Olympic success highlights glaring absence of ski jump facilities in Canada

It was a massive Olympic success for Canada. 

History was made on Feb. 8 when the country's national team clinched its first ever podium-place finish in Olympic ski jumping. 

The four-person team won a bronze medal in the debut of the mixed event. 

But while the future for the sport might seem bright in Beijing, back at home there's little to encourage young athletes to pick up their skis.

Nigel Lauchlan, the head coach at Altius Nordic Ski Club, chuckled as he looked up and down the grassy hill in Calgary that he and a team of volunteer parents and athletes turned into a practice jump. 

"It looks like any future Olympians in ski jumping will have to learn on our strange volunteer-made jump," he said.

Calgary facilities no longer exist

Lauchlan started ski jumping when he was 12. 

By age 15 he was competing internationally, and several years later he joined the national team at age 21. 

"It would have been impossible without the Calgary facilities. There's no way I would have started," Lauchlan said. 

The facilities that Lauchlan learned through no longer exist. 

Built for the 1988 Winter Olympics, the jumps Lauchlan flew from for years provided the only place in Canada where ski jumpers could develop their skills. 

Lauchlan says those hills provided smaller and larger jumps, allowing athletes to move up to the next challenge at appropriate intervals. 

In 2018, the facility at Winsport was closed. 

Now, Lauchlan and his volunteers are making the most of what they have with plastic sheets staked into a hill. 

"This plastic netting that we have here, we got from our old jump at the Winsport site," said Lauchlan. 

Lauchlan says that any young ski jumpers with podiums in their dreams will have a tough time transitioning through the sport up to the Olympic level. 

"It's amazing that we have any athletes at the Olympics at all with the limited facilities we have," said Lauchlan.   

'We have to send them elsewhere'

Stu Leachman says he didn't know anything about the sport until his own kids discovered it.

"They were in camp at Winsport and a former coach asked them if they wanted to try it out. And they tried it and they loved it," Leachman said.  

He knows that taking his kids' hobby to a competitive level would be a challenge. 

"The athletes who just won the medal, they trained in Slovenia for nine months of the year. They don't train in Canada because there isn't a facility here that will support them." 

Another parent of an avid young ski jumper, Colin Tanner, says his son's drive and commitment to the sport are what keeps them showing up, but it's hard to see a future. 

"Our age group tops out in the 14, 15 age, and at that point we have nothing to take them to the national level. We have to send them elsewhere." Tanner said. 

A tough loss for Calgary

Lauchlan says that the lack of funding and resources means Canada could be missing out on generations of Olympic medallists in ski jumping. 

A particularly tough loss for the city of Calgary, where all four bronze medallists are from.

"The organization of funding in Canada kind of favours sports that are already medalling and not sports that are developing," Lauchlan said. 

"It's almost retroactive. You have to get a medal to get funding and it's difficult to get medal without the funding."

Lauchlan says that without a permanent facility, it will be even more difficult to attract athletes to the sport. 

Until funding is funnelled back in, young ski jumpers will have to make do with flying from the top of a Calgary hill.