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How Canada deepened its Olympic pool with immigrant athletes Joe O’Connor
Ivan Babikov was standing in a freezer in a Toronto grocery store in the summer of 2003, shivering and stocking shelves with ice cream, wondering just how a freshly arrived 23-year-old immigrant from Russia’s frozen north was going to make a life for himself in Canada.
“I didn’t really plan on being a skier,” Babikov says, from his home in Canmore, Alta. “I had a wife and son back in Russia. I had to think about supporting them.”
Three years later, after finding his way back into cross- country skiing — a sport he had excelled at in Russia — Babikov emerged as the best new hope on the Canadian national cross-country ski team. Alas, he wasn’t a Canadian, but with the encouragement of his Canadian coaches, he competed for Russia at the 2006 Winter Olympics.
“I was torn,” he admits. “Most of the Russian coaches were looking at me, like, ‘ You’re not one of us anymore. Go back to Canada.’
“But when I initially made the Russian team, and made the Games, it was like my dream as a kid come true: to compete for Russia, the greatest country in the world. And so it was stressful. “I was torn. I was in between.” Babikov emerged as an immigrant-athlete almost by accident, and got caught in an internal tug of war between the patriotism he had been infected with as a child and the future he imagined for himself and his family. (He competed for Canada in 2010 and 2014; today he is a national team coach.)
Most Olympic country hoppers are more calculated in their decision to switch sides. Some come from hot countries to pursue cold -weather sports, some for better funding, some for a better shot at becoming an Olympian. Canada beckons not as some great beacon of openness and tolerance, but as a country of aspirational convenience. It is often only after the immigrant-athlete arrives that they realize they actually like the place and decide to stay.
(Formerly) Dutch speedskater, Ted-Jan Bloemen, saw his career dead-ending in the Netherlands. He was stressed out by the ultracompetitive environment, he says, and hating a sport he had always loved, and so he decided to escape from a fun-sapping environment for an “adventure” in Canada. Bloemen’s father was originally from New Brunswick. Calgary had a speedskating oval. Why not?
Bloemen, the hyphenated-Canadian, has since emerged to set world records, and is a medal favourite heading into the Games. His adventure, which has included marrying Marlinde, his Dutch wife, has become a permanent move.
“I’ve been super happy in Canada,” he says. “I feel like I’m part of a team here, and feeling that makes me feel Canadian.”
Bloemen hasn’t completely severed his Dutch ties. In the anemic world of amateur sports funding, he has a sponsorship deal with Calgary’s Dutch Store.
“I eat a sandwich with butter and chocolate sprinkles every day for breakfast,” he says.
Chris Spring, a bobsledder, is Australian-born, and discovered sliding while on a work visa in Canada. The Australian funding model for bobsledding was next to nil, and so Spring swapped countries, a leap that allowed him to pursue his sport but would also inform his understanding of self.
“I’ve now spent 12 years in Canada, but not just any 12 years, a very important 12 years for shaping the man I am today,” says Spring, 33. “The values you have, the mistakes you make and the person you find yourself to be, I believe, are shaped through your twenties — and that time for me was spent in Canada.
“People ask me this all the time, do you feel more Australian or Canadian? The answer for me is simple, Canadian.”
Spring summarizes his conversion experience by quoting a Canadian rock icon.
“Canada, to me, is like what Neil Young said in his song Harvest Moon: ‘ When we were stran- gers, I liked you from afar. When we were lovers, I loved you with all my heart.’”
( Note: Spring also lives in a van during the summer, surfs the B.C. coast and describes himself as a hippie. Country swapping, it seems, attracts all kinds.)
Not every immigrant- athlete is clamouring to come here. Some homegrown stars are itching to escape. Take freestyle skiing legend Dale Begg-Smith. The Vancouver boy bid Vancouver goodbye as a teen after his Canadian coaches urged him to ditch his side gig as a tech wizard to focus solely on his sport. Instead of bending to the pressure, Begg-Smith bailed for Australia, and a national program that didn’t pooh-pooh his internet dabblings. The turncoat was I-drive-a-Lamborghini-rich by the time he won a gold medal for his adopted country in 2006, and now spends most of his time in the Cayman Islands tax haven.
“I view myself as Australian,” Begg- Smith told The Sydney Morning Herald a few years back. “But I live in different areas, and move around without trying to get locked down to one place.”
And there are dangers associated with being an immigrant-athlete, especially when a plot twist demolishes an otherwise inspiring narrative. Ben Johnson was the fastest man in the world — and a Canadian — until he got popped for steroids at the 1988 Summer Olympics. “How could he do this to us?” one newspaper editorial raged.
Johnson brought shame down on Canada, and amid the blowback was the not- always subtle inference that he wasn’t really one of us (think: old stock, white, Anglo- French- Scots- Irish- Europlay-by-the-rules- Canadian-boy/ girl) after all, but a Jamaicanborn (with emphasis on Jamaican) drug- cheat, a dimwit with a speech impediment. One ugly joke that made the rounds back in those days featured a punch line — where Johnson denies taking any “stereos.”
“I don’t want people calling me a cheater for the rest of my life,” poor old Ben told me during an interview with the National Post in 2013. He craved absolution, peace, even then, at age 51. The Johnson cautionary tale is as much about sport as it is about national identity. Canadians stand united behind their Olympians, sure, but should you, the country-swapper fall or, say, fail a drug test, you risk falling alone.
Ivan Babikov is still standing, and now coaches with the Canadian national team. On a January morning in Canmore, after getting his sons — one Russianborn, one Canadian-born — off to school, he was contemplating doing what many Canadians do on snowy winter mornings: shovelling.
“I was born in Russia, we still speak Russian in our home, and we will eat some Russian food, because it is our culture — but we have also transitioned to Canada,” Babikov says. “This whole country is immigrants, it was built by immigrants, and so it is not hard to fit in, because no one judges you.
“And that is what makes us Canadians. We are friendly, and open, and it is a great thing to be.”