By Katy Heath-Eves
Melanie Turgeon’s World Cup downhill win and second place super-G finish in Lenzerheide, Switzerland earlier this month was a long time coming.
In each of her eight years on the Canadian alpine ski team she has approached the podium, only to miss it by hundredths of a second. Finally, she has broken the hex.
Despite our hopes, this win does not usher in a new era of Crazy Canucks. The team has too many obstacles to overcome.
I remember watching the World Cup downhill on Saturday afternoon TV with my dad during the ’80s.
It was exciting, not only to watch lycra-clad humans fling themselves down icy and scarily-steep slopes, attaining speeds of up to 120 km-h, but because invariably, a Canadian would win.
Laurie Graham, Rob Boyd, Karen Percy, and Brian Stemmle were our heroes, and we watched, unblinking, teeth and fists clenched until they won. Canada won dozens of World Cups and four Olympic gold medals in the ’80s. Suddenly, though, the Canadians stopped winning.
By the early ’90s, there were few top-15 finishes. We stopped watching.
Bruce Henry, a national team downhill coach for 12 years, says the recession of the early ’90s and the team’s dismal 1995-’96 season lost the team major corporate sponsors such as General Motors of Canada and Husky Oil Ltd., as well as federal funding.
“Cutbacks had to be made,” Henry says, “but you can’t cut at the top level, so you cut out the bottom.”
This meant money couldn’t be spent hiring extra coaches, and the existing trainers had to concentrate on the top athletes.
“The lower-level athletes suffered, not given the attention they needed to excel,” Henry says, adding, very few athletes are currently even close to competing at an international level.
Cuts in funding means some of the most promising young athletes can’t afford to compete, Henry says, since upper- level ski racing costs $15,000 a year.
To try to fill in these gaps, Mackenzie Financial Services Inc. is giving $500,000 per year to the team over the next three years.
In Calgary, a new school has opened combining academics with the best downhill ski coaching Canada can offer.
Until two weeks ago, it seemed these ‘new and improved’ tactics weren’t changing anything.
The last time the men won a World Cup downhill was in 1994, the women the year before. And then, Turgeon, Canada’s only racer for the women’s downhill and super-G team, stunned us all by winning a World Cup downhill event.
John Lavoie, head coach for the Camp Fortune Ski Club, says the fact Turgeon won a single race is an incredible feat.
This is not because she lacks talent, but because she simply does not have access to many of the training privileges the top European racers do.
This win may help secure more sponsors, which in the long run may make it less costly for ski racers to climb the ranks.
The only way the Canadian ski team can begin to compete on a level playing field with Europeans is to have more racers, which will bring in more coaches. More coaches means more feedback, and improved skiing.
Lavoie says the racers at Camp Fortune Ski Club don’t look to Canadian skiers for their mentors. ‘They follow the Hermanator (Austrian racer Hermann Maier) and other Europeans,’ says Lavoie. He says until the Canadian team wins consistently, they won’t be the ones our young racers emulate.