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Erik who, Tremblant where?
It was January 2003. I was in secondary school at that time when the World Cup events at Wengen/Switzerland took place, and my mom told me about Stephan Eberharter winning, home hero Bruno Kernen being on podium and a young Canadian called Erik Guay with good split times crashing when I got home. My parents (and I) have traveled to the USA and Canada for holidays at least 20 times so my mom is obsessed with geography of the two countries, and whenever she hears about a town or village she's never heard of, she runs to the globe to find out where it is. For some reasons, she wanted to know where that young Canadian that crashed at Wengen came from so we went to find it out. We had spent our family holidays the summer before in Quebec and had also stepped by at Mont Tremblant, where we experienced a wonderful flight over the lake at sunset that would make us remember the place.

St.Moritz, a raising star
Two weeks later, my parents and me drove down to St.Moritz for the openining ceremony and the men's Super-G of the 2003 World Championships. As the race was already decided, Eberharter won and Maier & Miller tied for second; the speaker announced bib 32 who's name sounded familiar to my mom and me: Erik Guay. He placed 6th. At the winner ceremony, he was standing next to my childhood hero Kjetil Andre Aamodt who got 5th, which made it impossible to just forget about him again. As Erik won the 2nd Downhill training the week after that and repeated the 6th-place-finish in that event, he had captured my interest already.

Bored in summer: the start of the website
The following summer, I was at home studiyng for the final exams at secondary school for a whole month. Looking for some distraction, I spent some time in the internet, just looking at different sites, stumbling over the idea of a so-called "fanlisting". Why not do such a fanlisting for Erik, I thought to myself. As he was named senior athlete of the year in Canada's national ski team, I figured I should also have a news section on my little site, making me notice that results, standings and pictures could also be added... a little fansite developped. Almost out of nowhere, and one day after my 19th birthday, Erik finished 2nd at the Lake Louise Downhill on November 29, 2003.

Bode Miller's part
In the same summer/autumn of 2003, I had joined a Bode Miller forum and applied to an offer to help doing the news on the fan website that forum belonged to, bodelicious.net. Back then, I didn't know that the webmaster of that website, Maja, would become a close friend in the following years.
After Erik's success at Lake Louise, my site got attention, especially in Canada. Maja offered me to host the website, which was at some free, unstable server back then, design a good-looking layout (be thankful in case you never saw the one I had made!) and do the ground coding. Which I accepted, of course!

ErikGuay.Com
The new website went online one day before Erik crashed at Val Gardena, injured his knee and put an early end to his season.
In February, out of nowhere, Maja wanted to know what day my birthday was - as she later told me, because she thought she found the perfect present and figured that her idea was too good to wait 9 months. I do remember her email word by word: "Why don't you visit http://www.erikguay.com and tell me what you see? ;-)"

Live support
Since the World Cups at Wengen in 2005, I've had the chance to finally support Erik and the rest of the team in person by attending some races myself (which is bad for my nerves and voice...) and got to talk to Erik a couple of times. I always enjoy it, and to get recognized by other fans or even team members letting me know my support is apprechiated is always a cool recognition and gives back a lot.
No need to mention Garmisch in 2007 was my favourite event to visit... I had never dared to think I could be there when Erik wins his first World Cup race! An incredibly cool race to witness and it goes without saying I enjoyed the weekend to the fullest.
Until we meet again... see you next season!