Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Snowboard team back on track, says CEO

New sponsors announced, more on the way

Despite strong results on the World Cup circuit the snowboard season ended on a bitter note for the Canadian team with a controversy over the decision to fire the snowboardcross team coach, and members of the national alpine and halfpipe teams paying most of their own travel and competition costs over the season.

Tom McIllfaterick, president of the Canadian Snowboard Federation (CSF), acknowledged that the organization was struggling with the loss of sponsors — including title sponsor Honda — but said that things would improve for the upcoming season with the addition of new sponsors.

“Honda was a major sponsor, and they were involved in events as well as supporting the national team,” he said. “It always hurts when you’re trying to make up for losing a major sponsor.”

Recently the CSF signed two new sponsors through 2010. LG Electronics Canada, which recently took over from Nokia as the title sponsor for the FIS World Cup, has become a title sponsor for the national team. Lang Michener LLP, a Canadian law firm, also entered into a three year sponsorship to support the team and snowboard events across Canada.

While finding new sponsors was an important step for the team — and McIllfaterick expects to be able to announce additional team sponsors in the coming weeks — he said the team is also looking at how resources are being spent.

“The other issue was budgeting,” he said. “It was a very long year, with a very long World Cup tour and when we allocated some of that money our first priority was not travel to competitions, our first priority was coaching. Beyond that was support for training, beyond that was the other sport services that athletes need to be at the top of competitions — wax and snowboard technicians, physiotherapists, sport psychologists. After covering those costs there was a little less money to go around.”

The team also made a decision to reward results, and plans to continue that approach next season.

“Telus put together a generous bonus plan for athletes on the podium which was $50,000 — above and beyond their contract — and LG made available $10,000 prizes at the national championships. That’s a significant bonus for those with medal results that are already in the system, but in terms of funding as we move forward there will be more emphasis on those (athletes) producing at the podium level.”

The CSF is in the process of reviewing the entire structure of its high performance program to plan for next season. In that context, McIllfaterick admits that the decision of head coach Jim Miller to terminate the contract of snowboardcross coach Rene Brunner over differences in their vision for the team was timed poorly.

“It’s a long season for athletes, it’s the end of year and nerves are frayed,” said McIllfaterick. “People are tired, people are frustrated and this wasn’t dealt with as smoothly as it might be at another time of the year.”

The team has committed to replacing Brunner, who single-handedly coached successful men’s and women’s national teams in recent years, with two full time coaches and a part-time coach, with some new funding from the national Own The Podium 2010 program.

For all the controversy at the finish, it was still one of the team’s best years on the World Cup circuit.

“It was an incredibly successful year with 24 medals, which is the first time we’ve topped the nations medal count in three Olympic events, parallel giant slalom, snowboardcross and halfpipe,” said McIllfaterick. “It’s the most medals Canada has won on the FIS World Cup tour. We have legitimate medal contenders in all three disciplines, and there is still significant room to grow.”

McIllfaterick credited support from Own the Podium for the team’s medal haul, allowing more money for coaching, video technicians, and wax and snowboard tuning technicians for each discipline.

“We spent more money on wax for one event this year than we used to spend in an entire season,” he said. “All of these things make us a better team. We’re still working on getting better, but the results are coming quickly and athletes are moving up through the system.”

The team has also been criticized for hiring coaches without snowboarding experience — including the appointment of former high performance wrestler and coach Jim Miller to the head coach position. But McIllfaterick, who also doesn’t snowboard, said the team doesn’t have many options at the high performance level.

“One of the big challenges we have with the sport is that the sport is so young,” he said. “In terms of what Jim (Miller) brings to the team, there’s nobody with snowboarding experience and with such a high performance history — masters degrees, exercise physiology, and working knowledge of the sport. It’s such a young sport that these people don’t exist yet.

“It’s always a challenge in marrying technical expertise to the culture of the sport, and it’s required an adjustment for everybody… we’ve had to reach outside of the sport to find people with the right academic background. Our strength and conditioning guy is a CFL trainer, our alpine technical coach is out of alpine skiing. You have to look everywhere for expertise, and take the skills where you can find them.”

The CSF is currently reviewing the past season and planning for 2008-09, which is a world championship year. As well, results next winter will help competitors qualify for spots in the 2010 Olympics. As to what the athletes can expect, he says it will be similar to last year with some additional training opportunities.

“We’re continuing to move forward on our high performance training model, which means there will be more camps on snow and also an increased emphasis on off-snow preparation — whether that’s general strength and conditioning, or specific training programs to address certain areas where an athlete needs to build strength,” said McIllfaterick.

Injured athletes are also a priority, as is keeping athletes healthy on the circuit next year by adding more medical staff to the team.

As well, McIllfaterick hopes to be able to deliver more financial resources to athletes and to cover travel and competition costs.

“Once we’re ready with our support people, we’ll be able to do more to support the athletes,” he said.

Whistler’s Crispin Lipscomb, who has been a member of the national halfpipe team for the past six years, says the athletes have lost faith in the CSF but are hopeful that the organization can turn things around. Funding has decreased every year since the Olympics in 2006, and halfpipe team athletes came into this season knowing they wouldn’t get any funding and limited support.

“In June our coach got $120,000 for the team and that was all,” he said. “Own The Podium, by September, had decided not to fund the halfpipe team at all. They offered to pay wages for technicians and specials, but we had to pay their travel, a per diem and other expenses so that basically took our support for the season.”

There was an incentive in place where athletes could claim travel and competition costs for podiums, but the athletes weren’t aware of the incentive until February.

All of these issues added stress to the athletes, Lipscomb said.

“We ended up talking about politics and all of the issues most of the winter instead of focusing on competing,” he said. “We knew right away what was going to happen. But our coach, Tom (Hutchinson), who designed our program, said that if they don’t want to support our approach, we’ll just go ahead and kill it on own program and that’s what we did.

“I hope Own the Podium recognizes how well we managed ourselves, and this time will give us funding that we can manage, carry on with the process and keep getting more and more medals.”

Aside from Own the Podium support and CSF funding, Lipscomb said that Canada’s private sector needs to get more involved.

“There’s never been a more important time for the private sector and individuals to pick a team they like and get involved in the support network,” he said. “Government gave all the (funding) power to Own the Podium, and if Own the Podium doesn’t want to support a certain sport then all the money is gone with that support. Now’s the opportunity for others to get involved.”