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Canada Snowboard inks partnership with Mazda

Snowboard organization feeling more confident heading into Olympic qualifying year
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DROPPING IN Own the Podium has identified snowboard slopestyle as one of Canada's better snowboard medal opportunities in 2014.

Despite the success of Canada's snowboard team at the 2010 Games — two gold medals and a silver — Canada Snowboard has been on a long search for sponsors to help offset the cost of running world-class programs.

That search bore fruit last week with the announcement that Mazda Canada had signed on as a National Team-level sponsor through 2015, providing a combination of funding and vehicle use over the duration of the partnership. Mazda is also a lead sponsor for the FIS World Snowboard Championships in Quebec in January.

Steve Hills, the executive director at Canada Snowboard, said Mazda was a good fit for the organization.

"We at Canada Snowboard couldn't have found a more parallel approach to our philosophy of developing athletes and programs," he said in a release. "Furthermore, we are proud to stand alongside a company that adopted the Mazda Global Environmental Charter, which includes zero landfill measure, fuel efficiency improvement and reduction of emissions."

Pique followed up with Hills this week to find out more. According to Hills, Mazda will sport a patch on the team uniforms, which are provided by Under Armour, another national level sponsor. Most of their contributions for this year will revolve around the world championships, while they are also contributing one vehicle to team members based in Vancouver and Sea to Sky, and another to athletes in Quebec. As well, funding in the future will go towards development level programs in the future.

"They've come on board with us in a big way at a very good time for us," confirmed Hills. "The interest from sponsors is a little more modest than it's been in the past, it's the same story for other sports including alpine and freestyle, and recently we haven't been able to do as much as we could before the 2010 Olympics. These sponsors are still very valuable to us (even if federal funding has increased through Own the Podium).

"One of the areas we're all hurting, including alpine and freestyle, is with funding for all of the development level things, like putting money into events and talent identification for the next generation — that's where we're struggling. We have lots of dough for Sochi, but beyond that it's less clear. That's where the funding support from Mazda is really important."

Hills said the program is now feeling better about its prospects in the long-term, and is confident that some of the other sponsorship opportunities that are currently being discussed will come through. In particular, he's hoping to announce another sponsor for the world championships within a few weeks.

The goal is to sign sponsors for the long term, rather than around Olympic cycles. "The sponsors always come, but if you can appreciate it in some ways it's a little too late," he said. "It's hard to make plans, run programs and run series of competitions and events with money you think you'll have, that money needs to be in the bank before you can do all of that stuff."

This season is particularly important for Canada Snowboard. Not only is it a world championship year, it's also a qualifier year for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. Athletes have to qualify quota spots for Canada at the Games, as well as their own spots with the Olympic team.

Despite the addition of a new discipline, snowboard slopestyle, the total number of athletes a nation can qualify is 24, up two from 2010. That's a challenge in the U.S. where they will be able to fill the maximum number of quota spots in halfpipe and slopestyle and will only be able to field smaller teams in the race events.

However, Hills said that number is perfect for Canada.

"We're good," he said. "We have enough athletes at the Olympic level that we can qualify a full program. It's a bit complicated by gender, by discipline, but overall the number we're using is 24, which we are comfortable filling. We think we'll have enough athletes in every category. In halfpipe we might have a struggle to fill all of our quota spots but we'll try."

Canada Snowboard's goal this season is to place athletes on podiums in every discipline over the season and during the World Championships, and Hills said the team is well positioned to do that in snowboardcross, alpine and slopestyle, as well as in halfpipe. Usually there are more pre-Olympic concerns regarding pro athletes earning FIS points as they spend more time on pro tours according to their own sponsors' wishes, but Hills said FIS and the World Snowboard Tour collaborated this year to ensure that events don't overlap as much as in the past. "I'm happy to say that both FIS and the World Snowboard Tour folks have all realized that their job in the end is to progress athletes and progress the sport, and they all want the best athletes competing at every event. To their credit, some of the financial stuff and ownership stuff has been put aside this season to make sure athletes have the opportunities to compete."

Hills acknowledged that the team funding is not even between disciplines, and currently halfpipe is getting next to no funding from the national Own the Podium program. They've hired Whistler's Dan Raymond to coach this season, but otherwise haven't been able to provide much support for athletes.

Hill says it's unfortunate, and hopes athletes will step up this year and get the funding they need to compete with the best in the world.

"Halfpipe is very dear to us as a traditional sport within snowboarding, and we have a lot of committed coaches and athletes that have come through that program," he said. "Own the Podium had to make a decision on the high performance side, and the one program of ours that was cut was halfpipe. Those resources have moved primarily to slopestyle because they see a better opportunity to medal.

"It's a dilemma. We made a strong pitch to Own the Podium to maintain funding for the halfpipe program... but they feel there's a better opportunity for medals in snowboardcross, parallel giant slalom and slopestyle."

Hills explained that the issue isn't unique to snowboarding. For example, he said the women's speed program at Alpine Canada lost funding while additional funding has been put into the men's speed program and women's technical team.

"Own the Podium is quite sophisticated and make very tactical analyses of what our chances are compared to the rest of the world. They look at things like field size and the opportunity. They can say, 'hey, we have great athletes in this event and we're going to commit to those athletes,' or they can say, 'look at what the Chinese and Japanese are doing, we're not even close, sorry.' They have 22 sports and only 'X' number of dollars, so they have to focus that money."

Hills said it would take some time to rebuild the program and ensure full funding going forward. Even if athletes step up this season to win podium and earn quota spots, the next funding cycle likely wouldn't make much difference for the 2014 Games.

"Next spring, we'll go into a review with Own the Podium on what our chances are like for 2014 and for 2018. I won't say we're young, but we do have competitive athletes in the pipe who could show up this year and prove they have the potential to win medals in 2018," he said.

The FIS World Championships take place from Jan. 17 to 27 at Stoneham, Quebec this year. As well, there will be a FIS World Cup for snowboardcross at Blue Mountain in Ontario from Feb. 1 to 2.