Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Making Champions

The sport, the athletes and the FIS Snowboard World Championships

By Andrew Mitchell and Adam Daff

They’ve never been held in Whistler before, but there’s an unmistakable feeling among organizers that the 2005 FIS Snowboard Championships are finally coming home.

Whistler has always been one of snowboarding’s hot spots, a place where the top pros live and ride, pushing the limits of the sport. Even today the resort ranks among the top riding locales in North America because of its terrain parks, the terrain, and the extensive backcountry.

Ross Rebagliati, the first Olympic snowboard gold medallist calls Whistler home, as do more than half of the current members of the national freestyle team.

Whistler has hosted snowboard World Cup events for almost a decade now, but the FIS Snowboard World Championships, held every two years, will feature almost twice as many athletes and officials, another 15 nations, and unprecedented global media coverage.

For athletes, the world championships present an opportunity to qualify for the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, as well as experience competing against the top riders from around the world.

For organizers at IMG World, Whistler Events Bureau and the Canadian Snowboard Federation, putting together the eight-day event has been almost a full-time job for over two and a half years. It will be the biggest and most expensive event held in Whistler to date.

The world championships also come at a time of transition for the Canadian Snowboard Federation. With snowboardcross debuting as an Olympic event in 2006, Vancouver hosting the Olympics in 2010, and other nations pouring resources into their national programs, the CSF has had to get organized and funded in a short amount of time – a challenge for a sport that is comparatively still in its infancy.

Canada boasts some of the top riders in the world, including the overall World Cup champion for the past four years, and medal contenders in the alpine, halfpipe, snowboardcross and big air disciplines. Maintaining the status quo will be tough with other countries continuing to improve, but the CSF is committed to go even further and create medal contenders for every event by 2010.

The journey has already started. There have been several recent personnel changes at the CSF, and a head office move from Calgary to Vancouver. New sponsors have also come on board with long-term commitments to the team, significantly increasing the budget for the national program.

The FIS Snowboard World Championships, which take place from Jan. 15 to 23, will mark the start of another chapter for snowboarding in Canada. We’re still in the early pages of that book, but the plot is just getting interesting.

The biggest event in Whistler’s history

The FIS Snowboard World Championships have been a long time coming for Mark Taylor, vice president of IMG Action Sports.

He was part of a Whistler group that first bid for the 2001 FIS Snowboard World Championships and again for the 2003 FIS Snowboard World Championships. They were at last successful in June of 2002, with no other countries competing against a strong Canadian bid to host the 2005 world championships.

"This whole process goes back to 1999 for us – all of the venue plans, everything we’re enacting now, has been in development for that long," said Taylor.

"The location of Base II for the events has been on the books since the beginning. The vision has been the same since we first walked out there and said this is where we do it, and took measurements of distances and the angle of the slopes, and all of those details. To watch it all come together so many years later is just incredible."

Although they had a plan in place, organizers hit the ground running once Whistler’s bid was approved by the International Skiing Federation (FIS) by signing up sponsors and formalizing plans. Construction on $500,000 worth of venues, including the creation of a new in-ground halfpipe with lights and the addition of snowmaking for Lower Cruiser, began in earnest at the beginning of last summer.

"The series of competitions that begin this weekend will be the largest, most expensive event that Whistler has ever held, or will likely hold until the 2010 Winter Olympics," said Taylor.

"It’s been a lot of work for everyone involved, I don’t think Whistler-Blackcomb, the RMOW, or Tourism Whistler have ever been involved with any project this big, and their staff has been really helpful in pushing the ball ahead with our team at IMG. A lot of our contractors have been working on it for the last six to eight months."

The experience will be helpful when it comes time to host test events for the 2010 Winter Games, he added. "All eyes are on us right now to see how it goes, and a lot of people who are working on this event are going to be working on the Olympics, whether it’s the broadcast teams, the production teams or the operation teams."

Whistler will also benefit from more than 100 hours of coverage on networks around the world. According to Taylor, the interest in the sport is growing in general with more people tuning in to snowboarding events. The fact that there are more countries taking part, combined with the fact that this is a pre-Olympic year, has also created a lot of interest.

"A lot of people in their respective countries want to start building the story of their nations competing… and they’re really interested in following the world championships. For example, in Austria a World Cup event would get about an hour of coverage. For the world championships, they’re looking at about 10 hours," said Taylor.

The biggest challenge so far has been finding accommodations for all of the athletes, coaches and officials. Because of the number of participants, organizers have had to book the equivalent of 5,000 room nights for the duration of the championships – which includes the Martin Luther King Jr. long weekend when the resort is typically at 85 per cent capacity.

"We were sweating bullets last week, but we just put it together thanks to all the hotels and property management companies who stepped up to help us fill the spots we had," said Taylor. In total, more than 20 different hotels and properties are being used by the world championships, a number that doesn’t include sponsors, industry reps and other contingents that will be in Whistler for the competitions. Most of those properties had to agree to a lower rate than what they would normally get at this time of year.

Despite the years of work and last-minute challenges, Taylor says organizers are still excited for the event.

"This is when the adrenaline really kicks in, watching all the little final details come together. The week after this is over I’m sure I’ll be bumping into walls, but for now everything is in full swing. I’m just excited to see the first competitors rolling down the slopes, watching venues fill up with fans.

"I’m especially looking forward to seeing our Canadians compete, there are so many who are doing well on the World Cup right now. It’s nice to be able to create these kick-ass venues for them to hopefully win some gold medals and get everyone excited for the Olympics next year," said Taylor. "Some venues like the halfpipe will be legacies that the team will build on for years to come. This event is the end of our preparations and hard work, but it’s also the beginning of a lot of things.

For a complete schedule of events and venues, turn to page 43.

 

World Championship Numbers

• More than 650 athletes, coaches and officials are expected to attend, compared to 350 for World Cup events. The number of countries participating is expected to be approximately 37, about 15 more than for World Cups.

• There will be more than 250 accredited media in attendance, the largest number for any Whistler event.

• There are 980 volunteers signed on, the largest group for any Whistler event.

• Approximately 600 VIPs, including sponsors, industry representatives, and sport representatives are expected to attend.

• The venues were built expecting upwards of 5,000 spectators for events.

• Snow-making has compensated for Mother Nature, with more than 20 million gallons of water used to produce over 100 acre-feet of snow (equivalent to 100 acres covered by one foot of snow).

• More than 100 hours of television will be distributed with a potential audience of 280 million around the world. In North America, CBC will offer six hours of coverage, NBC two hours, OLN USA four hours, SportsNet five and a half hours and SRC two hours.

 

The Future of Snowboarding in Canada

First Person with Canadian Snowboard Federation CEO Tom McIllfaterick

Tom McIllfaterick may have the Midas touch. As a former executive director of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association, he successfully increased that organization’s annual funding from about $260,000 to $3.5 million through corporate sponsorships and government funding, creating a framework that has helped to foster what is today one of the strongest freestyle programs in the world.

He has also served on the Canadian Ski and Snowboard Association, a national federation of nine ski and snowboard associations, and knows the politics, challenges and funding issues of Canadian winter sports inside and out.

When Adam Faithfull stepped down as the CEO of the Canadian Snowboard Federation in June of 2003, he endorsed McIllfaterick as his replacement, citing his proven track record in turning national amateur sports associations around.

So far so good. In his short tenure McIllfaterick has signed on Telus, RBC and Honda to sponsor the CSF, and has obtained more funding from Sports Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee. In the future he sees CSF taking a greater role in the grass roots level, building a national system that recognizes talent early, and provides a clear progression to the top ranks.

Three weeks ago the CSF released a new program called Project 2010 to foster that change, while creating universal standards for coaching and hosting competitions.

Pique talked to McIllfaterick about the CSF, Project 2010, and his vision for the future.

Pique

: How did your involvement with the CSF come about, and what kind of contribution are you hoping to make?

Tom McIllfaterick:

Well, I’ve been with them for a year and a half now, and I’m the first senior manager person that the organization has ever had. My job is to put a professional management footing under the organization, so we can more effectively do the things we do to serve the athletes.

Pique

: Things are improving at the CSF in terms of funding and corporate support with Telus, RBC and Honda signing on. How does that put the CSF on better footing as an organization?

TM

: Telus and RBC came in the past year, and both are multi-year contracts extending past 2010, and Honda sponsors our national Nor Am series as well. It gives us a great deal more certainty in our operations, because we won’t always be going "gee whiz, what are we going to do next month for the rent?" and that kind of thing.

Even with that, it’s still not enough, but it gives us a base that we can operate on.

Overall our budget is about $1.7 million and… realistically, probably within the next two years we pretty much need to double that, or would like to double that. We could very usefully invest another million and a half in everything from the national team program right down to developing at the club and provincial levels.

If you gave me $2 million tomorrow, I doubt we could invest it all effectively but if you came back a few years from now and we have 5,000 members across the country and dozens of clubs and competitions, we could probably use another chunk of money.

Pique

: What are your challenges now that you do have some secure funding in place?

TM

: We do have more secure funding and it’s great – not only from the corporate sponsors, but we have also been getting more support from Sports Canada and other agencies such as the Canadian Olympic Committee. What we have to do with that is build the entire structure of the sport. We have to continue to build the national team program, we have to improve the support we give to national team athletes.

We also have to build everything that’s underneath that, from the Honda Tour of Champions to programs for provincial organizations and the club systems beneath them… to the grass roots training of coaches and officials.

Pique

: Regarding the Project 2010 plan that was just announced, is it based at all on Alpine Canada’s Podium 2010 plan?

TM

: It’s not really based on it, but we’re responding to the same challenges. I think we’re responding in different ways because our organizations are at very different stages in our evolution. We are really young, very small. We don’t have a well-established club and provincial structure the way alpine skiing does.

The goal of Project 2010 is, with our limited resources, to identify and give as much help as we can to those athletes who we feel have the best potential to come on-stream for 2010. But, at the same time, to protect them by keeping them within the structure of their provincial programs where, at this point, they probably have greater support, greater resources, there’s less travel… all that type of stuff. So another thing we’re trying to do is build the strength of provincial associations.

We need to build capacity so there’s a lot of kids at the provincial level with potential, so the program doesn’t die or suffer a set-back every time an athlete moves up.

Pique

: Does having more events, like the Honda Tour of Champions, help out by giving athletes a chance to compete at a high level and earn FIS points?

TM

: Absolutely. Again, what we need to do is build the entire structure on a professionally managed basis. One of the key things there is opportunities for athletes below the national team level to train, develop, learn how to compete, inside the structure of sport. That’s one of the big gaps we have.

So with Honda’s support we’ve been able to put together this series of events at that level. It’s Nor Am competitions, it’s our national championships, and it’s for athletes trying to move up. At the same time they can compete in Canada and stay close to home. We try to have national team athletes, if they’re available, come down and do these types of events, which makes the events that much more worthwhile for the younger riders. It’s a way of grooming athletes without having to throw them full-on to the World Cup. Not only do (athletes) need to learn to compete technically once they’re in the starting gate or ready to drop into the pipe, they also have to learn, as an athlete, all the things that go with that – being on the road, how to pace yourself, how to get your training in when you’re on and off of airplanes, and driving up to resorts and back, and so on. (Developing) these other skills is part of what the Tour (of Champions) is all about, as well as giving them a higher level of competition.

Pique

: These days there’s a lot more to sporting events than athletes just showing up for event day – they go to sports psychologists, they train at the gym, things like that. Is the CSF working on a total program that includes those things?

TM

: That’s the point. As the sport grows up and matures, you’re going to have to bring in all the resources that the major established sports have. The athletes who will excel (in the future) are the ones who have the benefit of coming up through a structured program that gives them these areas of support.

It won’t be the way it was 10 years ago when it was enough for someone to have talent and a desire to win to show up and blow everyone else away. The sport is evolving past that stage, as any sport will when it gets more mature and more people get involved, and more countries with organized sport programs get involved and start applying sport science, sport medicine, mental training, strength and conditioning.

For us to stay in the game we have to do that as well. That’s part of what I meant when I said earlier that it was my job to put that structure into place.

Pique

: How close is the CSF to achieving that, compared to other successful programs that are in place?

TM

: There’s a lot of work to do, but we have some really great strengths. The quality, and talent, and commitment of our athletes is phenomenal, we’ve got some top athletes in any discipline with some great results.

We’ve got resources that are available inside of Canada, and, again, part of my job is to go around and pull them together… sport medicine, sport science, strength and conditioning, all of these things. The Coaching Association of Canada, the Canadian Olympic Committee, Sport Canada, all of these bodies have support to offer.

At the same time we have to bring the athletes in to show them there’s a program and it’s worthwhile to invest their time and energy and commitment, because in the long run that’s going to give them the support that they need.

Pique

: How has (the change) been for the athletes? As you’ve mentioned, it used to be that an athlete could just train on his or her own and show up on the day of a competition and do well. These days a lot more is being asked of the athletes with team commitments, and FIS commitments.

TM

: That’s what happens to any sport when it starts to mature and gets taken more seriously by the sporting world.

One thing that happened with snowboarding in the late ’90s, the level of expectations created for the sport was too high. It was brought into the Olympics with very short notice, the structure of the sport wasn’t ready, all of these system things I’m talking about weren’t in place virtually in any country, but it was thrown in right into prime time and right into the Olympics.

On top of that, Canada won the first medal with Ross (Rebagliati). So there was an expectation out there that "boy, these guys really got their act together, they really know what they’re doing" but in fact the reality was a little bit different. Inside, we had the top-10 (athletes), but we didn’t have anything below them, so the challenge was to build the structure that allows us to continue to build the athletes that get those types of results.

It’s a big challenge. Part of my job is to find the support that’s out there and bring it in, and where there isn’t support to find the easiest and most effective way of building it. We need to be able to go to athletes and say, for you to be successful in the long-term, you need to come into our program, you have to make a commitment to our program, which is a big change for a lot of riders.

But it’s us who has to deliver something here. We’re asking for something from (athletes), but we also have to deliver ourselves.

Pique

: The national (winter) sports organizations have committed to making Canada number one in 2010 for medals. How realistic is it to expect a Canadian nomination in snowboarding at a time when other nations are waking up and supporting their programs?

TM

: It is possible for Canada to finish number one in 2010, and that’s what’s driving all of our sports.

Is it putting extra pressure on the athletes? I don’t think so. First-off, in order to do this we have to deliver on our side, give the support to our athletes – more support and different types of support than they’ve ever had before. But for any athletes going into something like the Olympic Games, the real pressure is the pressure they put on themselves. If they are really prepared, they’ll be able to put all the external pressure aside… to achieve the best possible performances.

I’m not going to say to every athlete on the Canadian team for 2010 that I expect you to go out there and win a gold medal. What we expect them to do, and what we support them to do, is go out and give the best performance they’re capable of in their career. They need to have a career-day. That’s the peak, but that’s what they want as an athlete themselves.

And overall some will do it and some won’t – someone will exceed expectations, someone will break a binding, someone will come out of the gate slowly and won’t advance, all of those things will happen.

We’ll have goals for the team going into 2010, just as we have goals for the team going into 2006, but it’s more along the lines of, if we have 16 athletes in the Games – and that’s our maximum team size – my goal would be to have half those 16 athletes make top-10 results… you need to have that depth across the board on the team.

Pique

: Canada is in a good position right now, with Jasey-Jay Anderson winning the World Cup title for four years, and athletes winning medals in halfpipe, and snowboardcross and big air. Is this a good starting point for the program, or is this the level we should be maintaining?

TM

: The team is performing well, we’re achieving a high level of results without a doubt. As the stakes get higher, staying at that level would be a challenge, and certainly that would be a goal for us. But I think – not immediately, but over a couple of years when we start bringing in athletes from Project 2010, and with the additional support we hope we can provide – we’d want to improve that level of results. We’d want to be medalling consistently in every discipline. And other than Jasey-Jay, I don’t think we have anyone who’s medalled in an alpine event, so there’s work to be done there. In snowboardcross, we’re probably the strongest team on the tour right now, but we need more depth on the women’s side. In halfpipe, we’ve got great potential, some great riders coming on board, and we have to give them support because they’re not far from being on the podium.

 

 

(Title)Developing the best snowboard athletes in the world

Martin Jensen, the high performance director for the CSF, says the federation has "come a long way in a short time" but he conceded that this was still the beginning of a program aiming at 2010.

"I’ve been in this position three and a half years and just in that time the whole national team program has gone through a tremendous change and it’s starting to become a very professional environment."

Jensen said these changes were necessary because the pool of athletes going to the 2006 Olympics had changed from the last Olympics.

"The ’02 games were largely a bunch of professional or self-made athletes who were in the system under their own accord and they got themselves to where they were. A large number of athletes that went to the ’02 Games did not follow our program and did not prepare, and it showed.

"But this Olympics there’s a lot of athletes in our program that we’ve actually had time to prepare going into the Games – that’s the biggest thing. And going into this Games it will be a requirement they have to be part of our program, so we’re also accountable."

While the concept of a national program might be old for the skiing disciplines, snowboarding had a very different history.

"Back in the day there was no such thing as dryland training for us," said Adam Faithfull, the CSF’s former president and a current member of the board of directors. "We’d all go hang out and have fun and party the night before a competition – that was the way it was.

"But the paradigm has really shifted because it’s really amazing how fit all our athletes are with the dryland training, strength training we’re doing and other programs we have."

In recent months several Canadian winter sport organizations have identified areas where they can work collectively towards success in 2010, said Jensen.

"And there’s been a lot of interesting and elaborate discussions that we’ve never heard before involving the sports wanting to work together and recognizing there’s a lot of commonality."

For one thing, Jensen said they recognized that the typical Canadian attitude in sports is that it’s enough just to go to events like the Olympics and world championships. He’d like to see Canadians focus more on winning.

"It’s frustrating as hell with the Canadian attitude – it’s not just wanting to win when you have to, it’s about wanting to win every single time you compete."

He said changing the national psyche will have to be a collective effort, something that is started in the home and nurtured through school the same way it is in places like Australia. Quebec is probably the strongest Canadian province when it comes to fostering athletic excellence, but it will take a strong federal commitment to spread that across Canada.

Considering the attitude and the lack of resources for athletes, Jensen said Canada has managed to put together a strong team.

"With our snowboarders it’s a very young program, we don’t have a lot of resources but we have a great team, so looking at it from that way there’s a lot of opportunity. I mean, three and half years ago we didn’t even have a structured national team program."

Faithfull agreed that he would like to see "more of a winning attitude."

"With our American neighbours, they’re always there to win. The one thing I respect about the Americans is that in everything they do, they do it to be the best at it. They throw the money and resources at it and they build the programs."

Faithfull said it was about transferring the kinds of ideals Canadians have about hockey into all the other sports.

"When we stopped winning the medals in hockey… people said we won’t stand for it and they have an attitude we’re shooting for first and I like the hockey attitude.

"So we’ve got all this natural talent and when we’re good at what we do but we grow up saying ‘hey the name of the game is fun so if we go out there and have fun, that’s what it’s all about’.

"But it’s like Don Cherry always says, if the name of the game was having fun, why do we keep score?"

Better athletes through better coaching

In coaching elite snowboarders Faithfull said "the struggle has been trying to keep the balance between keeping a core and also trying to get good athletes into organized, structured programs.

"In the four years I was chairman we went from turning over our coaches every year to actually hiring a high performance director, which is Martin, to having coaches come on board that have been through it. The program is getting more structured because we’ve witnessed the struggles of hiring coaching staff when the coaching staff can’t support itself."

Faithfull said one of the biggest problems with hiring coaches in the past was that the athletes did not appreciate the skills of coaches who didn’t snowboard. To fix this, they made an effort to hire coaches with a snowboarding background. Faithfull said this approach had caused problems because while many ex-snowboarders knew a lot about snowboarding they didn’t know anything about the technical side of sport.

"Like some of the coaches didn’t know about periodization, which is basically getting athletes peaking at competition times."

Tom Hutchinson is now the CSF’s freestyle coach and Faithfull said he has made fantastic strides despite his lack of snowboard experience.

"There are snowboarders that want to be coaches and it’d been nice to get some of these hybrid coaches to learn from guys like Tom."

Medal expectations

Jensen said the CSF did have performance goals it wanted its athletes to attain but he wasn’t going to share them publicly.

"We have goals to try and establish something but we’re not going on the record about it. They’re more markers to help get us started and they are ambitious but they’re more for our people."

Jensen said he wanted at least two medals in this week’s world championships. The team has won four in the last two World Cup events, three by Jasey-Jay Anderson, and one by Dominique Maltais.

"Ideally we’d get three medals but maybe that’s more of a goal for Torino (Olympics). But every member of the national team has medalled before so hopefully we’ll get off to a bang."



Comments