CANADA'S MIELZYNSKI SKIS WITH A CROWD OF FRIENDS
You normally can’t put a price tag on friendship.
But Canadian national team skier Erin Mielzynski has built some lasting relationships for $45,000. That is to say, she put out a call last year on Instagram for donations to cover her Alpine Canada team fees and in the process wound up strengthening her connection with a supportive community of fans and friends.
“No matter how you slice it, that’s a lot of money,” said Mielzynski, a 31-year-old from Collingwood, Ont., who has been a national team stalwart for more than a decade. “I decided to crowdsource, not to use a Gofundme, but go straight to my Instagram because I have this kind of amazing community on there. I don’t really have any trolls, I don’t have anyone who is nasty, just these amazing people. I’m very lucky.”
Though Alpine Canada covers the bulk of national team costs — travel and accommodations, salaries for coaches and other staff — athletes are asked to ante up and team fees have been set at $30,000 this year. Mielzynski has in the past relied largely on corporate sponsorships to offset the cost, but the Instagram appeal was such a success that she opened up the channel again as well. “I didn’t know if I wanted to do it again this year, but it not only helped immensely with those funds, it created this incredible support team back home. And it wasn’t them donating through pity or anything like that, it was donating to be part of something and that for me became really cool.”
Mielzynski said regular interactions with her followers on social media and through personal emails gave her more purpose during a World Cup grind made more stressful by the COVID -19 pandemic.
“It just made skiing mean more, that I’m racing with these people on my back and they are with me from the moment I click into my skis until I reach the finish line. I don’t say that lightly. I don’t say that because I’m trying to get more money this year. That is the honest truth. And what’s really cool is that last year I was so far from home and these people just lifted me up through everything.”
That said, there were some truly difficult conversations when she was finishing too far away from the podium for her comfort; 15th in a slalom race in Levi, Finland and 18th in Semmering, Austria, for example.
“It’s hard to keep people updated when you are not as successful as you want to be. It’s easy to say, ‘Hey I won this race, it’s a great weekend, we did this together.’ It’s really hard to say ‘I failed, I didn’t succeed, but thank you for your help, I’m going to get up and try again.’ But that’s what life is and people realize that and it makes us a little bit more relatable and a little but more vulnerable.”
She said the donations came from Poland, where she has relatives, other European nations where World Cup skiing is a TV staple, all over Canada, from people she used to water ski with and complete strangers she had spoken to, like a ski lift operator in Killington, Vt.
“You don’t know who you impact, I guess. That has been the really cool flip side. Some donated a lot of money and some donated $20 and that’s what was so beautiful. It didn’t have to be a lot of money, and I know there are a lot more (things) to give money to than my ski racing career. But it was a lot of people donating all kinds of amounts.
“So for sure it’s a lot of money and at the beginning it’s hard to picture something so good coming from it, but that’s what happened for me. It kind of became something beautiful.”
Once the fees are raised each year, there is less of a mental load on each athlete. This year it’s even more important for them to focus on performance, since the Olympics are on tap in February 2022. Mielzynski sees herself as a podium threat in Beijing, but is also trying to carve out a wider definition of success as a mature athlete.