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Canadian freestylers doing more with less

Funding cuts hit national team skiers in the pocketbook The Canadian Freestyle Ski team seems unstoppable recently, with athletes winning 10 World Cup medals over the past two weekends.

Funding cuts hit national team skiers in the pocketbook

The Canadian Freestyle Ski team seems unstoppable recently, with athletes winning 10 World Cup medals over the past two weekends.

The younger athletes - from rookies still in their teens to skiers in their early 20s with only a few years on the team - are playing a key role in the team's success this year, showing the strength of the Canadian program.

Still, success always comes with a price and many of the athletes in the national high performance program are upset that they are the ones who are paying that price, often out of their own pockets.

At a Jan. 9 press conference before the World Cup events at Mont Tremblant, several athletes on the team questioned the spending priorities of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association, which they say left them high and dry this year.

Money committed to training and competition costs was cut this year, forcing many athletes to turn to their parents and sponsors, and to dig into their own savings to compete.

"We know that our association has money. But they seem to have trouble handling it properly," said 18-year-old mogul maverick Stephanie St-Pierre, who has won gold and bronze medals in the last two weeks.

Some of the athletes accused the CFSA of keeping its books closed, while backing down on financial commitments it made to athletes. They also suggested that CFSA CEO Pat Smith was avoiding a confrontation with the athletes on the funding issue.

Replying to the charges, the CFSA denies any financial mismanagement, and says that as a non-profit group their books are open to the public. According to CFSA spokeswoman Mary Fraser, the association lost a significant portion of its funding for the season, and directed what remained towards the priorities that the athletes themselves approved of before the budget crunch.

The athletes were kept informed of these funding developments, said Fraser, and the association is hoping that shortfalls are a temporary measure.

"The plan all along was to meet with the athletes, and we had a meeting in place. Actions had already been taken prior to the recent events at the press conference," said Fraser. "We weren't hiding anything.

"The association is well aware of the situation, and that our athletes are not happy with the current funding situation.

"We don't disagree that it's been very difficult for our athletes who have training schedules and programs to pay for. They were told in July that the money isn't coming, and it's been a real hit for them. It's been difficult all around," Fraser said.

The CFSA lost a significant amount of money as the result of funding changes from three major sources, according to CEO Pat Smith.

Wordmark Canada, a national branding program that funds events and initiatives across the country on behalf of the federal government, was suspended by Prime Minister Paul Martin when he came to power in December. The program is currently being reviewed.

The Canadian Olympic Committee also reduced funding for freestyle this year.

"The COC is in transition right now," said Smith. "They will come to their quadrennial (four-year spending cycle) in 2005, and used the last funding to reposition the organization."

According to Smith, the COC has seen its own funding reduced, and is changing the criteria by which they distribute funding to sport organizations and athletes. In the past, the COC would fund athletes and sports based on performance and results. After 2005, their funding will look more at the future, reviewing sport programs and benchmarking them according to their potential in upcoming Olympics and World Championships.

"I don't know if (funding) will ever be restored to previous levels," said Smith. "Everybody's hurting, CODA's hurting, these institutions are not what the used to be.

"That said the team has been doing incredibly well recently, and I think we'll see some of that funding return."

The Canadian Olympic Development Agency channeled some of the money intended for the organization into summer training projects, including the initiative to develop the Farnham Glacier in B.C.'s Interior for Canada's winter athletes. CODA has also lost funding recently, and has had to cut back on its contributions to sports organizations.

Compounding the CFSA's woes is the fact that the association is itself at the end of a quadrennial.

"This is always our lowest (funding) year in the quadrennial, typically two years after an Olympics. Sponsorship and contributions are at their highest during an Olympic year or the year after," explained Smith.

The CFSA has an annual budget of $3 million, of which $1 million is sponsorship money for events.

That leaves about $2 million for programming. According to Smith the CFSA will need another $250,000 a year to meet all of the priorities that the athletes themselves helped to establish a few years ago.

Athlete travel and competition costs are currently last on a list of three main priorities for CFSA funding. A group comprised of coaches, CFSA administrators and athletes identified coaching services as the top priority, followed by training opportunities.

The CFSA was locked into that formula for the 2003-04 season, and when the funding shortfalls were announced CFSA administrators had no choice but to cut from the bottom.

At a meeting after the National Freestyle Championships last March, the athletes were told that funding would be about the same this season as last season. The cuts to funding were announced in July, and athletes were informed by the CFSA.

"We found ourselves still trying to deliver programs with fewer dollars and the athletes weren't happy with fewer dollars, as we were not," said Smith.

Although they tried to cut costs, most of the program funding cuts have come out of competition costs according to the funding priorities.

The CFSA will re-evaluate that list of priorities in the future, and will have an athletes meeting in Fernie this weekend to discuss the problem.

Even without funding partners cutting and reallocating money away from the CFSA, Smith said the association would likely have come up short this year.

The fact that there are more events on the World Cup calendar than in previous years has complicated the problem for athletes, adding to the overall travelling and competition costs for the season. Some athletes may have to miss events because they can't afford to get there.

Since there is no guarantee that funding will be restored from any of their traditional sources, the CFSA is looking for more sponsorship from the private sector.

Two weeks ago, the same day that athletes aired their frustrations at the press conference, the RBC Financial Group announced a long-term sponsorship deal with the CFSA worth more than $1.3 million between now and 2012. Most of the money will go towards the national high performance program, although a portion of the money will be funnelled into the RBC Jumps and Bumps youth development program as well.

Smith says that the Canadian Freestyle Ski Team should be easy to find sponsorships for. Not only are the athletes winning, but we are entering an Olympic cycle for Torino in 2006. After that the Olympics will be coming to Canada in 2010.

"Not every company will be able to be part of the rings, but they might be interested in supporting a particular sport to get their place in the Olympic circle," said Smith.