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Putting pieces in place for home medals

Snowboard countdown to 2010 begins
1344snowboarders
Whistler's 2005 worldcup snowboard championships were a defining moment for Canada's national team in which they grabbed five medals. Photo by Justa Jeskova

By Andrew Mitchell

One of the finest moments of the Canadian Snowboard Federation’s history was the 2005 FIS World Snowboard Championship in Whistler. Despite the frigid weather that marked the opening days of the championships, and the Pineapple Express that left organizers drenched and scrambling to keep venues open in the closing days, the team performance was exceptional.

Members of the national team won five medals in total — Maëlle Ricker and Francois Boivin in snowboardcross, Jasey-Jay Anderson in parallel giant slalom and parallel slalom, and Justin Lamoureux in men’s halfpipe. More importantly, 16 athletes finished in the top-16 of their disciplines to qualify for Sport Canada funding.

Although the team was poised to do equally as well at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Torino, the snowboard team earned just one medal — Dominique Maltais winning bronze in women’s snowboardcross.

“In a way I think we overachieved at the 2005 world championships,” said Tom McIllfaterick, chief executive officer for the Canadian Snowboard Federation, “and what better place to do that than at home. That said, I think that the 2006 season was probably a more accurate representation of where we stack up against the rest of the world. We had a lot of good results and came close a lot of times, but I don’t think anybody would call it a great season.

“Having said that, we could have easily had three (Olympic) medals instead of one, give or take a few small things — that’s sports. What we have to do between now and 2010 is what makes the difference between coming fifth or eighth and landing on the podium.”

In a normal Olympic cycle the season after the Games is the start of another cycle. Funding is usually low, athletes focus on pro events instead of earning World Cup points, and organizations ramp down operations with a plan to ramp up again for the next Olympics. Not so this year.

With the 2010 Games on the horizon, national sports organizations like the CSF are aggressively building their programs with the goal of being the best. Canada’s target is 35 medals at the 2010 Games, leading all nations at the podium.

For snowboarding, that means several things, starting with an expansion of the team.

“Heading into Torino, we were a small team, we had it whittled down over the years to the athletes that had a really good shot at making it,” said McIllfaterick. “Normally a national team is a lot larger than what we can take to the Olympic Games, but we had narrowed it down to focus our resources on those athletes. But now we’re in the start of a new cycle we’ve increased the team size quite considerably.”

In terms of the national team, the CSF now has a roster of 29 athletes, compared to just 18 last season. Including the CSF’s Project 2010 team — athletes that still train with clubs or provincial teams, but have been identified as having potential — the CSF has a pool of 60 athletes to work with.

Each year those numbers will be pared down, based on results and potential, to the point where the team is focused on an elite group of athletes fighting for Olympic quota spots.

Thanks to increased funding from the Own The Podium 2010 program — jointly funded by Sport Canada and the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Games, with support from the B.C. government — the CSF has also doubled the number of coaches.

“It really brings an extra set of eyes to the hill,” said McIllfaterick. “Different coaches look at different things, have different styles of giving feedback; some coaches are good at the technical side of sports, others on the practical side.

“Before this year we had one coach working with 10 to 12 athletes, which is a coach-to-athlete ratio that most other sports would look at and shake their heads. What we’re seeing so far this year is good results, and just more confidence among the teams.”

This summer the team has mixed dryland training with on-snow training, with trips to Quebec and South America, as well as the Camp Green training centre on Farnham Glacier outside of Invermere.

Own the Podium funding increased the CSF’s annual budget by $771,000, from $695,000 to $1.466 million, which allowed the organization to hire coaches and other experts to work with the team. Recognizing that fractions of sections or a few points from the judges is the difference between finishing on or off the podium, the team is leaving nothing to chance in athlete development.

“What makes the difference is the extra resources that we can bring to bear — strength and conditioning coaching, sports science, biomechanics, wax technicians, mental trainers, physiotherapists, all those sorts of things that we can now provide our athletes for the next four years that we couldn’t in the past or could only provide on a limited basis,” said McIllfaterick.

“Own The Podium is really making a difference for us, and any sports organization will tell you the same. It’s allowing us to fund a program we simply couldn’t afford otherwise in terms of the number of coaches and sports staff, the camps we can organize for athletes, what we can pay to get athletes to camps and competitions.

“It’s also important because of the focused group of individuals it’s brought together, in terms of being able to recruit the top people in sports medicine, sports science, that kind of thing.”

McIllfatericks says national teams are pooling their resources and sharing that expertise, which provides athletes with support that national teams would not be able to fund on their own.

“The bottom line is that it’s made a really big difference, and the challenge for us now is to deliver the results. I would be happy to make that deal anytime.”

In addition to narrowing down the team for 2010, the next three seasons will also be spent focusing on the 2006-07 and 2008-09 world championships. Unlike summer sports, which have events like the Pan Am Games or Commonwealth Games to simulate the Olympic experience, McIllfaterick says the world championships are the biggest event in snowboarding next to the Olympics.

“By the time athletes qualify for the Olympics pretty much everyone has been on a World Cup podium and on any given day can be in the top five. The athletes that are going to make it are the ones with the best focus, the fewest number of injuries, who can put aside distractions. It doesn’t happen overnight, which is why it’s important that we have two world championships to prepare for.”

The CSF is also attracting more interest from sponsors with 2010 around the corner.

“The great thing is that it’s not just the team but sponsors are also coming up big for events, which is something we’ve been working on for years as a development tool for up and coming riders,” said McIllfaterick. For example, Honda has sponsored a national snowboard series for the past two seasons, as well as the national snowboard championships.

“It’s not just us, most winter sports are being approached by potential corporate sponsors, which is a pretty big benefit to hosting the 2010 Games. And they’re getting in early, not waiting until the year before the Games.”

The other side of having home advantage is that the athletes will be familiar with the snowboard venues, slated for Cypress Bowl. The top part of the snowboardcross course has already been built, and next spring and summer Cypress will be completing the installation of a snowmaking system, as well as finishing the halfpipe, parallel giant slalom course and lower part of the snowboardcross course.

“Our riders are going to be in there in winter of 2007, so they’ll know it better than anybody,” said McIllfaterick. “There are going to be riders showing up who’ve never seen it, and have not trained for the different weather conditions we can get on the coast with snow and rain.”

The 2006-07 World Cup season is already underway for the CSF’s alpine race teams, which have competed in two events. There is a World Cup big air on Nov. 11 and the first halfpipe of the season in Switzerland from Nov. 23-25.

For more information on the CSF, visit www.csf.ca .