last year," says Alex.

Pierre reads the blogs and web reports by the team and offers advice during the long months Harvey spends in hotel rooms across Europe.

The older Harvey was Canada's first male World Cup winner in cross-country skiing, taking three victories - including a gruelling 50-kilometre event in Oslo - in the months following the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary.

After those victories, Pierre learned that his wife Mireille Belzile, who was also a team doctor, was pregnant, and he decided to retire from the circuit to participate in raising his son.

"It was perfect," he says. "I never regret that. I went as far as I could, as long as I could. At the end of 1988 I decided it was time to do something else with my life."

The couple carried Alex over the trails in a kangaroo pack, and then towed him in a baby-glider sled as they continued skiing every day in the winters.

By the age of three, the little boy was demanding to be released and allowed to ski alongside his father and mother.

As his physical skills became evident, they enrolled him in a school for cross-country ski racers based at Mont St. Anne.

"He was a bit hyper, but sport saved him," says Pierre. "When snow came in December he could spend all of his energy in the right spot and he never had problems any longer. He became a top student and top athlete."

The father admits he was surprised when Alex decided to continue skiing in his later teens, expecting he would rebel against his parents' lifestyle.

Instead, the young man became an international junior skier, repeatedly achieving podium finishes. Meanwhile, he started studying law at Laval University.

He's also coped with adversity, having surgery in March 2008 to improve blood flow to his legs, and then rebuilding his strength after the operation.

Pierre cautions it's important for Canadians to recall that the chances of a medal are still "really small" for his son, who is still considered a newcomer in a World Cup circuit where athletes race into their mid-30s.

In addition, it's a sport where all factors - perfectly waxed skis, a peak in energy, a well-timed sprint, a course suited to the skiers skis - all need to coincide for a victory.

Whatever the result, Pierre Harvey will be watching and he will know all too well the precise emotions of the exhausted racer, both positive and negative.

"I know how hard you can push," he says. "If the result is good, it's unbelievable. And if the result is bad, I feel the pain that he feels."

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