‘Spirit of determination’: Bronze for underdog Canadian ski jumping team sparks hope for future of the sport

After years of sacrifice and toil against steep odds, Monday’s surprise ski jump mixed-team bronze medal by a dedicated group of Canadian athletes is being celebrated by their astonished loved ones.

It’s also inspiring hope that ski jumping in Canada can be brought back from the grim place it’s landed, with next to no domestic infrastructure for training, the evaporation of Own The Podium funding, and budding ski jumpers forced to leave the country and shoulder considerable costs to pursue Olympic ambitions.

“Whether they realize it or not, they really represent the spirit of determination that is Canada, in terms of: they came in as underdogs. No one — I mean, nobody in the ski jumping world — expected Canada to be anywhere near a podium,” Sandy Loutitt said Monday from Calgary.

His daughter, 18-year-old Alexandria Loutitt, was one of the four Canadian ski jumpers to qualify for Beijing 2022 and soar to a bronze finish in the inaugural Olympic mixed team event. She competed alongside teammates Abigail Strate, Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes and Matthew Soukup.

© Michel Cottin/Agence Zoom/Getty Images) Abigail Strate during a jump on Monday.

“There was undoubtedly some bad luck for other teams, that created an opportunity for Canada,” said Sandy Loutitt, referencing equipment violations that disqualified jumpers on four of the event’s top five seeded teams.

“The flip side of that is everybody on (the Canadian) team was consistent and steady and generated the results they needed to be there. And that wasn’t luck. That has been massive amounts of sacrifice and training and practice with very little resource — and I can’t stress the level of sacrifice.”

The closure of Canada’s only year-round ski jumping facility at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary several years ago forced its elite ski jumpers out of country and over to Europe. There, Canadian athletes lived out of hotels and suitcases for months-long training camps, said Rod Strate, father of Abigail Strate.

© Cameron Spencer / Getty Images Gold medalists Team Slovenia, Silver medalists Team ROC and Bronze medalists Team Canada (at right) celebrate following the Mixed Team Ski Jumping Final Round on Monday in Zhangjiakou.

The national team has ended up with its home base in Slovenia; athletes rent a home, lease a car, have Slovenia-based coaches, “and it really makes a difference,” said Rod, who sits on the board of Ski Jumping Canada. Still, he said, the difference between the Canadians and the “real powerhouse nations” — Germany, Austria, Norway and Japan — in terms of material and athletic resources is night and day.

Nathaniel Mah, marketing and engagement co-ordinator at Ski Jumping Canada, points to three factors that have left ski jumping at the margins of Canadian sport: exposure, facilities and funding.

Even if a banner moment like Canada’s first-ever Olympic medal in ski jumping were to bring new attention and interest to the sport and re-open the Own the Podium funding faucet that entirely passed over the sport for Beijing, grassroots infrastructure to support the development of budding athletes is practically non-existent in Canada.

© Odd ANDERSEN / AFP / Getty Images Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes in a first round ski jump on Monday.

There’s a glimmer of hope in the form of a future Calgary project that would provide facilities for biathlon, cross-country skiing and ski jumping, and allow for development of athletes in these Nordic sports from beginner to the Olympic level, said Mah. But to make this a reality, a location and funding need to be found.

“Those kids you’re looking at, that’s it, when they leave that international stage, we have no grassroots development (coming up) behind them,” Loutitt says of the national team ski jumpers.

As for their Olympic podium accomplishment, “I think what I would hope for an outcome here is that it spurs both interest from participating athletes and interest from sponsoring organizations.”

Canada’s national ski jumping team is, in large part, self-funded. Tracy McKay, Alexandria’s mother and Ski Jumping Canada board secretary, said she’d like to see the team’s Olympic story bring more attention to the financial challenges that elite competitors in ski jumping and other Canadian sports have to contend with.

“Seeing all the other female athletes that are struggling and skiers and bobsledders and lugers and these women are like, ‘Without this, I thought I was going to have to go home because I was living on my credit card,’” McKay recalled.

The owner of a home-staging company, McKay spoke by phone Monday after a morning of work. She hadn’t prepared for a day of calls with media — like other parents, the team’s podium placement was a shock.

“How good does this make the whole country feel, especially in the middle of a pandemic, that these young people went there and, you know, by hook and by crook won a medal? I don’t think you can replace that, those feelings, the national pride feelings … I feel like, you know, if the sports were better funded, maybe we would have more stories like this or more athletes that came home with medals.”

 

( Edited by Michael/Carol  Reviewed by Lucia )