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BARNES: Resilient Canadian ski jumpers kick off another World Cup season on the road

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There are surely great numbers of Canadians who do not care if the country’s winter sport athletes win a bunch of medals at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.

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Fair enough. Plenty of other things command society’s rapt attention. The pandemic, obviously. Global warming, increasingly. Elon Musk tweets. NFTs. Adele.

But for what it’s worth, with 200 total medals, Canada is the fifth-most successful winter sport nation at the Olympics. Its 74 gold, 64 silver and 62 bronze were gleaned from 13 of the 15 sports on the current programme; the exceptions being ski jumping and Nordic combined, the latter of which combines ski jumping with cross country skiing.

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The keen-eyed reader may have spotted an endemic weakness. The closest any Canadian has come to an Olympic medal in ski jumping was Horst Bulau’s seventh-place finish on the large hill at Calgary 1988. And here’s another tip of the helmet to the pride of Ottawa.

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But to our enduring shame, the jumps on which Bulau, dual gold medalist Matti Nykänen and Eddie (The Eagle) Edwards competed 33 years ago are now little more than ostentatious cell phone towers, having been decommissioned for lack of civic vision and funding, of course.

The Canadian national team ski jumpers, five women and two men, call Calgary home. That’s hardly coincidence. Most are legacy babies born in the shadow of those towers, and they chose ski jumping because it was fun and convenient. Now they’re all based in Slovenia and spend as many as eight months a year on foreign soil. There is considerable expense attached to that workaround strategy, as well as a mental toll paid by athletes who are rarely at home. What’s more, ski jumping doesn’t receive Sport Canada funding through Own The Podium — without a medal threat, it doesn’t meet the strict criteria — so the national body must recover those costs by other means.

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While Nordic Combined Canada no longer operates a national team, Ski Jumping Canada has made the best of a frustrating situation, hiring Austrian Janko Zwitter in June to coach its female athletes in Slovenia. Abigail Strate kicked off the World Cup season on Friday in Russia with a career-best 13th-place finish.

“Certainly a personal best for Abi is an excellent way to start the World Cup winter season,” Ski Jumping Canada president Todd Stretch said. “She ranked ninth in distance, her in-run speed is improving and paying dividends. Abi is bound and determined; we expect more great results to come.”

Natalie Eilers was 37th, while neither Alexandria Loutitt nor Nicole Maurer qualified for the final. The men, Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes and Matt Soukup, struggled through qualifying in Finland on Friday and did not advance.

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Strate, whose previous World Cup best was 26th, is a solid bet for Beijing, where Canada has two quota spots each for men and women.

“Will we hit the top of the podium? Unlikely,” Stretch said. “However, you never know. At the Olympics, as we’ve seen in the past, there are some dark horses who rise to the occasion. We’re excited to have Canada represented at the Olympics and we think there is a bright future for some of these newcomers as well.”

He is justifiably proud of the organization’s adaptability, but concerned for the athletes who have to spend so much time away.

“With the closure of the jumps in Calgary and the limited window that (jumps in) Whistler can be open, we had no choice. And it has really raised the bar on our daily training environment. It has worked out well, but it’s a long time for athletes to be away.”

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It’s not new for Boyd-Clowes, who has been based in Slovenia for eight years. He’s 30 now and about to qualify for his fourth Olympics. He was 21st on the large hill at PyeongChang 2018 and 25th at Sochi 2014. His results keep improving — he posted a career-high sixth and ninth in two World Cups last year — but his circumstances and those facing his sport at home do not.

“The closing of the hills in Calgary, consistent every year funding cuts and general lack of optimism for the future of the sport in our country,” he said, listing the perennial realities. “But it has also kind of empowered me to make my own decisions and choose my own path and try to figure out a way to continue doing it.”

He is persistent and determined, saddened and pragmatic. It has been a long uphill struggle and that won’t change before he hangs up his skis.

“That’s just in my bones at this point,” he said.

dbarnes@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/sportsdanbarnes

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