B2TEN HELPS CANADIANS REACH THEIR OLYMPIC DREAMS
Foundation has raised $30 million to fill training and preparation needs
Ten years ago today, a pint-sized Jenn Heil stood atop the moguls field in Sauze D’Oulx, Italy, with no regrets — regardless of what might happen during the next 26 seconds of her life.
The 22-year-old commerce student at McGill University had a note from her psychologist tucked in her pocket that read: “I’m ready. I know it’s going to be great.”
And great she was, exploding out of the gate and landing two monster jumps to win Canada’s first medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics.
“Now I can share that gold medal with all the people who made this possible,” Heil said that night. “This medal has to be divided into many, many pieces.”
At the time, Heil’s words sounded overly generous. After all, she was the one skiing down the mountain. But an entire team of professionals helped transform the Spruce Grove, Alta., native from the broken-down 18-year-old who finished a mere 100th of a point off the podium at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games into an Olympic champion.
The methodology used to develop Heil — engineered in large part by her partner (and former coach) Dominick Gauthier and businessman JD Miller — spawned the creation of B2ten, a group of Canadian business leaders who believe in the importance of sport and health’s contribution to Canadian society.
In the winter, Heil’s legacy is on display in mogul skiing where Canada simply dominates.
Alex Bilodeau won gold in Vancouver (2010) and Sochi (2014). Mikael Kingsbury won silver in Sochi and already holds the record for most World Cup moguls victories (31), though he’s just 23.
Montreal’s Dufour-Lapointe sisters swept the World Cup podium last month in Val St. Come, and a promising group of youngsters has Canada poised to dominate the sport through the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
“Jenn was always an amazing inspiration for me,” Bilodeau says of Heil, who also won silver at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. “I know there are some men who only want to train with men. They think women will only drag you down. But that was so not true with Jenn. She had so much energy. She pushed me every day, so I didn’t have the shame of being beat by a woman. She was always pushing the sport in her own way.”
The development approach created for Heil continues to pay dividends for Canada at every Olympic Games — including the coming 2016 extravaganza in Rio — thanks to the extensive behind-the-scenes support B2ten provides to a collection of Canada’s top medal hopefuls. The B2ten Rio roster includes world champion kayaker Mark de Jonge, world champion high jumper Derek Drouin and the women’s rugby sevens team.
Since the foundation’s inception in 2006, B2ten has raised some $30 million to fill training and preparation needs for athletes up to and including the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.
“For me personally, I don’t think I would have won a medal in Vancouver without B2ten’s support,” says retired bobsled pilot Helen Upperton.
Back in 2002, Heil felt like an old lady, betrayed by chronic injuries and a skiing career that climbed too high, too fast.
“She could barely ski,” Gauthier says. “We had to bring her to her ski boots and almost push her down the hill, and then she was OK.”
On the urging of Miller and Gauthier, Heil took a year off skiing to concentrate on her studies at McGill. Around that time, she hooked up with athletic therapist Scott Livingston.
“She was suffering from a lot of pain, says Livingston, who has worked with the NHL’s New York Islanders, New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens. “She had a lot of physical imbalances that needed to be cleaned up. She really had to reprogram herself, even in things as basic as walking.”
Once reprogrammed, Heil morphed into an Olympic champion. And over dinner one night shortly after winning gold, she casually said to Miller: “Wouldn’t it be fantastic if all Canadian athletes could be as well prepared as I was?”
In that moment, B2ten was born.
The contributions are tailored to each athlete. For swimmer Brent Hayden, the foundation set out to transform him from one of the slowest starters in the world to one of the fastest in the men’s 100-metre freestyle. Thanks in part to the $20,000 purchase of Omega start blocks for the University of British Columbia pool and the assistance of South African sprinter Roland Schoeman, Hayden aced the start at the 2012 London Games en route to winning bronze.
The same strategy was on display Wednesday in Phoenix as Canadian decathlete Damian Warner, who normally trains at home in London, Ont., ran hurdles against world champion Aries Merritt. The trip to Altis, formerly known as the World Athletics Center, was largely funded by B2ten.
“The national sports organizations in Canada try very hard to deliver the services athletes need,” Upperton says.
“The point of it isn’t to say they’re not doing a good enough job. It’s just a lot of these sports are expensive, and the way our sport system is structured, it’s not really conducive to pushing the envelope, taking big risks and providing an individualized approach to athletes.” And it all comes back to Heil. “Some people make a difference by the medals they win,” Upperton says. “Other athletes make a difference outside the field of play. There’s a rare few that do both. I would say Jenn is one of the rare few.”