The Fifth Estate

Downhill Racer (33x2)

Air date: Nov 07, 2007

In the 2008 episode ‘Downhill Racer’, the fifth estate’s Bob McKeown spent time with Dave Irwin, a downhill skier once renowned for his daredevil style, who was struggling to recover from a crash that left him with a serious brain injury. At the height of his racing career in the 1970s and 80s, Irwin was one of the ‘Crazy Canucks’, an elite group of racers who took on a sport long dominated by Europeans, and became among the fastest in the world. Irwin competed in the Olympics twice, and in 1975 he won a World Cup race, beating out the favourite, Franz Klammer, on his home mountain in Schladming, Austria. But Irwin’s success came at a cost - he suffered two severe concussions on the World Cup racing circuit, first in 1976 then in 1980 just before the Lake Placid Olympics. At the time, the long-term and cumulative effect of those concussions on his brain was not understood. Then in March 2001, during a training run for a skier-cross event outside Banff, Alberta, he fell again - and this time, it changed his life forever. His knee drove into his forehead, compounding his previous concussions and putting him in a coma. After three days, he woke up, but his memory was destroyed. He did not remember his children, his family, his friend or his fiancee, Lynne Harrison, who he’d met just ten months before his accident. In the years before the fifth estate’s story about Irwin, Harrison had been his constant companion, therapist, and friend, slowly helping him make the comeback of his life. Now, almost 13 years after that last fall, Irwin continues his recovery in his home in Canmore, Alberta. Harrison says she still notices progress in his short-term memory and mood. Now, when he returns from daily visits to a local coffee shop, she says he can remember more details about who he met there, and what they talked about. “Hurting your brain affects your whole life and the lives of everyone around you,” Irwin said. “Doesn’t matter if