Murray follows father's Olympic ski tracks

When Julia Murray was in the fifth grade, she sketched her dreams on a brown paper bag.

"My Olympic dream is … to be a downhill skier because my dad was one and my mom was a freestyle skier," Murray printed, with a colourful selection of pencil crayons, on her class assignment. "I think I have the genes in me. I would also like to travel."

On Monday, Julia's dream came true.

Now 21 years old, the Whistler, B.C., native was officially named to Canada's first-ever Olympic skicross team. She finished fourth in overall World Cup standings this season — her Canadian teammates Ashleigh McIvor and Kelsey Serwa finished second and third respectively.

Perhaps it was fate, or maybe just her genes, but Murray's journey to the Vancouver Olympics does seem predestined.

Julia's mother is Stephanie Sloan, a three-time world champion freestyle skier.

Her father, Dave Murray, was also a Canadian skiing legend. He was a member of the Crazy Canucks, a group of downhill racers known for their fearless speed who put Canada on the alpine map in the late '70s and early '80s.

Dave earned 107 top-10 World Cup finishes in his career, and was a member of the 1980 Olympic team in Lake Placid.

Julia was born in 1988. Her father died two years later, after a battle with skin cancer, at 37.

That same year Julia was clomping around in a ski boots, and her mother was running beside her as she wobbled down the Whistler hills.

"She loved it!" Sloan remembers, laughing.

Julia rose through the ranks as a young skier, following the tracks laid by her parents. As a teenager she was an alpine racer, competing on Whistler's Dave Murray Downhill, the world class course named after her father.

In 2008 she switched to a growing sport called skicross — a four-person race down a freestyle course, which is often described as roller-derby on snow. (Julia says new fans can expect both "carnage" and "excitement" when tuning in next month).

The sport is a hybrid of alpine and freestyle skiing, combining aspects of downhill racing, moguls and jumping.

"It's interesting, because I guess she's using both of our genes," Sloan says of her daughter's combination of mom and dad's skiing disciplines.

Julia says she's inherited her father's laid-back outlook on life — he always carried a guitar and was nicknamed the Maharishi Yogi Mer.

"So he was a very 'ommm' kind of dude," Julia laughs, making a chanting sound.

"[Julia] loves what she's doing, and she's very thankful. She doesn't take it for granted," says Sloan.

When Julia outlined her Olympic dream on that fifth-grade assignment, she also drew a picture of a skier (in pink and red stripes) drifting down the page toward a gate marked with the Olympic rings.

Three words are written across the top, next to the sun: "Can you imagine?"

"It's pretty unbelievable," Julia says of realizing her dream, in the shadow of her father's legacy. "I think he'd be extremely proud of me."