High hopes for Winter Olympians
TORONTO — A trustee stands before a gymnasium full of students at a Toronto school on Thursday and addresses the crowd. “Who loves the Winter Olympics?,” she asks.
Hundreds of arms shoot up — all of the arms, basically — there is much cheering.
There is a good reason for that. With Wayne Gretzky days left until Pyeongchang 2018, Canada is preparing to send one of its deepest teams yet. For these kids of elementary-school age, all Team Canada has ever been is a Winter Olympics powerhouse.
Isabel le Char est, the chef de mission of Team Canada, says that with 99 days togo before the Olympics, it’ s too early to be thinking about a prospective medal count.
“You put it at the back of your mind, because we want to focus on the process and we make sure we have the environment for the athletes to perform ,” she says outside the gym at Runnymede Public School, where the Canadian Olympic Committee was launching its Canadian Olympic School Program, an educational resource for use before and during the Games.
“Even for the athletes, at this point you don’t think about the medals, you just think about what you need to do,” says Charest, a three-time Olympic medal list herself in short-track speed skating. “But we do know that if we have this optimal-performing environment for the athletes, we can have quite good results, because we have seen it in world championships and world cups.”
Then she says something, that even after Canada finished first and third on the medal tables in the past two Winter Games, still sounds surprisingly bold :“We can be among the best countries, if not the best country at the Games,” Charest says.
That was the case in Vancouver 2010, where Canada topped the medal chart, and in Sochi, where the team came third behind only Norway and the doping-scandalized Russians. (The mighty U.S. team edged Canada in total medals, 28 to 25, but the Canadians won 10 golds to nine for Team USA.)
Of course, it’s too early to talk possible medal counts in Pyeongchang, because much of the team has yet to be formed. The next three months will see a flurry of events across dozens of sports that will determine how many Canadians will travel to South Korea, and which ones will go. At present, just 87 athletes of a contingent that the COC hopes will come in around 230 — which would be the biggest-ever Team Canada — have their spots in Pyeongchang assured.
There are all kinds of athletes that the CO C expects to have good shots at medals, but they have to qualify first. And for Charest, that means a lot of waiting and watching. Well, maybe not waiting.
“For me, it’s very exciting to get to know who’s going to be on the team. And to get to know these athletes and their stories. It’s a lot of excitement,” she says. “Of course, they are doing their job, and the team behind the team is doing their jobs, and my job, is kind of glue-ing everyone together and making sure we are ready to go.”
“I wouldn’ t say that I’ m waiting” — she breaks into an expression here than can best be described as Nervous Face — but I’m just very excited.”
Char est allows that talking about being at the top of the table is not a modest goal. The COC was cau- tious in its expectations at Rio 2016, and were it not for the unexpected thunderbolts from Penny Oleksiak, it would have failed to meet those.
Not so at a Winter Games, where the medal chances are many. Or at least they should be, pending the next three months of qualifying events.
“I think we have had successes at the past, we are continuing to have success and I think we are improving the preparation for the athletes,” Charest says. “They come to the Games with a better understanding of what it is, and I think the preparation is much better than it was years ago .”
It also doesn’t hurt that Canada has typically done well in the new sports that have been added to the Olympic schedule in recent Games. That should continue in Pyeongchang, with medals now available in big-air-snow boarding, mixed doubles curling, mass-start speed skating and team alpine skiing. The Canadians should be in the mix in at least three of those.
It is along way from Calgary 1988, where Canada won zero gold medal sand five in total. Team Canada won 24 gold sat the last two Winter Games combined; it won 25 golds over the six Winter Olympics prior to Vancouver.
Money is a big part of that, but Char est also credits what she calls a “full-team approach” today. “It used to be that you would goto the Games not knowing who your teammates were ,” she says. But now, “there’s a big share of resources and knowledge and experiences. And this, I think, makes the team much, much stronger.”
More confident, too.