Finding the remedy: Bryon Friedman’s story

SUMMIT COUNTY — He still grimaces when describing it.

It was in January of 2005, and Bryon Friedman was carving out a training run at a World Cup race in Chamonix, France.

“I was coming into a big turn and there was a small roll before it,” he said, before pausing a moment as it all flashed back to him. “Then I was in the air.”

Friedman, his momentum carrying him toward a left turn, landed on his right leg, facing the wrong way. His shin snapped on impact, and he was sent cartwheeling 65 MPH into a fence, his right ski never coming off.

He laid there, mangled in a mess of orange mesh, wondering if his career would be over. Hours later, he’d be more worried about keeping his leg.

“I wish there was a remedy I could get my hands on.” — Bryon Friedman, “Remedy,” Matchstick Memories, 2008.

Nine surgeries and multiple rods, pins and plates later, Friedman started to walk again.

But the injury left scars deeper than those that wrapped his right calf.

Being only 24 at the time, Friedman figured he’d lost a chance at getting to the pinnacle of his sport, not to mention the 2005 World Championships and the 2006 Olympics.

“I really pushed myself when I was younger; I was very uptight and serious about the sport,” Friedman said. “That’s before I kind of realized that there are other things beyond the sport.”

The physical and mental trauma that such a brutal injury caused Friedman left him grasping for balance, needing an outlet for his emotions.

So he turned to something that had always been nothing more than a hobby: music.

Nearly four years later, Friedman is on the verge of releasing his second full album, Matchstick Memories, and has played numerous shows around the U.S., including one last night at the Riverwalk Center in Breckenridge.

But even more incredible is that Friedman, after training the past few weeks in Summit County, is going to Lake Louise, Alberta next week to attempt to make his first World Cup downhill start since his accident.

“Let your dreams breathe a little. These are the moments that we grow.” — “Remedy,” Matchstick Memories, 2008.

Born in Atlanta, Friedman’s father taught him to ski at age 3, but it wasn’t until his family moved to Park City, Utah that the sport grabbed him.

He first started racing when he was 10.

“If you don’t ski, you don’t do much in the winter,” Fieldman joked of Park City. “I just loved to race, ski powder and goof around with my buddies on the mountain. That’s how it started.”

His career blossomed from there.

He won a slew of national junior competitions and was named to the U.S. Ski Team prior to the 2001-02 season while in school at Dartmouth College.

It was in his freshman year at Dartmouth that Friedman found his love for the acoustic guitar. Having taught himself in high school on an electric, Friedman was “blown away” by his roommate, Gordy Quist, and his mastery of a jumbo-body Guild.

“My eyes were just wide after he started playing that thing,” Friedman said. “Literally, that fall, I went out and bought an acoustic and learned off (Quist).”

Though he “wrote a bit” of music at the time, Friedman’s guitar served more as a traveling companion to him, helping him unwind before and after races, while he climbed the rankings in his sport.

As a rookie in 2003-04, Friedman earned two top-20 finishes in World Cup races. The following year, he started the season on a torrid pace, finishing seventh in back-to-back starts.

Then, in an instant, everything changed when he, and his career, went up in the air in Chamonix.

“The voices in my brain, telling me it’ll be OK.” — “Remedy,” Matchstick Memories, 2008.

After his wreck, Friedman went back to Utah and tried to piece together both his leg and his dream of becoming a top skier.

That’s when he grabbed his guitar and a pen.

“To have that outlet of music really helps with just being really bummed out for a while,” he said. “ ... I had all this time on my hands and all these crazy emotions to write about, and out it came, I guess.”

Friedman started filling notebooks with hooks and melodies while his leg slowly healed.

Then, in 2006, some of Friedman’s friends talked him into the studio, where in three days, he recorded his first album, Road Sodas.

His “easy-going” rhythms and Johnny-Cash-style story telling helped his album get radio play in Colorado, Utah and Idaho, not to mention some descent gigs here and there.

Around that time, Friedman’s leg had regained enough strength to get back on the hill.

And last winter, Friedman competed in some NorAm and Europa Cup events.

With his music career budding and some breath being blown back into his downhill career, Friedman is now eager to get back to where he was, in terms of skiing, before 2005.

“It all just melts away when we sing.” — “Remedy,” Matchstick Memories, 2008.

“I’m finally there,” Friedman said of his strength on the slopes while in Frisco, this week.

Though he doesn’t have guaranteed spots in any of this season’s World Cup races — he’ll attempt to qualify, each week, through the training sessions — and has to pay his own way, Friedman has come full circle.

“Up until that point, I was one of the best downhillers in the world when I broke my leg,” he said. “Now, I’m just lucky to have my leg.”

Friedman won’t go as far as to say his injury was a blessing in disguise, but he said he realizes that it’s helped him to gain some perspective on his career and life.

So, whether Friedman can regain his form on the slopes remains to be seen. Either way, he’s definitely learned through the last few years to take things as they come.

“Music is kind of like skiing: In the way you can’t force a turn, you can’t force a song,” he said. “You have to let the momentum take you, and you have to do the best with what you have.”

Bryce Evans can be reached at (970) 668-4634 or at bevans@summitdaily.com.