While Viviane Forest and Lindsay Debou were taking care of business, they also found the time to take care of others.

Forest, the visually impaired alpine skiing star from Edmonton, became one of the key Canadian faces of the 2010 Paralympics by achieving her goal of winning medals in all five of her events with guide Lindsay Debou of Whistler.

Forest, who has four per cent vision, was struggling with a painful pulled groin muscle throughout her gritty Paralympic performance on the Whistler Creekside slopes. She and Debou had to dig deep during their difficult, weather-altered schedule of five races in seven days to keep their energy up and the podium in sight.

By Saturday (March 20), when they scooped up their last set of silver medals in the super combined races that marked the final alpine skiing events of the 2010 Games, Forest and Debou both looked utterly spent.

“I’m pretty exhausted,” Forest said after speeding through the super G and slalom runs required for the inaugural Paralympic super combined race. “We dug deep, we did our very good super G this morning, I gave it all, and I tried very hard in slalom. I never felt like we gave up at all. I’m so pleased.”

After starting strong by winning a silver medal in the slalom race on Sunday, March 14, and capturing a bronze medal two days later in a difficult giant slalom race, the determined duo struck gold in the women’s downhill on Thursday (March 18), making good on the other part of Forest’s promise to Canada that she would win at least one gold medal.

They closed the competition by winning back-to-back silver medals in the super G and super combined races on Friday and Saturday (March 19 and 20), respectively.

Throughout the Games, the determined duo also demonstrated their capacity for caring and sharing their positive energy. When fog forced the delay of the downhill races originally scheduled to open the 2010 Paralympic alpine events on Saturday, March 13, Forest and Debou kept their spirits up by singing and dancing in the start gate while waiting to see if they would race that day.

“We stay positive, and we like to make sure everyone (around us) is positive,” Debou said that afternoon, sounding cheerful even after the pair’s three-hour wait in the start gate.

And when the duo did open their string of five podium performances by winning silver medals in the slalom, Forest made sure to share the magic with their roommate, three-time Paralympian Karolina Wisniewska, who was set to run her first 2010 race the next day.

Wisniewska, the Vancouver standing skier who came out of retirement to race in the 2010 Games, got up on the morning of her own slalom event to find Forest’s first silver medal sitting out in their shared living room.

“She’d left it out for me with a note, and then that day I got the bronze in slalom. And that was the beginning of my day, to come out into the living room and see Viviane’s medal sitting there, so beautiful, and this note: ‘It’s your day today, Karo.’ And it happened, which is just crazy,” Wisniewska said on Saturday (March 20), after ending her own stirring Paralympic performance by winning a second bronze medal in the women’s standing super combined event.

Debou, a former Whistler Mountain Ski Club racer, also supported the injured Forest throughout the week, picking lines through the course that would best suit the gritty but hurting competitor and leading and encouraging Forest through their runs.

In Friday’s (March 19) super G races, Forest and Debou earned their second silver medal despite taking a slightly more cautious approach to help keep the aching Forest in one piece, in order to preserve the possibility of her five-medal dream. In the super G, Forest said Debou “did help me all the way down the course. I told her I was quite fatigued, so she totally did respect that and we made it down safely…

“I was totally running out of gas. I kind of apologized all of my way down, (saying), ‘I’m so sorry,’ She’s like, ‘No, you’re good.’”

Though Forest can essentially see only the dot that is Debou when she’s charging down a race course, the duo still reaches speeds upwards of 100 kilometres per hour.

Already a two-time Paralympic gold medallist from summer Games with the Canadian goalball team, Forest said she hopes the 2010 Paralympics showed Canadians the elite calibre and achievements of the athletes who compete in these Games.

Asked what impact she thinks the multi-medal-winning performances by the likes of her and Lauren Woolstencroft could have for adaptive ski racing and Canadians across the country, Forest also said simply, “I hope they’re proud of us.”

Forest encouraged Canadians with any kind of disability to consider getting out there and trying some of the sports. If they like it, she said, they could be surprised at how they will progress through the ranks.

After giving up her goalball career because of a series of concussions, the fearless Forest went from a rookie racer who showed up with snowblades for a test run with an Alberta race program, to a Paralympic and world champion just a few years later.

“I’m so pleased that I accomplished my goal and my dream came true, so I’m very, very pleased and happy,” Forest said.

For complete coverage of the 2010 Paralympic alpine races, click into the Whistler 2010 section at www.whistlerquestion.com.