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Canadian snowboarders aim for five medals at Vancouver Olympics

By: Sunny Dhillon, THE CANADIAN PRESS

8/02/2010 7:28 PM | Comments: 0

VANCOUVER, B.C. - When Ross Rebagliati won the first ever Olympic snowboarding event in 1998, Canada's future in the Winter Games sport seemed bright. But Canadian snowboarders have claimed just one Olympic medal since Nagano - Dominique Maltais' snowboard-cross bronze in Turin in 2006.

Now Canadian snowboarding officials are predicting a bumper medal crop at home.

"We have established a target, which I think is a stretch target but that's what targets are for, of five medals," Tom McIllfaterick, chief executive officer of the Canadian Snowboard Federation, told reporters Monday.

"We have an incredible team, I think they're capable of that."

McIllfaterick pointed to the fact that Canadian snowboarders earned 26 World Cup and world championship medals last season and have already claimed 19 so far this season.

He said of the three Olympic disciplines - halfpipe, parallel giant slalom and snowboard cross - only women's halfpipe might be blanked during the Vancouver Games.

"Although these are the fourth Games to include the sport of snowboarding, in many ways Vancouver represents a coming of age for the sport," he said. "We have built without a doubt the strongest and best supported snowboard team in Canadian Olympic history."

Team Canada's 18-member squad is led by Jasey-Jay Anderson, who will be competing in his fourth Olympics. Maelle Ricker, who sits No. 1 in the World Cup standings in the snowboard cross, and Maltais, who's ranked third, are also among the medal threats.

"We have said the same thing over and over throughout the last couple of years," said Christian Hrab, director of high performance for the Canadian Snowboard Federation. "We will be ready to send the best snowboarders to the start gate. Drop into the pipe, attack the snowboard cross, or carve around the gates as fast as they can. I can now say one thing: we are ready."

Hrab said competitive snowboarding has rapidly evolved since its inception, a scant 25 years ago.

Hrab gave much of the credit for that evolution to American Olympian Shaun White, the rock star of the sport who won gold with a dazzling halfpipe performance in Turin four years ago.

"I guess we can give our thanks to Shaun for pushing snowboarding, not just our team, but all the world's teams and all of snowboarding, and inventing the future, if you will," he said.

White has pushed the limits of aerial halfpipe manoeuvres and his innovation has made it difficult, and perhaps dangerous, for his competitors to try and keep up.

His best-known manoeuvre might well be his back-to-back double cork 1080s - two flips while spinning three times off-axis.

Hrab conceded the halfpipe event can be a dangerous one, which serves as all the more reason to tread carefully and train thoroughly.

"Danger is calculated. It is dangerous if you're unfit, if you don't have the right equipment, if you don't have the right support system behind you and you're just throwing yourself out there on a Saturday afternoon when you sat around all week," he said.

"Danger is relative to the amount of planning and the amount of preparation you use to approach what you're trying to do."

McIllfaterick said with snowboarding still being a relatively young sport, athletes are still setting the limits of what can physically be done on the course.

"I think we are now starting to push the envelope of what our athletes, particularly in events such as halfpipe, are capable of," he said.

"And this is an evolution that other sports have gone through before. For the first few times, it's who can do the next level of difficulty for a trick."

McIllfaterick said the sport also took a bit of a hit after Rebagliati briefly lost his Olympic medal for testing positive for marijuana. He got it back because marijuana was not on the banned substances list (although it now is).

"Specifically in terms of Ross' medal, I think it's a shame that the controversy, the mistaken controversy, around that medal got in the way of the fact that here was a Canadian winning the first ever gold medal awarded in that sport and that achievement, we've lost sight of," he said.

Of course, both McIllfaterick and Hrab faced a number of questions about Vancouver's recent weather woes.

Games officials have had to truck snow up to Cypress Mountain, which will host the snowboarding and freestyle ski events during the Olympics, due to unseasonably warm temperatures.

But the two men maintained the conditions of the course are not a concern.

"The snow conditions up there are suitable for our events," Hrab said. "I was up there the last couple of days. I have seen pictures. I have talked to our expertise staff on site and everything is all systems go. We'll be fine."

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