‘SOMEONE WILL RISE’
As the 2018 Winter Olympic Games wind down, Team Canada sets sights on Beijing 2022
Whatever the final medal count for Canada, these Winter Olympics have unfolded the way most do, with surprised winners and heartbroken favourites among our 225 proud, flagwaving representatives. There were great debuts and touching swan songs, personal bests, illtimed injuries, top fives both satisfying and dream-crushing, and a record 27 medals through Friday night.
But what’s next? The Beijing 2022 quadrennial starts Monday, and if you’re already wondering how the country’s winter sports participants will top this performance in four years, you’re not alone. Canadian sports organizations are always planning at least one Games ahead.
A drop-off in medal count in Beijing surely looms for Canada if Russia drops its damaging stance on doping and satisfies the — how to put this? — minimum behavioural standards set by the IOC and comes to Beijing with a stronger contingent.
Beyond that issue, there will be immediate turnover in Canada on many fronts, particularly in the medal-rich environs of short-track speedskating and figure skating. Short track will lose retiring power couple Charles Hamelin and Marianne St- Gelais, who delivered seven Olympic medals between them before coming up mostly short of the podium at these Games.
Hamelin shared a relay bronze, but it turned out they were here primarily as mentors and did a fine job. Protégés Samuel Girard and Kim Boutin produced four individual medals.
“I’m proud of what I’ve done,” said Hamelin. “I’m also proud of what the Canadian team in short track became in the last four years. The main point, the main focus right now is Sam.”
It’s much more of a work in progress for the figure-skating team, which will lose the most decorated Olympic skaters in history, ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, winners of five medals. Three-time world men’s champ Patrick Chan is exiting, too, as are two-time world pairs champs Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford. Women Kaetlyn Osmond and Gabrielle Daleman, and perhaps dance team Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje will have to lead the way into Beijing.
“I know we have guys who will step up,” said Skate Canada high performance director Mike Slipchuk. “They’ve taken a lot out of this experience and they’re going to want to be back here. It’s going to be a lot of change in a lot of areas. We have a lot of quiet leaders who just come out and do their job. Someone will rise.”
And what of the sliding sports, which between them delivered four medals, with four-man bobsled yet to come? Breakthrough medal wins by Alex Gough and the relay team gave luge a renewed profile and will assure the continued flow of federal funding. But we’ve probably seen the last of Gough and Sam Edney.
With sliders Brooke Apshkrum, Reid Watts and Mitch Malyk already in the pipeline, and the doubles team of Justin Snith and Tristan Walker seemingly too young to walk away, Luge Canada is probably going to be OK through the next quadrennial.
The skeleton crew also seems set for another Games, with Elisabeth Vathje declaring her desire to stay for at least another Olympiad.
“I know I have that fighting aspect in me and I am going to keep fighting for another four years and then hopefully Calgary gets the Games, fingers crossed,” said the Calgarian.
If she’s going to be ready for the podium in 2022 or 2026, she’ll need to settle her funding situation. The skeleton team didn’t produce the expected medal here and that could lead to another funding cut, which has been their lot in life since Sochi.
The bobsled program has never been stronger and looks to stay that way. Three-time Olympic medallist Kaillie Humphries has committed to another quadrennial, and would like to have two-sport athlete Phylicia George back for another go as a brakeman.
Justin Kripps and Alex Kopacz will almost surely continue to star in two-man, and the organization will withstand whatever retirements are likely coming in the ranks of the brakemen — perhaps Jesse Lumsden, Neville Wright, Lascelles Brown and Heather Moyse.
Cross-Country Canada is going to lose both Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw before the next Olympics, too. There is one last chance for one of them to medal in the men’s 50-kilometre classic race Sunday, but they ’re up against a Norwegian machine and a sport-wide funding imbalance.
“Our cross-country ski team is the worst supported team on the World Cup tour,” Kershaw said in January. “Without question. That’s unequivocal.”
There’s no denying Canada has stepped up its funding game, but some countries will continue to spend more. Own the Podium made funding recommendations to target $75 million from Sport Canada to winter sport organizations this quadrennial, the aim being to maximize current medal potential. OTP also makes recommendations on millions in NextGen funding so athletes are better able to step up to the podium at the next Games.
I know I have that fighting aspect in me and I am going to keep fighting for another four years and then hopefully Calgary gets the Games, fingers crossed.
ELISABETH VATHJE, skeleton
It’s not a bad system, and it’s changing for the better. Sports that delivered at least one medal here will be reclassified as core sports.
“Starting for 2022, the core sports will get 75 per cent of their targeted excellence funding, and the NextGen money both, locked in for the quadrennial,” said OTP president Anne Merklinger.
That’s money the organizations can count on up front, to make strategic decisions about the program. That’s crucial.
Sports that hardly ever deliver Olympic medals, well, they’re still in tough. There were just two Canadian ski jumpers here, and nobody in Nordic combined. Taylor Henrich finished 32nd in the lone women’s ski jumping event and Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes was 26th on normal hill and 21st on the large hill.
Canada’s only hope in Nordic combined, Nathaniel Mah, failed to qualify for the Games.
His father Andy, president of Nordic Combined Canada, believes there will be a women’s event in the Olympics in either 2022 or 2026, and he doesn’t want Canada to miss that opportunity, or to see his son’s favourite sport die. Nordic combined is not currently supported financially by Sport Canada.
“In our conversations with Sport Canada and others, they’re very encouraging. There are three medals, potentially six with the women some day,” said Andy Mah. “The question is, do we want to lose this sport entirely in Canada? … It’s one