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Feature - First Person: Ken Read

Building momentum to 2010

By G.D. Maxwell

Two days after the International Olympic Committee met in Prague and awarded Vancouver the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Pique NewsMagazine had a chance to speak to Ken Read, President of Alpine Canada. During a rambling conversation, he spoke of what the Olympics might mean to Canadian alpine skiing as well as other issues.

Pique:

Tell me what hosting the 2010 Olympics is likely to mean for alpine skiing in Canada?

Read:

What the Olympics does is bring focus. We’ve been trying to do that the past year with our Podium 2010 Strategic Plan. We’re trying to transform our entire system so that we’re not just focusing funding at the top, we’re driving it down into the system for development. We’re going to try to do this on a sustainable basis so that year-over-year, we continue to produce.

What we’re seeing now is the other half of that equation fall into place. Governments seem to need an endpoint like the Olympics to focus on. Now they’re driven by having this in our country. But you’ve got to keep that in context. The amount of money we get from government is very small. We’d really love to see it get up to, at a minimum, 15 per cent. Currently it sits at nine per cent. The rest comes from the corporate sector, which is a good thing. We’re not as dependent on government, which, until just recently, had been slipping for a decade but seems to have turned a corner and headed back up.

The Olympics help give a lot of existing and potential commercial partners focus too. We, again, are in a fortunate position. We had quite a few who were committed regardless of the bid’s outcome, so this is a windfall to those who were already dedicated to our effort. We’re pretty sure we’ll be able to welcome a few more.

Pique:

What else are you hoping might come out of this?

Read:

Well, it’ll mean more World Cup races in Canada because there will be all the test events for the Games.

And we’re planning on it providing a legacy... a real legacy. We’ve been struggling for 15 years to find a legacy out of the ’88 games. We’re only just now making it happen. There has been no legacy in alpine skiing from 1988 because the alpine ski venue was a straight user-pay affair and was actually more expensive to use than other venues.

None of the snow sports venues – snowboarding, freestyle, cross-country, biathlon, alpine –really had a legacy specifically put into place to ensure low-cost access.

I’ve got to be really careful to make sure I’m understood. I’m just going to focus on Nakiska because I know it. It’s actually a very, very good venue for ski competition. It’s quite actively used. The current management of Nakiska are very active supporters of ski racing from entry level right to the Nor-Am level. But it’s pretty much on a user-pay basis. Fortunately our socio-economic group can afford to pay. But I’ve got to be frank – it’s expensive.

At the same time, I can’t fault the operator. They’re a private operator and they’re trying to make a dollar for their shareholders. It’s not their fault that the promises made by the government of Alberta were hollow and remain unfilled.

That’s what we’re looking to change. We want to now be able to get in place dedicated training and competition facilities. Let me use a comparison. My understanding is speed skaters can use the Olympic Oval for a cost of about $150 a year. That’s their basic membership. They’re overall cost to be part of a high-performance program is, all in, about 10 grand.

When you compare that to what it costs a provincial level athlete in alpine skiing, that runs anywhere from 25-40 grand. Some of those costs are travel and equipment but a lot of the cost goes to pay for lift passes and lane fees. Typically lane fees for a team to train on a mountain for a day are about the same as what Catrina LeMay Doan pays for a year of speed skating. That’s for one day! About $150. Times 100 days. It ain’t cheap.

So that’s where we want to step in. To come up with a mechanism that can work for private operators. We don’t want to have to go to a private operator and say, ‘Please sir, can you be benevolent and give us your hill?’

My hope would be that we can get something like that in place pretty quickly. That kind of an approach is something we need for the long term health of alpine ski racing.

Pique:

Is that where the new training camp on Farnham Glacier comes in?

Read:

When I talked about it taking us 15 years to find a legacy, that’s the legacy. CODA has been able to step up with something that didn’t exist before and it’s now going to be able to deliver something that’s of enormous benefit to our athletes, not just alpine skiing but freestyle and snowboard as well. To find a similar type of opportunity (to Farnham) we had to travel outside the country. In doing so, we face increased costs but it also wasn’t necessarily optimal from a training perspective.

Farnham introduces something that’s very much in line with what the Austrians or Swiss have at their fingertips and we’ve never had. We have to take our hats off to CODA. We’ve been struggling for many years to find what it is that will make the difference and this is the piece that will make that difference. It’s not just CODA but the government of B.C. also, driven by the focus of 2010.

I haven’t been to Farnham personally. But Burkhard (Schaffer, men’s head coach) said it’s as good as you’ll find anywhere in the world. His one comment was, because we’re using a cat to take the skiers back up, it’s physically harder on them. Now instead of having a break going back uphill, they’re on their skis.

In terms of the slope, the vertical, the type of terrain they have, there was a concern that for the men it might be too easy. But Burkhard came back and said it’s as good as you’re going to find anywhere in the world. He’s very happy. The comments I’ve heard from the athletes have been positive, Allison Forsyth and Thomas Grandi and Emily Brydon, all have said it’s fantastic.

Pique:

Speaking of Burkhard, there have been some major coaching changes both this year and last year. What’s your strategy there?

Read

: We had a setup where, effectively, we had six different teams operating – World Cup technical, speed and development, for both men and women. There was no overall co-ordination. That essentially resided with our vice president of athletics, who tended to be mostly in Calgary. The purpose of having a head coach for men and one for women is to provide that co-ordinating function so there’s one person who’s responsible for steering the whole program.

Down within the respective team, many of the coaches and staff still remain in place. But now there’s someone who’s on the ground looking at the bigger picture to ensure, number one, there’s co-ordination. When you have all the different teams operating quite independently, you’re not being very efficient with your dollars.

Number two, you’re not being efficient with your training programs because there’s many opportunities where you need to have crossover and you need to have people working together. The disciplines don’t break out so nicely that super-G and downhill are exclusive from giant slalom and slalom. That doesn’t work and hasn’t for quite some time.

In our instance, using the women for example, you have Gen Simard, Emily Brydon, Britt Janyk, athletes who need to go back and forth. If they’re going back and forth, who’s their coach? Piotr (Jelen, speed coach) or Jim Pollock (technical coach)? There’s a gap there. By having the one coach on the top, his job is to make sure those athletes don’t get lost in the shuffle. So that was the reason why we brought in the head coaches. The outcome is, the athletes are feeling there’s someone they can go to for direction and feedback on the overall direction.

Burkhard has the responsibility to determine how the men’s program will unfold. In his particular case, he still has the speed portfolio as well as head coach responsibilities. He will be oriented toward the speed side but will be working closely with Dusan Grasic on the technical side.

Pique

: Speaking of whom, why did you replace men’s technical coach Thierry Maynet with Dusan Grasic?

Read

: We decided a change was needed for the technical skiers. We offered Thierry a different position but he decided to go with the French team. Thierry’s done great but there was a feeling something else was needed, a little bit of extra was needed.

Burkhard has the responsibility to determine how the men’s program will unfold. It was left to Burkhard to structure the team as he saw fit. That’s where he felt Dusan should be moved in, to head the technical side.

Pique

: And on the women’s team, you have a new head coach, Stephan Kurz and a new technical coach, Jim Pollock. How’d that come about?

Read

: Stephan became available because the Germans restructured their whole program. They decided to go with someone else. Within the Canadian coaching ranks, there’s people who’ve known Stephan, or Shorty as he’s known, for quite a few years. The German women have trained regularly with the Canadian women so there’s a familiarity there and there was a feeling he could bring something to the program.

He was originally brought in to work on speed with Piotr and then when we shifted to wanting a head coach position, the feeling was that he was the ideal person because of his experience with skiing cross-discipline. He’s done it before as part of the machinery the Germans had in place; now he want’s to do it with the Canadian women.

Jim Pollock is very dedicated and hard working. He’s worked his way up the Canadian system from clubs and provinces. He’s got good familiarity of what the athletes go through to get to the top. Jim and (former women’s technical coach) Mark Sharp were working very closely together. We’re confident he’s qualified to step into the leadership position and do a good job.

Mark Sharp had accomplished many of his goals. He has a young family and didn’t want to continue to do the travelling. We didn’t want to lose that wealth of knowledge. That’s why we offered him the job in juvenile development. We’ve discovered club coaches from coast to coast are crying out for the kind of information Mark can bring to the development level. We’ve never done this in Canada. Mark’s a great person to do this.

Pique

: It’s been just over a year since you took the reins at Alpine Canada. We’ve seen some changes and I’m sure there are more coming. What’s your plan?

Read

: The strategy for the next couple of years will be sticking to our Podium 2010 strategic plan. What I ask of the athletes is to just keep moving forward. At the end of the day, you’re not in a ski race to try to come fifth, or 10 th or 25 th , you’re in a ski race because you want to try and win it. So we want to teach these athletes to be winners, right from the bottom to the top. And that occasionally means taking a step back so you can learn to be a winner. I think we’ve made good strides this year in confidence boosting, for the athletes, for the coaches.

We want to keep trying to develop a system that’s efficient and uses our dollars well. That’s the whole purpose of 2010. When we have competitive teams, we’re going to do it on a consistent basis. It’s not going to be that Canada does well and then you don’t see Canada again for another five years. We want to be doing this year in and year out because that is what’s truly going to build momentum.

We’ve created a momentum this year but realistically, we know there’s a little bit of a gift in it. But you take your gifts where you find them and you run. I didn’t expect the team to do as well as it did but that’s the nature of ski racing. Sometimes you can energize the momentum and things will take off and we just want to keep building on that because we can maintain that momentum. I think we’ve got the right coaching staff in place to see these athletes succeed. When they’re (coaches) stepping up and saying they want to be around for eight years. That’s quite a commitment.

It’s kind of amusing when you have an moment like this where you won the Games and people say, ‘Oh this will inspire the kids.’ It’s amusing because we pretty much know who the team will be and the question now is how to nurture them through the next seven years. Giving them the support, giving them the experience, giving them the leadership.

If you look back at the previous Games and the investment that was made, the Game Plan ’76 and Best Ever ’88, created what I call the Olympic shadow. In fact the best results came afterward.

Steve Podborski and I were beneficiaries of Game Plan ’76. The best years of the Crazy Canucks came between 1978 and 1984. The group that benefited from Best Ever ’88 included Karen Percy and Rob Boyd, who had their best years between 1988 and 1994.

There’s already been several years investment in developing the current group of ski racers and if you look further down the system, there’s a pretty steady stream of them coming along. So looking forward, we’ll be able to do well in the years leading up to 2010. But from 2010 on, we’ll have a very healthy, vibrant and incredibly successful team for years to come beyond that.

We won’t be saying the golden age of Canadian ski racing was in the ’70s and the ’80s but hopefully, 30 years from now, they’ll be looking back and saying the new golden age came in the 2010s.



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