From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.
A classic sprint for the line at the Candy Cane Cup in December 2025. (Photo: Rob Smith)
The series, taking place in Gatineau, Quebec (near Ottawa), kicks off with the Canadian World Junior and U23 Championship trials, Dec. 18-21, and concludes with the Eastern Canadian Championships, Feb. 5-7. These FIS races, organized by Évènements Nordiques Gatineau Nordic Events (ENGNE), take place at Nakkertok Ski Club with the support of Ville de Gatineau and Tourisme Outaouais, longtime sponsors of the events and of skiing in the region.
Nakkertok is known for its excellent grooming and for race trails supported by an extensive snowmaking system, and for a very experienced organizing committee (nakkertok.ca).
A racer leaves the start gate at the Candy Cane Cup in Gatineau, December 2025. (Photo: Rob Smith)
The Candy Cane Cup
The December races, also known as the Candy Cane Cup, will feature Canada’s best Junior and U23 athletes as they battle for positions on the Canadian team at the FIS Championships in Otepää, Estonia. The Candy Cane Cup is also the second Nordiq Canada NorAm event of the 2026-2027 season, identifying senior athletes for the Period 3 FIS World Cups. Winners in the Open class will claim $500 per race, with the overall winner receiving an additional $1,000 as a Hall Mark of Excellence (HME) Award. Junior race winners will receive $200 per race and $500 overall. Additional prize money will be awarded for other placings and categories, including ParaNordic events, with racers selected for the Canadian teams receiving an additional cash bonus.
A chase group tucks through falling snow at the 2026 Eastern Canadian Championships. (Photo: Rob Smith)
The Eastern Canadian Championships
February’s Eastern Canadian Championships start the Friday following the NorAm and SuperTour races in Lake Placid, 2.5 hours “up the road,” and have a similar prize structure. Athletes who participate in both events will be eligible for the additional $2,700 in HME prize money for overall performances.
Hall Mark of Excellence checks for $2,000, $1,000 and $500 presented at the 2026 Eastern Canadian Championships, made out to Olivier Léveillé, Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier and Parker Courte-Rathwell, respectively. (Photo: Rob Smith)
The Hall Mark of Excellence Award
The Hall Mark of Excellence Award program, founded by Marty and Kathy Hall, has provided over $70,000 of prize money at ENGNE events over the last six years, providing much needed financial support to athletes. As Kathy Hall described, “The intent of our program is to inspire and reward skiers, ultimately to enable them to continue to develop their potential and pursue their success at whatever level of skiing they choose.”
For the 2026-27 season events the HME is contributing $18,000, with an additional $17,000 provided by ENGNE and $8,600 by Nordiq Canada for the NorAm event.
“Nordiq Canada is pleased to contribute financially toward the December NorAm at Nakkertok and to work alongside ENGNE and the local organizing team to deliver a strong competition opportunity for Canada’s athletes,” said Beckie Scott, CEO of Nordiq Canada. “Investing in our domestic competition calendar is an important part of creating a high-quality pathway for athletes to develop, compete and prepare for international racing. We’re grateful to ENGNE and its partners for continuing to raise the standard of racing in the Ottawa-Gatineau region and for their commitment to supporting Canadian athletes.”
The field double-poles over a small climb early in the 2026 Eastern Canadian Championships. (Photo: Rob Smith)
A Record Year at Nakkertok
ENGNE has been organizing races in the Ottawa/Gatineau area since being formed to run the 2016 World Cup event as part of Ski Tour Canada. “A larger prize purse was important to us this season: it helps ease the financial load for athletes heading to World Championships,” said John Halvorsen, ENGNE President. “With the support of Nordiq Canada and Kathy Hall, we’ve set a record year for prize money at Nakkertok Nordic Ski Club, cementing its place as eastern Canada’s hub for world-class ski racing.”
As well as the Nakkertok trails, the Ottawa/Gatineau area has over 200 kilometres of ski trails, including Gatineau Park, home of the Gatineau Loppet, and an extensive urban trail system. It is a great area in which to train, explore and relax. We look forward to welcoming you to our winter ski home.
The mass start rolls out at the 2026 Eastern Canadian Championships. (Photo: Rob Smith)
Publishing press releases is a service we offer to the ski community, so please note these articles are not written by FasterSkier and therefore do not necessarily represent our thoughts and standards.
The five minutes Beckie Scott spent at the finish line in Soldier Hollow on February 15, 2002, lasted longer than most things in her career. She had crossed the line in what felt like third place. She thought she had a medal. She did not yet know.
“It was actually a photo finish,” Scott said. “There were about five full minutes where we didn’t know. And then it was announced.”
Her teammates, her coaches, and the wax technicians were already gathered in the pit, standing in the cold. The result came over the loudspeaker. Bronze. Canada. Beckie Scott.
“We went ballistic,” she said. “It was magic. By that point, a lot of the coaches and wax technicians had made their way down to the pit. We were sort of standing there all waiting, and then when it was announced, it was just chaos. But in the best possible way.”
The Canadian flag went up the pole in third position. The bronze, in the moment, was a win.
“There was no disappointment. We celebrated that medal like it was platinum. This was the first medal for Canada. It was a long shot. It was absolutely incredible and powerful to stand on. In that moment, I got to celebrate that and have that day, and that feeling, and all the joy that comes with it.”
What happened next is now part of cross-country skiing’s history. The two Russian skiers who finished ahead of her were caught for doping. The bronze turned to silver, then to gold. The flag that had risen for her in third place was wrong, but only because the truth had not yet caught up to the racing.
It would catch up eventually, though, and so would Scott, now an Olympic champion.
Beckie Scott with the gold medal she was awarded at a ceremony in Vancouver in June 2004. A former Canadian cross-country skier, Scott finished third in the 5 k pursuit at the 2002 Olympics but was later awarded gold when the two women ahead of her were disqualified for using performance-enhancing drugs. (Photo: Cross-Country Canada)
Scott grew up in Vermilion, Alberta, a rural community in the province’s northeastern region. Her parents were avid cross-country skiers and members of the local club. The trails started at the back of their property and ran into the provincial park. She could ski out the back door.
When the Jackrabbit program — the Canadian equivalent of the Bill Koch Youth Ski League in the United States — rolled out across Canada in the early 1980s, her mother adopted it in Vermilion and Scott came up through it.
“I developed just a real affinity and love for the sport, right from the start,” she said. “I was very inspired by the community. I really loved the community. I loved competing, and I just loved the idea that the harder you worked at something, the better you could do. So as a kid, it was all very exciting, and a lot of fun.”
The Vermilion club is now more than 50 years old. The trails are well used. It remains a rare facility for a rural Alberta town.
What was not rare, in the late 1990s, was the experience of a North American woman struggling on the World Cup. Scott was at the front of a group that did not yet exist. She was the best of her cohort, which was a difficult thing to be.
“Even when we started on the World Cup, when I was there, the results were abysmal. It was very, very poor performances. The results were nowhere near successful, that’s for sure.”
She remembers it now with a kind of dry humor. “I think it’s good that we had a good sense of humor, because there were a lot of days, if we weren’t laughing, we would have been crying. I do remember being completely devastated, often. Not just by being so far down the list, but by how far behind I was. That, to me, just seemed almost impossible. To see the gaps that I was seeing when I first started, in the era, I think we all know why the Russian women were skiing as fast as many of the men.”
She did not know that at the time. She thought she was just a weak competitor.
The way through, she said, started with a single word.
“The first step was approaching it as a professional. Leveling up the approach to my career as a cross-country skier, as a professional. I don’t think I was doing that in the early days, and I didn’t even understand what that meant, necessarily. So that was a big shift. And then it was increasing training hours, getting serious about strength training, and technique. Taking every single piece of what a performance needs and addressing it separately, and eventually collectively. But the biggest shift for me was the mental, socio-emotional approach. Shifting the paradigm to being a professional.”
She offers this as the lesson she most wants to pass on. The hardest part, she said, was maintaining belief.
“In the early days, I just didn’t know at first if this was even possible, or what it was going to take, or how to get there. I had this incredibly aspirational ideal of what I wanted to be, and I was so far from that when I first started.”
The first glimmer of light came at a World Cup in Val di Fiemme, Italy. She does not remember the exact year when we spoke, but it was in December of 1997. After seasons of trying to crack the top 30, she finished eighth.
“That was it. That was the moment. It’s like, okay, 100 percent this can be done. And this isn’t going to be a one-off. It was totally exciting and inspiring, and I just wanted more.”
Beckie Scott racing in Val di Fiemme (courtesy photo)
By Salt Lake City, she was a contender. Not a sure thing, but a contender.
“We had the belief, even years leading into Salt Lake City, that this was a golden opportunity that we shouldn’t and couldn’t pass up. We had spent our years living and training in Europe, constantly dealing with jet lag, living in hotels, foreign language, foreign food. And this was a magical opportunity on our doorstep to effectively race at home.”
The 2002 women’s pursuit was a five-kilometer classic followed an hour and a half later by a five-kilometer skate. The format played to her strengths.
“I could do both techniques well. There’s this powerful energy that’s created when you have a home crowd behind you. It really does change things for athletes in a way that’s hard to describe. There’s an uplift that’s just incredibly powerful. I felt it. I remember it to this day, twenty years later.”
Then came the five minutes of waiting, and the chaos in the pit, and the medal that was, eventually, the right color.
The irony of becoming the public face of clean sport in cross-country skiing was not lost on her. She had been vocal before Salt Lake, after most of the Finnish team was caught for doping at the 2001 World Championships in Lahti.
“It was deeply frustrating to know that we were doing everything we could do to compete at the highest level in this sport, and we were constantly being thwarted by athletes who were using performance-enhancing drugs. That was incredibly aggravating. And it was shared. Not just by me, but my coaches, technicians, fellow teammates. This was not just unique to me.”
When the Russians were caught in Salt Lake, her first reaction was surprise.
“It was an open secret how much performance-enhancing drug use was going on in our sport, in particular by the Russian team. I was surprised because I did not have much belief, faith, or confidence in the anti-doping systems at that time. When I learned later about what actually happened at Salt Lake City to have those tests revealed as positive during those games, it was a remarkable series of events.”
That path eventually led her to the World Anti-Doping Agency and a long career in sport integrity work.
Canada’s Beckie Scott (right) and Sara Rennner receiving their silver medal in the team sprint at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy. That was two years after Scott belatedly received the gold medal she won at the 2002 Olympics, after fighting long and hard to earn it when the first two finishers were found to be doping. (Photo: courtesy photo)
In 2006, in Turin, she won another medal. This one is remembered less for who lost it and more for who gave it.
In the women’s team sprint, her teammate Sara Renner broke a pole. A Norwegian coach, Bjørnar Håkensmoen, standing on the side of the course handed Renner one. Renner finished the leg. Canada finished second. Norway dropped to fourth.
“It really lived long in the hearts of people, I think, because of the sportsmanship element,” Scott said. “The Norwegian coach giving her the pole, which moved the Norwegians back to fourth and gave us the opportunity to have a silver that day. That piece was so encouraging and heartening, and really in the spirit of what we like to think the Olympics should be about.”
The other piece, for her, was personal. The team sprint silver was the last medal of her career, won with Renner, with whom she had been racing for eleven years.
“That was the culmination of 11 years of traveling and racing World Cups, World Championships, and Olympic Games together. And then we could stand on the podium together, in what would be the last year of my career. As teammates, but also very good friends, lifelong friends. We’re friends today. There was a dual component to that experience. It was, I think, lovely and inspiring in a lot of different ways.”
Beckie Scott shares her silver and gold Olympic medals with a Spirit North participant. (Photo: Spirit North)
When she retired from racing, she was invited to be an ambassador for a Learn to Ski program sponsored by an oil and gas company in northern Alberta. The program ran in indigenous communities. She would visit a community five or ten times a year, ski with the kids, show the medals, give a talk, then go home.
She kept going home, and she kept thinking about what she had seen.
“I began to notice many things. First, the disparity in the socioeconomic conditions of how indigenous people in this country live versus non-indigenous people. The lack of opportunity that kids were really able to access for sport and play. And then just the paradox of my own life and the opportunities that I had through sport, and my own kids were having through sport.”
It struck her, she said, as deeply unfair.
“An entire population of people was effectively kept out of that arena, and for no valid reason that I could see or think of.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission published its final report in 2015. Among its 94 calls to action were several related to sport. Scott read the report. She had, she said, a hard time just letting things be.
“I have a hard time just turning away and saying, not my problem. So I started a nonprofit.”
She started with four communities in northern Alberta. The organization, Spirit North, is now national. It operates in 160 communities across Canada. It serves roughly 20,000 kids a year. It is among the largest sport for development organizations in the country.
“The lesson there is that you can make a difference. I didn’t know anything about starting a nonprofit. I didn’t even really know much about indigenous culture and ways of being and knowing. But being open to learning, being super curious, and being driven by a vision of what change could look like, and meaningful action. That resulted in that organization.”
Beckie Scott gives a speech while she served as the Chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Athlete Committee. She also served on the Compliance Review Committee. (Photo: courtesy photo)
In March of 2025, Scott started a new job as CEO of Nordiq Canada. The skills, she said, transfer. Spirit North was a nonprofit. So is Nordiq Canada. There is a board, staff management, fundraising, finance, HR, and strategy.
“A big part of our job at Spirit North was setting the strategy. A big part of our work here at Nordiq Canada is setting the strategy. Putting the activities together. How are we going to get to where we want to go. Many, many parallels.”
The job she walked into was harder than the parallels suggest. The federal government had frozen its core contributions to National Sport Organizations for 20 years. The core funding that Nordiq Canada received from Sport Canada when she started last year was the same dollar figure as when she was racing two decades earlier.
“Think about that in terms of the cost of living, inflation, and the rising demands on an NSO. It really crippled the organization in terms of capacity and what it was able to deliver.”
She brought her CFO, Sian Bolton, from Spirit North with her. They streamlined operations. She went out and raised money.
“I just started knocking on doors and pounding the pavement, trying to raise money for the organization. The response in the community has been encouraging. We signed on a number of new donors and had some major gift contributions. People recognize that we have a lot of talent right now in our programs in this moment. And if we don’t get behind them, we’re going to lose them. People heard that message loud and clear.”
Then, after Milano, the federal government announced a $755 million investment in sport over the next five years.
“It’s transformational. We are going to benefit from that. I am very optimistic about our future financial state because of the government’s recent announcement and because of our fundraising success.”
The total budget at Nordiq Canada now sits just under $5 million, covering both the Olympic and Paralympic programs. About $2 million of that is core federal funding. Scott would like to add another $1.5 to $2 million.
She conducted a ‘listening tour’ after taking the role. The thing she heard most often from athletes was a lack of trust in the high-performance system.
“As an athlete, you want to believe more than anything that your NSO has got their act together and knows what they’re doing when it comes to high performance. That was one of the biggest areas that needed to be addressed.”
She restructured the leadership team quickly. “It was time to make a fresh start. The organization needed to be right-sized for the budget and the financial situation we were in. But we also needed the right skill sets and the right roles.”
She has, she said, four near-term goals. Podium results. Financial stability. Restoring trust and credibility. Unifying the community.
“It’s a bit fractured,” she said of Canadian skiing now. “I think we can do a much better job of pulling together, remembering why we’re all here. Unifying as a nation behind our athletes and our programs and our development and our organization.”
The fifth goal, on a longer arc, is coaching development.
“I see a huge opportunity for closing the gap in coaching in this country. I look to the U.S. and what the U.S. has done to generate so many really highly qualified coaches, and not bringing them over from Europe all the time. For me, for the next four to five years, coaching development is going to be a big focus.”
Beckie Scott and Justin Wadsworth pose with their family. (Photo: courtesy photo)
Scott is married to Justin Wadsworth, who spent six years as head coach and high-performance director for Biathlon Canada and is now consulting for U.S. Biathlon. They try not to talk about work over dinner.
“It’s hard. We’re living it every day, and our kids are both in it. But dinners are generally pretty lighthearted. We don’t avoid talking about work, but we certainly don’t do it all the time.”
She is writing her report for the upcoming Nordiq Canada AGM. When she looks back on her first year, she said, it has been a remarkable one.
“It was a lot of transformational change. New leadership in finance, high performance, events, athlete support. But at the same time, we managed to do that without destabilizing our teams. Our athlete performances continued to rise at the Olympic Games, at the Paralympic Games, at the World Juniors. We have so much to celebrate and be proud of when we think about this last year in terms of performance. The organization is on solid ground, and it’s really full steam ahead.”
It could seem strange that the woman who became the first North American to win an Olympic gold medal in cross-country skiing now spends her days raising money, restructuring boards, and writing AGM reports. Alternatively, maybe the trail Scott got on out of her backyard in Vermilion had been leading her all along to this moment, and she has proven she is ready for it.
Help Support Our Coverage!
If you value the thoughtful work and access FasterSkier provides, please consider becoming a Voluntary Subscriber. Your support directly fuels our work to cover the people, places, and moments that make our sport special.
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.
Beckie Scott with the gold medal she was awarded at a ceremony in Vancouver in June 2004. Scott finished third in the 5 k pursuit at the 2002 Olympics but was later awarded gold when the two women ahead of her were disqualified for using performance-enhancing drugs. (Photo: Cross Country Canada)
The Olympics are designed to be a simple thing: “The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight,” said Baron de Coubertin (founder of the modern Olympic Games)” The essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well.” Those sentiments he voiced would become the Olympic Creed. But “winning” has become so important in modern society—so potentially lucrative—that it’s logical to expect that winning will become the ultimate priority. Olympic gold is a huge thing: to some participants, it may become a thing worth cheating for.
Beckie Scott (CAN) originally finished third in the 5 k Pursuit in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Her bronze medal made her the first Canadian to win a medal in Olympic cross-country skiing. It was a satisfying accomplishment, the crowning achievement of an already proud career. But the story did not end with the presentation of that bronze medal. Subsequent to those Olympics, it was discovered that the gold and silver medalists—Olga Danilova and runner-up Larissa Lazutina—had tested positive for the presence of darbopoetin, a therapeutic drug that boosts red blood cell production (similar to EPO). A long process of investigations, rulings, appeals, and re-decisions followed, ultimately resulting in the disqualifications and suspensions of Danilova and Lazutina, and the awarding of the gold medal to Scott. She finally received her gold medal in a modest ceremony in June of 2004.
While it was wonderful to see a clean athlete like Beckie Scott be rewarded for her efforts, it was also part of a dark chapter in Olympic history . . . and similar chapters continue to be written. What an utter mess . . . what an indictment of Olympic greed, of the uber-competitive nature of cross-country skiing. And what a criticism of the agencies responsible for assuring fair and unbiased competition. Danilova and Lazutina had both enjoyed long and successful careers. Lazutina was one of the great Soviet/Russian skiers of all time, having won 15 gold medals at Olympics and World Championships. And yet their records, their victories, their medals now came under unavoidable scrutiny.
Beckie Scott displays her Olympic Gold medal from the 5 + 5 k pursuit at the Salt Lake Winter Games in 2002. (courtesy photo)
After the doping disqualifications of Russian skiers, Beckie Scott—the clean athlete on the podium—found herself elevated in the medal standings, first from bronze, to silver. Then later to gold. She was compelled to ride an emotional roller coaster, one that extended across multiple seasons. She would become a symbol of what was right in the Olympic movement, while also being called upon to represent the interests of many other athletes who urged her to advocate for more comprehensive drug testing. It was a role she was willing to take on for a while, but it was certainly not the way she may have imagined spending her retirement after a long and distinguished career.
The Russian Olympic Committee and the Russian Ski Federation continue to contest the veracity of the tests, even going so far as to dedicate a city park in Moscow to Lazutina: the Sports and Recreational Park of Hero of Russia Larisa Lazutina. It seems that Russian federations and athletes have not yet learned that the world desires clean and fair competition . . . and that is what will be respected and rewarded.
Three-time Olympian, gold and silver medalist, long-time chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Athlete committee, Officer of the Order of Canada, company founder and CEO, the list of Beckie Scott’s achievements is both lengthy and remarkable, and those included here only scratches the surface. In the nordic world specifically, Scott made history as the first North American woman to earn a medal at the Olympics in cross-country skiing. She has also been a long-time advocate and voice in anti-doping. In recent years, Scott’s focus and attention has shifted to the creation of Spirit North, a non-profit organization using the power of sport to improve the health and well-being of Indigenous youth in Canada.
Beckie Scott displays her Olympic Gold medal from the 5 + 5 k pursuit at the Salt Lake Winter Games in 2002. She finished third but when the two women who finished in front of her were caught doping, Scott was awarded the gold in 2004. (courtesy photo)
The inspiration for founding this organization came after her retirement from ski racing, as Scott was invited to be an ambassador in a learn-to-ski program in northern Alberta funded by an oil and gas company that sponsors Cross-Country Canada.
“I started traveling up to these communities in northern Alberta for a number of years,” shared Scott, “the majority of which were indigenous, and I saw, for the first time, the realities of life there for community members, but particularly for the kids.”
Beckie Scott racing in Val di Fiemme, Italy (courtesy photo)
Struck by how little there was in the way of sport and recreation, whether by virtue of the remoteness of the community, lack of infrastructure, or poverty, Scott noticed how many barriers there were for children in these communities to access sport.
“And yet, in parallel, when we would do this program, I was seeing this universal experience that kids have when they take part in sport,” continued Scott, “which is, just loving being out there, having fun, just walking a little taller because they’ve learned a new skill, all those great transformative benefits that come with being able to have that opportunity.”
Happy kids head out for a Spirit North event (Photo: Spirit North)
After a number of years with this program, she gradually came to the realization that the program should be something more, it could be bigger, it could be better, and it should be its own organization. In 2017, Scott made it an independent entity, rebranded and renamed it, and thus, Spirit North was born.
The motivation and realization for this move was also partially spurred by the publication of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, published in Canada in 2015. The TRC came about after the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, to facilitate reconciliation among former students, their families, their communities and all Canadians. From 2007 to 2015 the TRC traveled throughout Canada, hearing from over 6,500 witnesses, and in June 2015 at its closing event in Ottawa, they presented an executive summary of the findings in a multi-volume final report. This report also included 94 “calls to action” to further reconciliation between Canadians and Indigenous peoples.
Levi Bent, a Spirit North coach, leads an event with a group of skiers (Photo: Spirit North)
“I think the Truth and Reconciliation Report was really a turning point for a lot of Canadians,” reflected Scott, “the legacy of residential schools and the intergenerational trauma, and the damage that was done, it lives on today. Those calls to action were really aimed at primarily non-Indigenous people starting to take steps to reconcile and to heal the harms of the past.”
Among the 94 calls to action were some specifically mentioning or targeting sport. The Spirit North website highlights three of them: Number 19, relating to the legacy of health, and Numbers 89 & 90, relating to sports and reconciliation.
A participant enjoying the sunshine and snow at a Spirit North event (Photo: Spirit North)
“It was really incredible to see sport in there,” said Scott, “Of course, I know that as a former athlete how valuable sport has been in my own life, not just as a professional pursuit, but in terms of life skills, friendships, and opportunities. To think that we can contribute to reconciliation through this platform, that is really at its heart a very simple concept – it’s activity, it’s play, it’s sport, and it’s something that all kids should have the opportunity to benefit from. I think it was really inspiring to know that we are part of this whole movement toward reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada.”
Initially cross-country skiing was the only sport offered in the Spirit North programs, but when they started to get interest and questions about expanding beyond winter, the list of offerings started to expand.
“It really grew, it just exploded this last year to include everything from rock climbing, to equestrian, to skateboarding,” said Scott, “basically, if a community indicates interest in another sport and we have the capacity to meet that interest, we will do it. One of our primary goals and objectives is to ensure the experiences are really enjoyable for kids and make sure that they have a great time, and if they want to try a new sport and it’s beneficial, then we’re open to exploring it.”
Spirit North participants work on their mountain biking skills, one of the sports added to the program. (Photo: Spirit North)
In the last year, 77 schools took part in Spirit North programs across six provinces and territories. Scott explained that they have a number of different models for programs within a community but primarily, the relationships start with what she calls a “co-creation process.” This includes meeting with the community members, teachers, elders, families or whoever is interested.
“Really, it’s a discovery,” explained Scott, “just learning what their values, beliefs, traditions, and knowledge are, and what are the barriers and then the program design is developed in collaboration with the communities. It’s very much a partnership.”
After this, the Spirit North program rolls out with a leader who is local if possible, if that capacity isn’t there, then they bring in a coach from an outside or neighboring community to lead programs.
“Every program looks a little bit different in every community, because it’s community driven,” said Scott. “We have been in communities for ten years now, there’s no cutoff date, or time we transition out,” she continued, “I think one of the reasons for success is relationship building, we just really commit to the community in terms of long-term relationships and delivering programs for as long as they want or need us there.”
Spirit North leaders gather for a team photo (Photo: Spirit North)
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. When asked about the learning process, Scott laughed, “I started a nonprofit really with no idea how to start, and so the learning curve was extremely steep.” However, with the help of a great team of people to lean on and provide advice and guidance, she was able to get the program off the ground. “I don’t think I could have known how much work it was going to be,” reflected Scott, though she was quick to say that it has all been worthwhile and very rewarding. “I think one of the biggest challenges we have is the challenge of every charitable organization, which is fundraising, you have to keep the lights on, and the programs running, and coaches paid.”
This has been particularly challenging during COVID. “We really have two jobs here,” said Scott, “raising money, and running programs, and raising money during COVID has been a challenge for a variety of reasons.” As with most non-profits, their fundraising success ebbs and flows. “We’re lucky and we feel fortunate, we’ve got some great backers, but growth and expansion as we go forward requires more funding. So it’s a constant sort of push and pull or a balance to try to maintain,” Scott concluded.
Enthusiastic little skiers show off their fischer skis, taking part in a Spirit North program (Photo: Spirit North)
On the flip side, Scott said the rewards from her efforts come in two parts, heartwarming individual stories, and the cast of extraordinary quality who work for the organization.
“We have coaches across the country now, who will send in a note or a text about a kid in the program who’s just completely transformed,” said Scott, “it’s so heartwarming and it never gets old… when we know that this program has touched them in a positive way, and it has made a difference in their life, that’s the most rewarding thing I think we could ask for.”
Regarding her team, Scott said, “the cast of people that have come to the organization – it’s been really extraordinary to see the quality of our team grow over the years, and I feel very fortunate to have the team around us that we do, running these programs, people who are really truly talented, but also caring and committed to the cause.”
As the Spirit North programs continued to grow, Scott reflected particularly on the satisfaction she draws from seeing kids participate in and enjoy Nordic skiing.
Beckie Scott shares her silver and gold Olympic medals with a Spirit North participant. (Photo: Spirit North)
“I think for me, it’s always so heartening and inspiring to see kids enjoying the sport that I love the most, and have grown up loving,” she concluded, “and just to have seen the sport, carry me through all these different phases of my life has been really something remarkable.”
To find out more about Spirit North or to make a donation, you can visit their website here.
The NorAm weekend at Duntroon, Ontario, continued Saturday with an individual start 10km classic race, the opening half of the first two day pursuit at this level in many years.
The two day pursuit race format was replaced in 2002 with the same-day pursuit. This is the event in which Beckie Scott famously won all three medals at the Salt Lake Olympics. In 2003, the skiathlon format was introduced under the name ‘continuous pursuit’ which was later shortened to ‘pursuit’ before FIS acquired the rights to the name ‘skiathlon’.
In the summer of 2018, FIS dropped the skiathlon format, which brings us back to a format that most of the athletes racing today will not remember. In keeping with the spirit of change, men and women raced the same distance today, 10km, in relatively pleasant weather described by the jury as -9C and 37km/h winds.
Nakkertok’s Zoë Williams won for the second consecutive day in 35:46.09. Mia Serratore (Big Thunder) moved up one place to take second, 37.82 seconds back, to trade places with Laura Leclair (CNEPH) at 1:18.40. Annika Richardson (TBay) just missed the podium, 0.18 seconds behind Leclair.
Alexis Dumas (CNEPH) won the men’s race in 30:04.08, 16.67 seconds ahead of Andy Shields (Lappe) and 21.57 ahead of Philippe Boucher (CNEPH).
Sunday’s race is a 15km skate pursuit for both genders, using only the time differences from Saturday. Unlike the mini-tour format, no bonus seconds are given to the first three finishers and Friday’s sprint doesn’t count.
The wave starts at 12 minutes on the 7.5km loop.
The combination of an unusual format and the potential for rain should make for an interesting final day.
The day is wrapped up in many parts of the globe — the new year has been celebrated, or the anticipation of midnight Jan.1 still tingles for some.
In Moscow, Russia at the time this draft was begun, it was 2:30 AM, Tuesday, Jan. 1. For those who follow nordic sport, you know the clock has ticked past the deadline the World Anti Doping Authority (WADA) had set for Russia to meet the conditions set forth on Sept. 20 for it to remain a compliant nation when it comes to clean sport.
Here’s the short version of the news: Russian authorities had until the end of today to allow WADA investigators unfettered access to its Moscow Lab (run by the Russian Anti Doping Authority or RUSADA), and access to the lab’s LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) data and any underlying data. Unless WADA has not informed the public, that data is not in the hands of WADA delegates.
It was hoped by WADA and clean sport activist that with the data in hand authorities could conclude which athletes had been involved with Russian state-sponsored doping activities.
But in the latest back and forth between WADA and Russia, clean sport loses.
Even RUSADA’s leader, Yuri Ganus, pleaded this week with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, in a video message, to intervene and help settle the issues with data access.
“We are on the brink of abyss and I ask you to protect the present and future of our fair sport, present and future generations of athletes,” said Yuri Ganus according to a translation.
On Dec. 21 Russia claimed the equipment brought to Moscow by WADA to examine the data was not certified under Russian law. WADA delegates, in Moscow to work and meet the Dec. 31 deadline, left the country.
It appears despite Russia’s current claim that they are ready to receive WADA investigators again in Moscow, that WADA representatives are preparing to file a report to the WADA Compliance Review Committee (CRC). The CRC will eventually make a recommendation to WADA leaders on Russia’s standing in the sports world. That report is due in mid-January.
Either way, if WADA returns to Moscow or not, the predetermined deadline voted on by WADA’s Executive Committee to hand over the data was missed.
But it is New Year’s Eve. A time to reflect, celebrate, and give thanks to all that was good in 2018.
Beckie Scott during her work for Spirit North. (Photo: screenshot Canadian Press/Spirit North)
That brings us to the news that Canadian Olympic cross-country champion Beckie Scott has been awarded the second highest honor in Canada, the Order of Canada. The award comes to the forty-four-year-old Scott, who retired from competitive skiing in 2006, for her painstaking anti-doping work. (Scott is currently the Chair of WADA’s Athlete Committee.)
Scott has moved the anti-doping needle with her fearlessness and strict adherence to her core values.
The shifts in behavioral norms when it comes to doping in sport may be small in some regions, seismic in others. Unequivocally, without Scott, the anti-doping landscape would be darker indeed.
Time to toast Scott this evening for her work and award. And then tomorrow turn our attention to WADA’s decisive January.
Left to right: Canada’s Len Valjas, Alex Harvey, Knute Johnsgaard, and Devon Kershaw after their historic third place finish in the 2017 men’s 4 x 7.5-kilometer team relay in Ulricehamn, Sweden. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
This is the second part of FasterSkier’s report on the state of high performance cross-country skiing and athlete development in Canada. You can read part one here.
Cross Country Canada (CCC), as the national governing body for cross-country skiing in Canada has the difficult task of steering a rather large ship. The idea in steering the ship is to maintain a path requiring little quick and nimble maneuvering. Survey the landscape, mine the data, set a course, and sail. Along the way, there’s the ability to make slight adjustments for efficiencies, accommodate unforeseen changes.
Nic Lemyre (Photo: Norges Idrettshøgskole/Norwegian Sports Academy/)
“We’re thinking our starting point is to build a really strong relay team, on both the women’s and the men’s side,” Lemyre told FasterSkier. “We want to have five athletes, so that we can rotate with the fifth athlete and we’re never in a situation where we can’t field a strong team because one athlete’s injured or sick.”
According to Lemyre, the composite team must be derived of skiers who can hit specific individual benchmarks “[When] we have athletes that can start scoring points in every race they enter on the world cup, that’s a medium term goal,” Lemyre said. “From there, we start aiming for the top-15 for all athletes that are identified in that group.“
Part of the reasoning behind the relay vision is that for a skier to get a permanent spot on the World Cup, the athlete not only has to reach a high level, but also help raise four other Canadians up to that level. Lemyre believes this should foster cooperation and team spirit.
“It helps us meet goals of performance,” Lemyre added. “But also it helps us meet goals that are related to how to build a strong performance culture, where the athletes need to support each other, to learn from each other. They need to push each other. They need to push each other beyond limits they may have experienced before.”
How do we get there?
After PyeongChang, CCC appeared to have both the political will to start the painful process of another re-invention. However, that will came with a reduced budget with which CCC could support its future options.
The simplified model of corporate restructuring begins with terminating certain roles and concludes with creating new roles filled by new individuals near the top of the organizational pyramid. Often, in a medium or large corporation, most people will be shuffled around and only a few near the top will lose their jobs. The final step is to find a quick win to help the newly reshaped organization gain morale and unify.
In a small organization like CCC, everyone is near the top. While the process works well for the survival of the organization, it can be hard on individuals.
The change at CCC began with long-time High Performance (HP) director Tom Holland’s planned retirement. Lemyre was hired as a consultant to oversee the restructuring of the HP group. Shortly before Lemyre’s hiring, CCC eliminated some positions.
As Joel Quenneville’s recent firing demonstrates, proven ability and past success is not enough to provide job security during a reboot. (Quenneville was the NHL’s Chicago, Blackhawk’s head coach since 2008. During his tenure Quenneville lead the team to three Stanley Cups.)
On November 1st, CCC hired Erik Bråten as a new national team coach and modified Louis Bouchard’s title. Bouchard remains head of the National Training Centre in Mont Ste-Anne, Québec, with the added title and responsibilities of World Cup Head Coach.
Bråten, a recent Norwegian School of Sports Science graduate with a specialization in cross-country skiing, won the 2018 coach of the year award from the Norwegian ski federation. This hiring didn’t happen as quickly as some had hoped, but is considered the first win for CCC’s new structure.
“Erik has a strong sports science background applied to cross-country skiing,” Lemyre said on the phone. “His profile is unique in our environment. The fact that he’s young is really positive for us, because he’s open to this new experience. He comes with a solid base, and his excitement and his motivation, I think, will be great assets in applying that knowledge in the right culture in Canada. At an individual level, Erik is unique in working one on one with athletes. I think our athletes are going to really appreciate that.”
Along with bringing in new personel, Lemyre aims to improve sharing of training information in Canada. In Norway’s organizational structure, athletes and coaches are able to log hours and training plans on an interface organized by the Norwegian National Ski Federation. It’s a model and template Lemyre is intimate with.
“The fact is that we have a large country, and we can’t be with athletes every day of the year following them on site,” Lemyre said. “Now the technology is there to pool [training data] in a way that our coaching staff and the local coaches can communicate really well, But also as we’re building up our science team, we also have interaction with our different people involved in helping the athletes develop.”
Dahria Beatty racing the 2018 Holmenkollen 30 k freestyle mass start in Oslo, Norway. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Another planned shift is to interchange athletes between Europe and Canada more often. For example, Dahria Beatty will start the season in Canada — a change encouraged by her coach Chris Jeffries and supported by Lemyre.
“This summer my coach Chris and I came up with a plan that allowed me to stay in Canada to start the season to build into the race season and then head over the Europe and race on the World Cup circuit leading up to World Championships in Seefeld,” Beatty said. “With this being the first year of the new quadrennial, it is the perfect time to fine tune some of those race details domestically before leaving for Europe mid-December. I am looking forward to racing part of the Tour de Ski then period 3 and hopefully finding my peak for World Championships and World Cup finals in Quebec.”
Lemyre’s concept is to allow athletes like Beatty to build into the early part of the season domestically and arrive in Europe at a higher level of race fitness.
“The way we scheduled the trips this year, giving some athletes the chance to prepare very well before they race on the World Cup,” Lemyre added. “I think some of them will be stronger when they show up on the World Cup, and also they’ll be able to sustain that level of performance over the time period they are on the World Cup. We will try to be a little more selective and well prepared when we show up, and then post really good results when the athletes are racing the World Cup.”
Jeffries stated that the stress of living abroad, a dynamic known all to well by North American World Cup skiers, can be counterproductive to a developing athlete.
“The last few years, our top athletes spent the majority of their time in Europe,” Jeffries said. “I think it stalled our development a little bit, because we’re always living out of a suitcase, and we’re always having to ski races where we’re trying to perform.”
Dave Wood spent 18 years as a national team coach. His time leading the team included the post-Nagano rebuild and managing athletes at the Olympics in Vancouver. His vision includes giving skiers more time to develop and less emphasis on being fast all season.
“Sara [Renner] had far less World Cup starts before she was top-15 at the Olympics than the people of today,” Wood said. “I think that this big argument about experience is valuable when you are looking for seconds. When you are looking for minutes, [World Cup experience] makes no difference.”
Will it Work?
The U.S. has been able to develop a strong women’s team built off Kikkan Randall’s determination to drag U.S. skiing to the top. Randall took inspiration and knowledge from Canada’s post-1998 rebuild where Scott, Renner, Milaine Thériault, Jamie Fortier and Amanda Fortier decided it was time to lead the charge.
American Kikkan Randall tucking during the women’s 10 k classic mass start at 2018 World Cup Finals in Falun, Sweden. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
In both cases, the athletes didn’t succeed alone. The “fantastic five” got the support of Holland, Wood, and many others. Randall also collected a large supporting cast, well documented by Peggy Shinn’s book ‘World Class’.
Laura McCabe, now a Methow Valley coach and two-time Olympian, spent most of her free time in Nagano with the Canadian women’s team because it felt like a group that had a vision and a willingness to support one another to collective success.
“It just shoots you up the ladder when you come back and you feel like you have a very safe place, you’re working on this goal together, you’re all in it together, and you’re there for each other all the time,” McCabe told FasterSkier. “I felt like the Canadian women were doing that. And now I feel like Matt Whitcomb has led that charge for the American women.”
While crediting Randall for starting the process, McCabe feels that the team’s work to be a team is the critical factor.
“They have goals, team goals and they have personal goals,” McCabe said. “They are always there for each other. One of their biggest goals is to basically keep their relationships positive and keep everybody moving forward. I think that is one of the number one reasons that team is doing well.”
In a conversation last May with FasterSkier, Yukon coaching icon Alain Masson spoke of the complexities of achieving success on the international stage. Simply possessing physical gifts, the aerobic capacity, the predisposition to tolerate and absorb high training loads, is no guarantee of success.
There’s the behind the scenes unglamourous work of nurturing athletes, remaining true to organizational core values, and feeding the system with money, intellect, and vision.
“Definitely, there’s a minimum set of physical characteristics that you need to perform at that level,” Masson explained to FasterSkier. “But you also need many characteristics, personality characteristics, that are vital. What Alex showed, and Sara Renner, and Chandra [Crawford] and Beckie [Scott]. I think athletes that combine both the physical and the mental characteristic at a time when the program works together, and everything lines up with the funding, good leadership, and everybody working together. That’s the difficulty, this is the issue, trying to get all of that together. As the women in the U.S. have demonstrated, when you have all of that lining up, it’s amazing what you can do.”
Canada’s Alex Harvey celebrating on the podium after placing second in the men’s 15 k freestyle mass start in Seefeld, Austria, for his best result of the 2018 World Cup season. (Photo: Salomon/NordicFocus)
Cross Country Canada (CCC) has begun a reboot process as the new Olympic cycle starts. Corporations call this a reset, a rebranding, a new direction, restructuring, and various other names that try to disguise the challenges and issues that come with enacting real change.
The reboot process traditionally starts with an acknowledgement that the current level of success, and that of the foreseeable future, doesn’t align with the goals or the potential of the organization.
Canada left PyeongChang with no medals at three consecutive Olympics, only one skier in the World Cup red group, and a perception that there was no obvious successor to Alex Harvey.
There are many people who, with the benefit of hindsight, believe that CCC allowed itself to be trapped by a combination of success and the Own The Podium (OTP) funding model.
The process of assigning blame for the past, called “blamestorming”in the corporate world, is one of the most effective ways to waste time and destroy morale without doing anything to improve the future. The “best practices” approach to a reboot starts with four apparently simple questions: How did we get here? Where are we now? Where do we want to be in five years? How can we get there?
While CCC does many things as a national sport body, this article will focus on high performance and the development system.
How did we get here?
After a disastrous 1998 Olympics in Nagano, CCC shrank to a full-time staff of five and endured a forced re-invention. Four years later, in 2002 at Salt Lake, Beckie Scott won all three medals in the skiathlon after the initial silver and gold medalists were caught doping. Sara Renner missed the B final in the sprint for 9th place.
Canadian Chandra Crawford in the 2011 team sprint in Dusseldorf, Germany. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
In 2006 in Torino, Chandra Crawford earned a surprise gold in the sprint while Scott finished fourth. Scott had earlier teamed up with Renner for a team sprint silver medal.
In 2010, there were no Canadian cross-country medals. However, there were signs of promise. Renner skied to her fourth Olympic top-10 finish. All four Canadians competing in the men’s skiathlon finished in the top-15. Devon Kershaw lost out in final kilometer of the 50 k to finish fifth, 1.6 seconds away from gold.
That post-Vancouver glow was possibly the point where CCC temporarily slid off the rails.
A number of Canadian sports fell victim to OTP incentives. A sport qualifies for OTP funding by having good prospects for a medal in the next Olympics. The money comes with strings attached, to ensure that resources are spent on improving the probability that specific individuals will podium. For smaller sports where the OTP money is a significant proportion of the sport’s annual budget, it is hard to make choices that put that money at risk. Choices like balancing the emerging athletes in the pipeline, while simultaneously supporting those athletes already at the top-end of the sport.
As a result, many sports have lost their OTP eligibility by losing the focus on development and the vision that qualified the sport for OTP in the first place. Some people put cross-country skiing in the list of sports that fell into this trap.
After 2010, the future looked bright. Harvey and Kershaw were World Champions in the 2011 team sprint. Kershaw was second overall in the 2011/2012 World cup. (A feat only equaled in North America by Scott and Jessie Diggins).
Harvey arrived at Sochi in 2014 as a medal favorite. He was fresh off a World Cup podium in Toblach the weekend before the 2014 Games began. Sochi ended poorly when Canada, along with Norway, couldn’t solve the difficult waxing conditions.
The results in PyeongChang were similar to 2002 numerically: Harvey was close to a medal in multiple races and Lenny Valjas collected 7th in the classic sprint. A medal would have changed the mood, but not overall situation.
Where are we now?
Post-PyeongChang, CCC believes Canada is not achieving the international results a country with plentiful snow and 37 million people is capable of.
The development system in Canada consists of the National Team, the official training centers (Centre National d’Entrainment Pierre Harvey (CNEPH), Thunder Bay National Team Development Centre (TBay), and the Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA)), and the clubs. The ten provinces and three territories have teams, but don’t have a formal place in the development system as each of the thirteen regions approaches development support differently. In the last few years, the number of clubs actively recruiting and developing athletes while supporting a high performance team has increased. For our purposes, as no official name has been affixed to these clubs, the term ‘elite club’ will be used here.
In the past, all national team members were required to belong to a training center while developing athletes were encouraged to join.
“I can speak for many of the athletes, they thought that if they didn’t go to a training centre, then they might as well quit skiing,” Telemark’s coach Adam Elliot said. “It was that broad of a choice, they felt they had to choose between skiing and school immediately.”
The landscape is more diverse now, with more options. The examples that follow skew to Western Canada, largely because the coaches quoted brought teams to Sovereign Lake snow camps in May and November and were available for in-person interviews. Eastern Canada remains equally diverse in terms of its club offerings.
A common theme among the coaches and athletes is that each athlete’s needs are different, and he or she needs to find an environment that fills those needs. FasterSkier asked AWCA’s head coach Chris Jeffries how an athlete should choose his or her path to success.
“It’s such an individual, case by case thing,” he said. “I don’t have an answer.”
In 2017, a shift to allow more development paths resulted in new senior National Team member Gareth Williams staying at his home club, Telemark, in Kelowna, BC. Elliot described how it came about.
“Tom Holland approached us, for Gareth, and said we like what you’re doing in the Okanagan, and we want to keep Gareth there. We’re going to support you and your program to be able to support Gareth.”
Also in 2017, Julien Locke returned to his home club Black Jack while Russell Kennedy shifted to the new Team R.A.D., part of the Canmore Nordic Club.
To further illustrate the spectrum of options and pathways, FasterSkier contacted three Canadian athletes, each with a history of NorAm podiums and some international success, to discuss their ski-training choices. Dahria Beatty started at AWCA and has remained there, Evan Palmer-Charette started at TBay then recently moved to Team R.A.D., and Andy Shields has gone rogue.
Dahria Beatty en route to 20th overall in the Seefeld World Cup freestyle sprint for her season-best result in 2017/2018. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
“For me, I’ve been working with Chris [Jeffries] for six years,” Beatty told FasterSkier in November. “It works really well for me, and I have a good group of training partners where I am, that can push me everyday in training.”
AWCA is also the home training group for National Team skier Emily Nishikawa and two junior national team skiers. AWCA also benefits from its close proximity to a number of other training groups.
“For me, Canmore’s a location where I want to be training, where I want to be based out of,” Beatty said. “All the pieces fit well together for [me], it’s somewhere I think I can keep improving.”
Palmer-Charrette made a summer-time decision to change things up by finding a fresh environment in Team R.A.D.
“I think the best part of being on a training centre is the entire program is based around a small group of athletes of similar age which makes for a great training and racing environment,” Palmer-Charrette wrote. “I feel training centres, as they are, are best-suited for junior/u23 athletes and especially great for athletes who are a bit late to the game like I was at the end of high school and will really benefit from learning from other athletes on the day to day training life.”
Shields is no longer affiliated with an official team. He funds his skiing by painting houses in the summer and representing ski wax companies in the winter. Although he refers to ski racing as a hobby, he did end the last season as COC leader and will race period 1 of the World Cup.
“I don’t think I could have done this straight out of junior,” Shields wrote. “My time on Tbay is still having a huge positive effect on my ski career. Being on a team through my early years as a senior made it much easier to get a decent training base and set a couple good habits in place which are paying dividends.”
Shields did reflect and offer an alternative to how he might have changed his path to elite level skiing.
“If I could go back in time I would have gone the NCAA route straight out of junior,” Shields added. “College skiing in the States is a much better deal than a training center for people in their early twenties. You can go down to the States, get a degree, not pay a dime, and come out the other side with plenty of time to have a full-time ski racing career. I would have joined a training centre upon finishing with NCAA.”
The Canadian university system differs from the U.S. model, offering little money for sports. Heading south to the U.S. as a student-athlete remains an option for some Canadian skiers. Most athletes remain in the Canadian system to develop. With that in mind, FasterSkier asked why some athletes had chosen some of the Western based training centres.
Jeffries, who leads the AWCA, also noted how his program has evolved. There appears to be room at the AWCA for those with concurrent goals. The AWCA has partnered with the University of Calgary to allow AWCA athletes to work towards degrees.
“We’re always evolving our programming, and what it entails, and how we package it,” Jeffries said. “That’s why we have this new university program this year, because you just look at the popular decision making of graduated high school athletes.”
Elliott, based in the Okanagan, said his program offers athletes a well rounded experience too.
“You’ve got the trifecta,” Elliot said. “You’ve got access to education opportunities for post-secondary. We’ve got the university, UBC Okanagan, and the college. Most of the people who’ve moved here have gone to school. Secondly, it’s the Okanagan. Which is probably the best place to ski in North America, with skiing up and down the valley –with Nickel Plate, Telemark, [Kelowna] Nordic, Sovereign, and Larch Hills. The third is that you’re moving into a community of skiers: family, volunteers, everybody trying to make a go of keeping people in sport.”
Clearly the times have changed from a programming perspective and the past’s financial windfall for Canadian cross-country skiing.
“Probably the quad between 2010 and 2014, CCC had more money almost than it knew what to do with, ” Dave Wood, former National Team head coach, told FasterSkier in May as he finished up a long ski day. “Now, I think the budget’s still three and a half million. While it’s maybe low compared to what it has been, it’s a hell of a lot higher than it was in ‘99, by about four times.”
Former CCC High Performance Director Tom Holland spoke of those larger commitment from clubs during the Frozen Thunder races in October.
“There’s a lot more resources,” Holland said, referencing the increased numbers of coaches attending Frozen Thunder with their athletes. “One of the reasons clubs are more important now is that there are paid coaches at the clubs. That’s why training centres started in the 90’s, because you’ve got to have a coach, full-time.”
Thee deep question remains: what next for Cross Country Canada as it ponders a post-Alex Harvey scene? Better and more diverse options for Canadian skiers, like those modernizing their offerings to connect with the student-athlete, is a step forward. But fans of the sport, and of course Cross Country Canada, have short-term and long-term goals. No one wants to see another Olympic quadrennial transpire without the glimmer of medal potential at the international championship level.
“I think when Alex Harvey retires, mostly likely after next year with Lenny Valjas, it will be the end of an era having athletes being able to finish on the podium at World Cups, World Championships, said Alain Masson, Whitehorse head coach. “So definitely, the program is going to go into a real rebuilding phase with lots of young athletes, but no guarantee of success in the near future.”
A scene from the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
A full Olympic quad after Sochi, nothing remains irrefutably clean. Off the radar then on again, the Sochi doping scandal has sent recent tremors through the sports world.
In a quick summary, after the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, the host nation was handed sanctions for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics that affected some of its athletes. A total ban from Rio was not enacted despite the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) recommending the contrary. Russian athletes competed under the Russian flag.
At the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) handed down a fiercer sanction. Russia as an official team and its Olympic delegation were banned from the Games, as were athletes suspected of taking part in the Sochi affair.
Russian winter athletes without any ties to the scandal competed under the IOC’s neutral flag as the Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR).
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Russia’s 2018 Olympians prior to the Games on Jan. 31, 2018. (Photo: Wikipedia)
At the 2018 Games, OAR cross-country athletes were on-form. They were repeated medalists, fast and collectively young.
Today (Thursday, Sept. 20), it was the WADA’s turn to take another stance. During a meeting in Seychelles, the WADA Executive Committee (EC) voted to reinstate the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA).
WADA announced the decision via Twitter. In the two-part tweet, WADA President Sir Craig Reedie stated, “Today, the great majority of WADA’s ExCo decided to reinstate RUSADA as compliant with the Code subject to strict conditions, upon recommendation by the Agency’s independent CRC and in accordance with an agreed process.
“This decision provides a clear timeline by which WADA must be given access to the former Moscow laboratory data and samples with a clear commitment by the ExCo that should this timeline not be met, it would support the CRC’s recommendation to reinstate non-compliance.”
For reasons already exhaustively documented, RUSADA was deemed non-compliant in November 2015. By August 2017, WADA had created a concrete outline of concessions and reforms known as the RUSADA: Roadmap to Compliance.
The roadmap reads like a hardened list of demands. In Part I of the document, WADA notes 20 actions already taken by RUSADA as conditions for reinstatement as a compliant anti-doping agency. Part II details 12 steps that remained unfulfilled at the time of the roadmap’s release. Much of those 12 steps begin with the words “RUSADA must”. Last week, it became public that much of WADA’s leadership have a malleable understanding of the word “must”.
Here’s the basic background to understanding how WADA’s Sept. 20 EC vote transpired:
Two critical conditions set forth in the RUSADA roadmap remained unmet by Russia as of Sept. 20, 2018. Russia has not officially accepted the McLaren Report findings and has not provided WADA with unmanipulated digital forensic data or unfettered access to RUSADA’s Moscow lab.
Starting this summer, it was time for WADA and RUSADA to think about a resolution.
In a letter obtained by the BBC dated June 22, 2018, signed by Reedie and WADA Director General Olivier Niggli, the two responded to a recent overture from Russian Minister of Sport Pavel Kolobkov. The letter clarified how WADA would be willing to move forward in negotiating Russia’s reinstatement.
Kolobkov’s response did not mention the McLaren Report commissioned by WADA, but it did acknowledge the IOC’s 2017 Schmid Report (the IOC investigation into the McLaren Report’s findings). But no overt guilt was admitted in the letter. Instead, it made a tepid hint at conciliation. According to the letter, the Russian Federation “fully accepted the decision of the IOC Executive Board on December 5, 2017, that was made based on the findings of the Schmid Report.”
The main body of Kolobkov’s letter establishes a quid pro quo. It states that only after RUSADA is reinstated, and with the consent of the Russia Investigative Committee, Russia will provide access to its lab and data. Kolobkov provides no timeline for when Russia would provide these two key provisions after reinstatement.
Beckie Scott with the gold medal she was awarded at a ceremony in Vancouver in June 2004. A former Canadian cross-country skier, Scott finished third in the 5 k pursuit at the 2002 Olympics but was later awarded gold when the two women ahead of her were disqualified for using performance-enhancing drugs. (Photo: Cross Country Canada)
On Sept. 14, only a day after Kolobkov’s letter, WADA’s Compliance Review Committee (CRC) approved RUSADA’s reinstatement. A member of the CRC, Beckie Scott, a former Canadian cross-country skier and Olympic gold medalist, resigned her position last week in protest of the pending reinstatement. Scott remains the Chair of WADA’s Athlete Commission.
In an interview with the CBC on Thursday following the official decision, Scott said she was “profoundly disappointed”.
“I feel that this was an opportunity for WADA as the global body responsible for regulating doping in sport and responsible for the rights of clean athletes has really dealt a devastating blow to clean athletes with this decision and I’m quite dismayed with the way things went today,” she continued.
“With WADA’s sudden shift in position raising questions about its transparency and about where its loyalties lie, we must begin the journey of returning trust to the system, enhancing WADA and creating a system fit for the next generations of athletes,” Moses wrote. “Having spoken to athletes, I know they overwhelmingly support the right decision being made in the Seychelles — they overwhelmingly support WADA’s sticking to its road map. This was not the time, they say, for the global antidoping body to perform the U-turn of all U-turns.”
The U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) issued a press release echoing sentiments to instill faith in the anti-doping system.
“We hope that WADA can reach a conclusion on RUSADA that will give athletes a firm belief that when they compete, it will be on a level playing field, without any doubts,” it stated. “Anything that stops short of satisfying that will not only be a huge disappointment to the USOC and American athletes, but to the entire Olympic and Paralympic movements.”
But according to Reedie, Russia’s reinstatement is key to progress WADA’s worldwide mission.
“It’s my convinced view that the best thing WADA can do is to have an efficient and well-operated anti-doping system in Russia, and we’ve been trying to do that for two years,” he told the BBC. “This moves things forward.”
“To sit back and do nothing doesn’t serve the world of sport so I think progress has been made,” Reedie added. “To the members of the Ukad, athletes’ commission, I am grateful to them for their advice and can be reassured that I take their advice and I operate within the roadmap.”
One WADA EC member, Linda Helleland, Norway’s sport minister and vice president of WADA as she represents national governments on the EC, declared herself a “no” vote prior to today’s meeting.
FasterSkier will update this story with any new developments.
Canada’s Devon Kershaw racing at 2017 World Cup Finals in Quebec City, where he finished 26th in the 15 k freestyle pursuit and 19th for time of day in the last race of the 2016/2017 season. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
On April 26, Devon Kershaw posted a photo on social media of Alpina boots hanging on a line. The next day, he spoke on the phone with FasterSkier from his new home in Lillehammer, Norway, after a day of running around outside with his 15-month-old daughter, Asta Isabel.
Kershaw was tired, but in a good way. For the first time in 17 years, he was ready for a new challenge, a new focus and much more time with his daughter and wife, Kristin Størmer Steira, a former standout Norwegian skier.
Three years after Steira left professional cross-country skiing and pursued a career in business, starting with her master’s degree in business management, Kershaw is following suit and headed back to school. The 35-year-old Canadian hung up his boots to quietly announce his retirement after about a month of deliberation.
“I was really keen to keep ski racing, to be honest,” Kershaw said. “I had the motivation to go one more year, and in my head, I wanted to race one more season, but as things progressed in the spring, there were a lot of different factors that just made it seem like, oh man, it doesn’t look like it’s gonna be super realistic at this point.
“I struggled with that, when you feel like you still have more in the tank,” he continued. “But at the same time, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword in the sense that it’s been a fantastic career.”
Kershaw was quick to reflect on his roots as a kid growing up in Sudbury, Ontario, “a mining town with a small but passionate skiing community,” as he put it. He also reiterated how proud he was to represent Canada for 17 consecutive seasons, first as a junior national team skier for two seasons starting in 2001, then as an under-23 national team member in 2003, and finally as a full-fledged World Cup Team member starting in 2004.
Devon Kershaw (l) and Alex Harvey celebrate their 2011 World Championships gold in Oslo, Norway. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
His career included three World Cup wins and 14 podiums, and a gold medal at 2011 World Championships with teammate Alex Harvey in the classic team sprint. Kershaw finished the 2011/2012 World Cup season ranked second overall and second in the distance rankings.
When he reflects on those accomplishments, he still has a hard time believing that all happened to him.
“So instead of focusing on being bummed at the situation or a bit frustrated with the state of things in Canadian skiing right now, I have to look back with a smile,” Kershaw said. “I feel just so privileged and grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of a real movement for men’s skiing in Canada.”
Kershaw said he was left with unanswered questions this spring during a transitionary period at Cross Country Canada (CCC). The team’s budget was undetermined, camps were not yet set in stone, and Kershaw said his decision — which he wanted to make by May 1, the start of the new training year — became about energy management.
“Part of managing your energy properly is putting all of your energy and focus into training, and if you’re being pulled with uncertainty or being stressed about uncertainty, that will come back, the World Cup will exploit that,” he said.
According to CCC Chief Executive Officer Shane Pearsall, High Performance Director Thomas Holland had planned to retire this past March, yet has stayed onboard as an advisor until CCC fills the position. Pearsall said the hiring process is still ongoing and will hopefully be wrapped up by next month. He confirmed that CCC has yet to finalize its budget and doesn’t anticipate being able to do so until a government minister signs off on the amount from Own The Podium (OTP), one of its primary funding sources, in July. Pearsall explained that they expect to have a better sense of national-team finances in mid to late June.
Typically, the team’s budget is determined in May, but because of necessary “quad reviews” following the Olympics, which took place before CCC met with OTP, the process was delayed by about a month. Pearsall did not elaborate on how significantly the budget would be decreased from last year, but said, “It’s certainly tighter than last year.”
Kershaw said he needed to pay about $25,000 Canadian dollars in team fees if he wanted to continue racing this year, up from $15,000 last year. That didn’t cover the cost of living, which he figured to be around $55,000 Canadian, for a grand total of $80,000.
“The financial burden is big, and moving forward the financial burden went from big to 100 percent paying for every cost,” Kershaw said. “So all travel, accommodations, everything. … I’ve just been in the sport a long, long time, and from a directional standpoint, I’m not sure we’re moving in a direction that will yield sustainable results at this point in time, but I understand it is difficult when you’re under such financial duress to create a sustainable program. But from a vision standpoint, I think there’s a lot of questions that remain unanswered, and it’s late in April. The fact of the matter is the rest of the world has all of the holes plugged — if they have holes in their boat — because May 1 is the new year of every ski program. And we’re just constantly slow and off the mark with that.”
Budget cuts had been expected as Canada’s World Cup Team missed performance benchmarks throughout last season. The team finished 2017/2018 with just two men scoring World Cup points (top 30) in distance races: Harvey and Kershaw. Two men (Harvey and Julien Locke) scored in World Cup sprints. On the women’s side, Dahria Beatty landed one World Cup sprint top-30 last season, and Cendrine Browne was the top Canadian woman in a distance race with a 27th place for time of day in the last race of the season.
Meanwhile, Alex Harvey led the team with four World Cup podiums, including third overall in the 2018 Tour de Ski, and a top result of fourth place at the 2018 Olympics. He finished his season in fourth in both the Overall and Distance World Cup standings. But Harvey’s results alone weren’t enough to buoy the whole team for another winter.
“Throughout my entire career, it’s almost unfathomable to think that the season ends and that’s the stat line,” Kershaw said of the team’s overall results. “It wasn’t so long ago that we had over 16 World Cup podiums in a season. The truth hurts, as [former Canadian coach] Tor-Arne Hetland once said, but things go in waves and this is the reality that we live in right now.”
Despite the prospect of self-funding, Kershaw didn’t feel pressed into retirement. Several of his teammates have decided to retire as well, including Graeme Killick, Jess Cockney and Knute Johnsgaard, but Kershaw said they weren’t forced, either.
“You can choose to work and you can choose to hustle for money; there are ways to make it,” he said. “No one’s forced into it. I could keep skiing if I wanted to, but I think the stark choice you’re faced with is, maybe perhaps some people are like, I can’t really see a path to international success currently, and that’s what I think is sad…”
‘A dream scenario’
When Kershaw moved to Canmore, Alberta, in 2001 and entered Canada’s elite skiing scene, Cross Country Canada (CCC) was entering a fruitful period. At the 2002 Olympics, Beckie Scott was proclaimed winner of the women’s 10-kilometer pursuit (now called the skiathlon), becoming the first North American woman to win an Olympic gold. At 2005 World Championships, Sara Renner earned a sprint bronze to become the first North American woman to medal at World Championships. Scott and Renner teamed up for silver in the team sprint at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy, where yet another Canadian woman, Chandra Crawford, won the individual skate sprint for Canada’s second-straight gold in as many Winter Olympics. Scott finished that 2005/2006 season ranked second overall in the World Cup, just 16 points behind Norway’s Marit Bjørgen in first.
Devon Kershaw (r) with Graham Nishikawa in 2013. (Photo: Devon Kershaw)
Kershaw made his Olympic debut in 2006.
“Coming into Torino, we were quoted in the newspaper as being like the world’s most anonymous men’s ski team,” he said of the Canadian men’s team that year. “We weren’t really ‘on the map,’ but I’ve just been so grateful and lucky to have such a great group of guys around that really welcomed me in.”
He credited his former roommate and teammate Chris Jeffries as well as other Canadian competitors of his time, including George Grey, Gordon Jewett, Dan Roycroft, Sean Crooks, Dave Nighbor, Phil Widmer, Brent McMurtry, and Graham Nishikawa (who’s still racing), for having a major impact on the formative stages of his career.
“[There were] so many athletes in Canmore that tried hard, wanted it bad, and loved ski racing and training,” Kershaw reflected. “That’s a dream scenario for a young athlete to come into a community like that and be welcomed into that environment.”
Less than a month after the 2006 Olympics, he notched his first World Cup podium by placing third in the Borlänge, Sweden, skate sprint. In doing so, he became the first Canadian male cross-country skier to reach the podium since Pierre Harvey (Alex’s father) in 1988 and the first ever to medal in a World Cup sprint.
“I had no idea who Pierre Harvey was,” Kershaw said of his younger self.
Pierre Harvey had previously won the 1988 Holmenkollen 50 k as well as two other World Cup distance races and the Norwegian Birkebeiner, making him the most successful Canadian male skier before Kershaw.
“He could walk into the room and I would not recognize him,” Kershaw continued. “Even his results, I had heard that he had five World Cup podiums and that seemed pretty cool, but that’s all I knew about him.”
Kershaw’s second World Cup podium came early in the 2006/2007 season in a skate sprint in Munich, Germany. That same day, Crawford — whom he was dating at the time — placed third in the women’s sprint.
Devon Kershaw after being tagged by his Canadian teammate Alex Harvey (l) in the freestyle team sprint at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. They went on to finish fourth.
At his second Olympics in 2010, Kershaw finished fifth in the 50 k classic mass start for the best individual Olympic result for a Canadian male nordic skier. That record stood until Alex Harvey, who burst onto the World Cup scene in 2008, bested it with a fourth place in the 50 k classic at this year’s Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Kershaw and Harvey also teamed up to place fourth in the freestyle team sprint at the 2010 Olympics.
Kershaw’s first World Cup win came in a skate sprint during the 2011 Tour de Ski. He finished that Tour in seventh, and the next year, came back to place fourth overall in the 2012 Tour de Ski (TdS). Kershaw started all 12 editions of the TdS, a record he shares with France’s Jean-Marc Gaillard.
Harvey scored his first individual World Cup podium in a 50 k classic in 2009 and won his first World Cup race (a 3.3 k freestyle prologue) at the TdS in 2012.
“Then next thing you know, Alex and I are sharing a podium on some World Cups,” Kershaw reminisced. “Two Canadians on one podium in the World Cup, like, really? And then you win World Championships and I’m on the overall World Cup podium, and then next thing you know, Alex has been on the overall World Cup podium a few times and also now 50 k world champion. It’s crazy. It’s insane. From nothing. From no results. The journey has just been amazing. … I never would’ve thought Canada would, I mean, how could you? We had Pierre Harvey and that’s it in, like, a hundred years of international ass-kicking.”
Kershaw credited his initial World Cup breakthrough as a 23-year-old skier in Borlänge to Dave Wood, Canada’s national-team coach at the time.
“I came into a team with a coach that you could call at midnight. He’d do anything for you,” he said of Wood. “There was no way I would’ve stepped onto the podium in 2006 without him, and Mike Cavaliere, too, my first-year senior, Mike was my coach. We had staff that was just committed to the core for the cause and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”
‘A hell of a season’
Canadian head coach Justin Wadsworth (r) giving splits to Devon Kershaw at 2012 World Cup Finals in Falun, Sweden.
Of his coaches, Kershaw gave special credit to Justin Wadsworth. A three-time U.S. Olympic cross-country skier who became Canada’s head coach in the spring of 2010, Wadsworth coached Kershaw for five seasons, and the two developed a close friendship.
“When Justin came into the national team, the level of professionalism and excitement and freshness that he brought … I don’t know if you call it luck or happenstance or just the right place, right time,” Kershaw reflected, alluding to his 2011 World Championships gold with Harvey and his 2012 Overall and Distance World Cup podiums. “Justin’s best results as a coach were me and my best results as an athlete were when I was coached by Justin. Talk about an amazing relationship there.”
“The main thing that I really appreciated with Devon, and I think he would say the same thing about me, is that we could be honest with each other and talk about hard things and enjoy the good times when we had them,” Wadsworth said on the phone last week. “… It’s cliche, but when I was talking to Devon the other day about his retirement, it’s not about the medals or the performances or whatever, it’s about your times together on the road.”
One of Kershaw’s biggest moments came at those 2011 World Championships in Oslo, Norway, where he and Harvey beat out Norway’s Petter Northug and Ola Vigen Hattestad by 0.2 seconds for gold on the Norwegians’ home turf. They had done so after Kershaw lost one of his skis early in the race, Wadsworth pointed out.
“His ski fully came off and he had to put it back on and get back into the race,” Wadsworth said. “Just the whole day was pretty incredible. That was a great, great opportunity for us, and the guys cashed in.”
Devon Kershaw (l) and Alex Harvey with their World Championship gold medals at the 2011 World Championships in Oslo, Norway.
In a difficult-yet-strategic move to conserve for that race, Kershaw and Harvey both sat out the 15 k classic the day before.
“With anybody else running the ship, there’s no way I would’ve trusted that [decision],” Kershaw said of Wadsworth’s call. “But I trusted Justin’s leadership and we went all-in, and the next thing you know we won World Championships. I mean, are you kidding me? How can you get a better start to the next quadrennial? And Justin as a first-year head coach of a national team, that’s gotta go down as maybe the best season ever for a first-year North American coach of a national-team program.”
He and Wadsworth reiterated the crucial foundation that Wood had laid.
“Dave Wood had done a really good job with the athletes leading into that period, mainly focused on building a big base and doing a lot of hours and also doing a lot of time at altitude,” Wadsworth explained. “And when I took over the position, I saw that both Alex and Devon were really primed and had a really good response rate to altitude, and all we had to do was fine tune a little bit of strength training and intensity. I was really excited to work with both those athletes and saw that they had a lot of potential.”
For Kershaw, Wadsworth’s “American swagger … was magic for me,” he said. During the 2011/2012 season alone, he stood on the podium 10 times, with four top-three finishes in seven races at the 2012 Tour de Ski.
“It was a hell of a season for me,” Kershaw said.
‘Best sand-digger ever’
He went on to compete at two more World Championships and two more Olympics. This past season, Kershaw finished in the top 30 in eight World Cup distance races, with a top result of 19th in the 30 k skiathlon in Lillehammer, Norway. While struggling with lung issues, he finished 26th in the 50 k classic at the PyeongChang Olympics.
Devon Kershaw racing to 25th in the World Cup 15 k classic this past March in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
“We worked to get that under control and it was manageable but it never felt good like it felt prior to 2015,” Kershaw said his health over the last three seasons. “In PyeongChang, it was a calamity of bad luck. When we got there it was minus 20 [Celsius], and this makes me sound so soft, because I’m from northern Ontario so you’d think I’d know, but it was really cold. I did some intervals and it aggravated my lungs and it was super windy and dirty and a lot of sand blowing around, and that really flared up my asthma to the point that I was wheezing badly.”
His breathing troubles also affected his sleeping and took most of the two-week Olympics to manage. At one point, he had a chest X-ray to make sure it wasn’t pneumonia.
“It was sporting asthma,” he said. “… It took all the way to the 50 k to kind of get it 70 percent.”
While he noted he was left wanting more from a performance standpoint at both his final Olympics and in his final season, Kershaw also acknowledged that he’s his biggest critic.
“That’s been probably the biggest detriment to my entire career; I’m the best sand-digger ever,” he said. “I am disappointed in the sense that I work really hard and I train hard and I prepare well, and it didn’t go exactly as planned. … When you’ve competed in the top 10 for as many years as I have and on the podium, of course that becomes your bar that you hope to achieve, but at the same time … when you’re in the top 30 in the results page, you’re in the race at least. And I’m proud of the fact that in almost all classic races, not every, but most, I was in the top 30 and ‘in the race’.
“Am I satisfied? In my life I’ll probably never be satisfied, that’s just how it goes,” he added with a laugh. “But am I somewhat proud of maintaining a fairly competitive level? Yeah, absolutely.”
Wadsworth reflected that Kershaw was one of the best athletes he had ever seen, even “physiologically as good as Alex [Harvey]” at the peak of his career.
Left to right: Canada’s Devon Kershaw leads his teammate Alex Harvey and U.S. Ski Team members Noah Hoffman, Erik Bjornsen and Simi Hamilton during a Level 3 interval skate session up Snake Creek Canyon in Midway, Utah, during their respective teams’ 2016 training camps in Park City, Utah. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)
“Devon’s a very intelligent person and sometimes he might’ve overthought things and lacked in confidence, and as a coach that’s really frustrating to see because you know how good they are physically,” Wadsworth said. “And when he was on mentally, too, in training, when he was at his very best, he had total confidence and could destroy anybody in any workout.”
He recalled a hill-bounding workout with the Norwegian team in which Kershaw was literally leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else — even Martin Johnsrud Sundby and Russia’s Ilia Chernousov, who joined the training session.
“He was just shelling everybody,” Wadsworth said. “So when Devon was at his best like that and mentally confident and relaxed, he was a real force of nature. Unfortunately that didn’t always translate into the racing season, but in 2012 he put it all together and had a tremendous year. … If he had the confidence the whole time, he would’ve been almost unbeatable, in my opinion, but it takes the whole package all the time, and he was among the greats there for a while.”
‘Younger, faster, better dog’
And then there was Harvey, another one Kershaw’s of his best friends and longtime roommates.
“I’ve spent more nights in a room with him than my wife or any girlfriend I’ve had,” Kershaw joked. “… He was eager to learn, he chased me for years, he was always a hard worker, too. He trained really hard, he believed in himself, and I still am in total awe of that. I’ve never met anybody as confident as him. It’s too bad that didn’t rub off on me, but that’s been great to be around.”
He likened Harvey’s addition to the team as a family adopting a puppy.
“You know when your parents get a puppy because your dog is 10 years old? He’s kind of slowing down a little bit and then you see that old dog get fired up and run again and jump around and play; that’s me,” Kershaw said. “And I’m so grateful that my owners got a younger, faster, better dog to hang out with because it was so inspiring.”
Several times over the last few years, Kershaw has said that witnessing Harvey make Canadian history has been one of his biggest reasons for staying in the sport.
“He, for sure, has kept me in this probably longer than I should’ve,” Kershaw said. “I just love traveling with him and seeing what he can accomplish and training with him and seeing that professionalism.
“There’s no question he’s the best Canadian skier ever, that’s not even close,” he added. “… I just feel so honored that I got the chance to see it all happen, from his last-year junior when he did his first World Cups and then all the way though I’ve been with him.”
The Canadian men’s relay after placing third in January 2017 in Ulricehamn, Sweden, for Canada’s best-ever World Cup result in the 4 x 7.5 k relay. From left to right: Lenny Valjas, Alex Harvey, Knute Johnsgaard, and Devon Kershaw. (Photo: Salomon/NordicFocus)
In an email, Harvey explained that he and Kershaw first met in the fall of 2005 at a training camp at Sovereign Lake, British Columbia. Harvey was on the junior team and Kershaw a senior, but the whole team stayed at the same hotel.
One morning, Kershaw accidentally took Harvey’s poles from the hotel. Harvey had to track him down on the ski trails to get them back.
“That was the first time I talked to him and to me it’s just perfect because that’s so Devon,” Harvey wrote.
Later that season on March 7, 2006, Kershaw made history with his first podium. That same day, Harvey won his first national title in the 10 k classic at Canada’s senior national championships as a 17-year-old junior.
“I guess our friendship was meant to be before we even knew it!” Harvey wrote.
When the two became teammates, Harvey immediately took to imitating Kershaw, both in training and racing.
“He took me under his wings and he has a big part in the athlete I became today,” Harvey wrote, likening Kershaw to a big brother. “I feel very privileged to have spent all that time with him. I think we became such close friends because we are both very driven athletes and we don’t accept any compromise. We’re both huge fans of our sport, ‘nor-dorks’, so we also love to talk about everything from altitude training to who is seeing who on Tour.”
Kershaw’s decision to retire didn’t surprise Harvey.
“I think it’s a mix of a few things,” Harvey wrote. “… Probably this biggest reason, he has a little girl at home. I know this winter was extremely hard on him. Not seeing Asta Isabel was pure torture, I think I would have done the exact same if I was him.
“I will miss a lot of things about Devon,” he added. “He’s always there to give good advice about everything and anything. He knows so much about all that is going on in the world, probably the most well-read person I know. He’s kinda my news source. I’m still amazed by how indecisive one can be. This brought a lot of laughter throughout the years. I have so many memories from the last 10 years with him. Seeing him dominate the World in 2012 was just amazing but also very eye-opening for me. He raised the bar for all North American skiers that year and I’m very thankful for it.
“We both lived great emotions in high accomplishments and huge disappointments. I’d like to think I helped him get through these upsets and I can say he definitively helped me get through mine. A page turns in the life of Devon Kershaw but knowing the man, I’m not worried about what’s gonna come next.”
Without Kershaw, Killick, Cockney, and Johnsgaard on the men’s team, Harvey acknowledged that next winter will be “very different” for him on the World Cup.
“All these guys are calling it a career and I’m super proud of what all my friends accomplished,” he wrote. “I’m excited to try to help the next generation step it up and fill the shoes of the previous generation. … Also, after 10 years on Tour I’ve made some friends on other teams so I’m not too worried. I’m just excited to step into a bit of a mentor role for our next generation.”
Onto the Next
As for Kershaw, he didn’t rule out coaching future generations of Canadian skiers, but he said he was focused on getting an education first. In just over a week, he’ll start a course that requires 20 hours of classes a week — all in Norwegian — for what he anticipates will take six months. The course is essentially an advanced version of Norwegian as a second language, and foreigners must pass it to pursue a degree in Norway.
After that, Kershaw plans to apply to universities “and hopefully study forever,” he said with a laugh. “Not forever, but study, and I want to stay involved in skiing in any way I can and I want to help the next generation get better.
Kristin Størmer Steira (l) and Devon Kershaw during a day hike on one of their acclimatization days. The couple got engaged in 2014 after summiting Mera Peak during a three-week trek in Nepal’s Himalayas. (Photo: Devon Kershaw)
“First things first, I have to get my Norwegian at a level where I can sit through a lecture and write an essay at a decently good level, at least good enough that my wife doesn’t have to rewrite it, she can just correct it,” he explained.
Asked what he’d like to study, Kershaw said medicine, specifically orthopedic surgery, has always intrigued him. (As a junior skier, Kershaw took undergraduate classes at the University of Calgary until 2006, but those credits have since expired.)
“But now I’m 35 and I’m going to have to do all of this in my third language,” he acknowledged. “So for now, I’d say that that’s still my first choice and I’m exploring what it would take.”
If not medicine, he’d like to pursue a degree in “some kind of science physiology, and then in a totally shifted way, if I have a panic attack and be like, ‘Science is too hard after ski racing forever,’ then I am interested in economics and economic theory and business to some degree…”
Regardless of which path he choses, he’ll be doing it in Norway, Kershaw said.
“I don’t mind the challenge. … It’s intimidating in a way, but it’s also really exciting,” he said. “Kristin’s family [who lives in Lillehammer] is just so fantastic and to see how happy my daughter is here, to have her family, to have family around her and everything for the short term, and I hope to be educated in Norway.”
Asked if he’ll jump into any ski races this season, Kershaw was quick to respond, “No.” But he will continue skiing. The beauty of the sport and the struggle, as he put it, is what’s kept him in it so long.
“Imagine just having a singleness, a purpose, a goal that’s just there in your face and then you get to wake up every day and do the things you absolutely love to do,” he said. “… I adore cross-country skiing. I just think it’s such a peaceful, beautiful exercise, and the technique and the flow of it all. … You’re just skiing through the woods peacefully, gliding over snow, over all the terrain you can cover. It’s a beautiful, zen-like endeavor, and I think that’s what’s kept me in it this long. And the people, the Canadian ski community, the world ski community, really. I’ve met so many inspiring people and beautiful people and worked with a lot of absolute experts and I’ve had brilliant teammates and brilliant coaches.”
And because of skiing, he met his wife and started a family in Norway.
“I have a daughter with a woman that I love and respect and am in total awe of every day of my life and without ski racing there’s no way that would’ve ever come to fruition,” he said. “There’s the biggest gift right there, as cliche and Hallmark as that sounds, it’s true.”
FasterSkier’s Alex Kochon, Nat Herz, and the author (Chelsea Little) at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Little did we know what was going on behind the scenes of those Games. Looking back at our coverage of the 2014 Olympics, I’m very proud of the work we did. But I’m not too proud to say that while we thought we had a realistic understanding of international sports governance, we were still naive to its incredible inertia.
The following is an editorial written by FasterSkier’s Editor-at-Large Chelsea Little, who has been covering doping in sport, specifically cross-country and biathlon, for the better part of the last decade. The opinions expressed are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of other FasterSkier staff.
The athletes had been disqualified from the 2014 Games by an International Olympic Committee (IOC) Commission. This was after more than 18 months of buildup in which the world learnt of systematic manipulation of the anti-doping process by the Russian state security apparatus at those Olympics.
I was both shocked, and not shocked. When all these athletes had been disqualified by the IOC and handed lifetime bans from Olympic competition, I knew in my heart of hearts that it would be undone (I’ll explain why below). But I hadn’t, somehow, put any thought into how exactly that would come to pass. So on one level, I was surprised, even if on another level I wasn’t.
When the news broke, I had written a profanity-laced all-caps message on our company Slack channel. On Twitter, I wrote, “I am so tired. That means that they have won.” That’s about all I could muster.
“I’m sure you are extremely disappointed by the CAS ruling,” one member of my extended family wrote in an email, knowing how many nights and weekends I had spent covering this story, how many hours and days of my personal life I had erased to chase it, because doing so does not pay the bills if you work for a cross-country ski website in America.
And I was disappointed.
I had thought that those nights and weekends would help make a better sporting world, help bring cheating to light, help hold the powers that be in sport accountable and call on them to do a little better.
But it felt like all that work had accomplished nothing, not changed a single thing to make nordic sports more fair.
I can only imagine how the athletes felt. The ones who found out that they would not be receiving medals after all, medals that they felt had been stolen from them by cheaters, medals that they had been slated to finally receive but now would never see.
I can only imagine.
More than anything, I was disappointed because I didn’t understand. I’m an analyst. No analysis I could do would explain to me just what had happened because CAS did not release a reasoned argument for their decision, which, as USADA General Cousel Bill Bock pointed out, is ludicrous. So at the moment we don’t know why these athletes were cleared; we only have speculation and hearsay.
In that decision, an arbitration panel wrote that they trusted the statements of whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov and investigator Richard McLaren.
That testimony that is widely speculated to have been found untrustworthy by the arbitration panel which more recently cleared the athletes.
There is a difference between provisional suspensions and rule violations, and maybe that’s the root cause (or maybe it’s not; one day we will find out).
But if two different arbitration panels can come to two completely different conclusions about whether evidence is trustworthy, then what is the point of a “high court” of arbitration? That’s disappointing.
On the other hand, maybe the new panel did believe that the whistleblower testimony was true, but that witness statements alone are not enough to prove a doping violation. We’ll set aside for a moment all the forensic evidence [see footnote 1].
If that’s the case, it’s even more disappointing. It means that all of the rhetoric over the last few years about putting more resources into investigations will not actually result in cleaner sport, unless there is a positive test or the presence of drugs or medical equipment (see: Austrian skier Wurm, Russian skier Pankratov).
It would mean that the World Anti-Doping Agency’s new “secure digital platform” for whistleblowing — and statements by athletes and doctors and team staff — are all useless to anti-doping unless they are followed by physical evidence of prohibited substances or methods.
But we don’t know the panel’s reasoning. This is all just speculation.
I was tired and disappointed because my job as a journalist is to take complicated things, and make them make sense to our readers.
Here, there was nothing to work with. There was nothing to explain.
A second suggested storyline is that the IOC set up the cases to fail, so that it would look like they tried to do something heroic, but in the end nothing would change.
To some extent, that is absolutely the case. Lifetime bans for doping have been attempted by the IOC before. Every time, they have been overturned. There was a zero percent chance it would work this time, either.
Did the IOC go further than that in “set up to fail”? Both storylines may be true. Neither may be true. But each of these storylines is far too myopic in their attempts to explain what happened with this CAS decision.
The reason that, in my heart of hearts, I knew that things would turn out just fine for most of these seemingly disqualified athletes, is that far more than CAS is broken [2].
Broken would imply that at some point the system worked. When was that, again?
This scandal has been going on for years. And in both it and other, non-Russia-related doping scandals, organizations have dragged their feet at every turn. There is no political will to keep sport clean. Ensuring clean sport would be hard. Nobody wants to do hard work. Universally, these organizations just want to run sporting events and for fans to be happy.
“We need to stop pretending sport is clean,” International Ski Federation (FIS) President Gian Franco Kasper [3] famously told New York Times reporter Rebecca Ruiz. “It’s a noble principle, but in practice? It’s entertainment. It’s drama.”
People were mad when Kasper said this, but it was an especially revealing comment. Maybe it is a testament to our optimism that we quickly moved on, focusing on how we would try to “solve” the problem of doping.
There have been individuals and groups who have worked passionately to uncover the truth, and done an admirable job. Beckie Scott at WADA [4] is one who comes to mind. But their work is always prevented from reaching its logical conclusion.
Let’s first look at the IOC, which has deservedly gotten a bad rap for dragging its investigations out for as long as seems humanly possible.
The IOC has certainly not put the resources or good-faith effort into looking under every stone, or doing so quickly. That’s how we got the first Sochi disqualifications – like Legkov’s – being announced in November of 2017. Most of the criticism leveled at the organization on this front is absolutely justified.
In all the time between May 2016, when the Sochi scandal was first broken by the New York Times, and November 2017, the IOC did very little. The decision banning Legkov relied mostly on the same evidence that had been in the McLaren Report.
The IOC Commission asked new experts to revisit the issues of scratches on sample bottles and salt content of urine samples. Basically, they repeated a lot of work which had already been done, expanding it to a larger number of samples but taking longer to do so by insisting on using different experts, who nonetheless came to the same conclusions.
For Legkov, all of this resulted in the same evidence that had been in the McLaren Report: that Legkov’s sample bottle from after the 50 k, which he had won, showed signs of being tampered with.
Sure, the IOC Commission got testimony from Rodchenkov. But that only at the last minute, perhaps because they were publicly shamed when it was revealed that they hadn’t contacted him.
It’s fair to criticize the IOC for its anemic investigation, but this is not just an IOC problem, just like the disqualifications being overturned is not really a CAS problem.
Look further. Since the McLaren Report, few other governing bodies have been doing better.
“We like to play coy, like the cat wagging its tail when the mouse runs in front,” IBU Vice President for Medical Issues Jim Carrabre told me back at the 2014 Olympics, in an interview that led to the IBU’s media chief calling me into his office at the press center and dressing me down for talking about things that he would rather journalists didn’t ask his organization’s board members.
“It goes by once or twice, and then the third time it gets bitten,” Carrabre said at the time.
He was referring to blood profiles, a topic that has recently gained prominence.
For years I have been told by various people that the IBU has cases in the works, that soon I will hear about them, that they know some people are doping and are about to catch them.
I don’t doubt that Carrabre is a true believer in the anti-doping fight. He gets pretty fired up about things, as does fellow Executive Board member Max Cobb.
But the cases that I heard rumors of, even promises of, have never materialized.
The Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) was supposed to revolutionize anti-doping and indicate if athletes had been blood doping even when no illicit substance was detected. That sure would have been handy due to the drugs’ short detection windows and athletes’ and doctors’ strategies of “microdosing.”
But there have been no doping bans on the basis of ABP in skiing or biathlon [5]. I don’t think that even the most optimistic of fans really believes that this is because there is no blood doping going on.
What does that mean? That ABP doesn’t work, that it wouldn’t hold up in arbitration? Or that something else is going on?
It would be hard to look at IBU President Anders Besseberg’s behavior in the last two years – for instance, the IBU’s continued insistence that it’s totally fine to hold events in Russia, or his demeanor and statements during meetings with athletes – and conclude anything other than that he is sympathetic to Russia and would even more generally like to simply pretend that there was no scandal in his sport.
Having a few true anti-doping crusaders on a governing board does not clean sport make. I don’t want to put words into their mouths, but probably, it just makes these crusaders even more frustrated.
“When the McLaren Report first came out, I thought that doping was the greatest threat to our sport,” U.S. biathlete Susan Dunklee told FasterSkier in January 2017. “However after watching the last few weeks play out, I believe that the IBU’s reluctance to meaningfully act to prevent doping is the greatest threat to our sport.”
Then there is FIS. As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, there were 46 skiers implicated in the McLaren report. Not all of them, obviously, were at the 2014 Olympics or Paralympics, yet as far as anyone can tell, FIS has done nothing to investigate the other cases, some of which include alleged anti-doping rule violations.
(Which, by the way, how can I get in on that? Hi? I’m over here! I know a lot about doping in skiing and I also how to do statistics!)
The data is interesting, but nothing can really be done with it, as it is old and from the days before ABP was a policy. Without the journalists or their experts explaining how they decided what an “abnormal or highly abnormal” blood profile is, it’s impossible to judge what percentage of the athletes they identify as potentially having doped actually were likely dopers.
But perhaps this indicates that someone within FIS is frustrated with how things are going. If you cared about skiing being clean, cared about doing your job well, and listened to Kasper say things like “sanctioning entire countries is purely political and I do not agree with this,” you might be frustrated too.
And here’s the last thing. In this whole scandal we are talking about one country. That’s Russia, and it has led to a lot of ideological discussion.
But it’s not really about Russia.
Yes, the IOC and the IBU and FIS want to keep Russia happy, because their sports are popular in Russia, the Russian athletes are talented and popular even outside the country, because Russia is great at hosting events, and because Russian fans travel all over to watch competitions. That’s part of it.
And yes, some commentators have complained that athletes are being punished just because they are Russian. They have complained that this is a U.S.-led effort reviving Cold War hostilities. That we are Russophobes. That we are hypocrites because American sports stars dope too, and/or that lots of countries dope but we just haven’t found out about it.
But again, that’s being far too myopic about things, and believing that this scandal is only a thing unto itself, not part of the bigger problem.
If this scandal had taken place with Norway, Sweden, Germany, the United States, or any other country at the center – the outcome or the (lack of) speed of its resolution probably wouldn’t have been much different [6].
I – yes, I’m among those journalists accused of being hypocritical and anti-Russian, I’ve even been compared to Nazis, gee that was fun – I would chase this scandal just as hard if it had arisen in any of these other countries.
In fact, I would have investigated it with even more fervor if these were American or Canadian skiers and biathletes we were talking about. And presumably most of the evidence would have been in English, so I could investigate more effectively, without translating things I was looking for into Russian, searching the internet or evidence documents, and then translating the Russian back into English, in a crappy game of “telephone”.
I think that the North American athletes I routinely interview are aware that if I found out they were cheating, I would have no remorse and they would have nowhere to hide.
Just as I’m not a hypocrite, these sports organizations aren’t, either – well, they are, but not in this way, not when it comes to nationality. The claims that various decisions just come from Russian money and bribes are missing the point.
Whether coming from Russia or elsewere, these organizations don’t want a big scandal. They don’t want to rewrite their results sheets. The athletes who missed out on medals they probably should have taken home? These organizations don’t really care about athletes.
They are just an unfortunate bit of collateral damage, but oh well.
Time will march on. A new race will be held. It will be an exciting race! We will all be caught up in it.
Maybe Pellegrino will upset Klæbo.
Maybe an American will finally win a medal.
Maybe Fourcade will mess up his first stage, but then climb back to gold anyway.
Maybe Makarainen will mess up all her shooting stages, and we will all watch rapt to see whether she can pass 15 people on the final loop. Maybe she can.
Maybe Harvey will finally truly become the Prince of Quebec, crowned with an Olympic medal.
Maybe the breakaway will succeed.
Or maybe the favorite will win, but we will be enthralled until the final moment, watching to see whether they will pull it off.
Soon, we will forget about those athletes whom we were wondering about, the ones who maybe probably should have a medal stashed in their safe deposit box somewhere and a whole lot more sponsor money than they have now.
Those athletes will slip farther and farther to the back of our minds. In the forefront will be the day’s competition – so amazing! – and the big happy family that is sport.
Actual clean sport is not, and never was, these organizations’ goal.
*****
Footnotes:
[1] On the topic of skiers who were cleared by CAS: Maxim Vylegzhanin’s sample from Sochi also had scratches on it and had an incorrectly reported specific gravity; the two other members of the men’s relay team also had marks on their sample bottles, and one had a sample whose specific gravity was too high to be believable; two sprinters had marks on their sample bottles and for one, there as also a foreign fiber inside the bottle. Julia Ivanova, whose ban was not overturned by CAS, had an impossibly high salt value in her urine sample.
[2] I actually think CAS does work. CAS handles far more than doping cases – they handle contract disputes, team selection, trades, anything you can think of that would need arbitration. And as far as I know, they do a good job. This is the first CAS decision that has left me truly baffled.
[3] Term limits, man. We really, really need term limits.
[4] I’m not going to talk in much detail in this piece about WADA, which alternatingly does the right thing and the wrong thing, and often does the wrong thing for a very long time first. But at least in the last year or so, WADA is no worse than any other group, and indeed maybe a bit better.
[5] Blood profiles have certainly led to targeted testing, which caught athletes before the 2014 Olympics. But nobody bothered to try an ABP case, that we know of. Nor, seemingly, did the biathletes that the McLaren Report alleges were doping – Olga Vilukhina and Yana Romanova – fail their ABP’s. Either ABP is not being used, or it is not being successful and the details of the cases are never made public.
[6] If the perpetrator of this scandal hadn’t been Russia, I think the main difference might have been the reaction within that different country. I don’t think the Norwegian public would react the same way the Russian public has. Each place has its own culture around sport and what it means, and government also plays various different roles in supporting and controlling sport. But the reaction from the international organizations? Things would probably be much the same.
Johannes Duerr (second from right) during the Tour de Ski’s 35 k pursuit from Cortina to Toblach, Italy, in December. The Austrian was since kicked out of the 2014 Olympics for doping.
Doping has been in the news again, with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announcing on Thursday that 16 more athletes from the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing had tested positive for banned substances, then adding 12 more to that tally on Monday from the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
That brings the total number of athletes disqualified for doping at those two Olympics to well over 100.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) also held its Foundation Board meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, this weekend, agreeing on a whistleblower-protection program as well as a system of graded sanctions for countries who do not comply to the World Anti-Doping Code.
“The decision by the Board to grant WADA authority to develop a new, meaningful graded sanctioning system is welcomed by athletes; particularly, as it provides a direct answer to the call made by athletes earlier this year for a stronger, meaningful system of consequences for non-compliance,” WADA Athlete Committee Chair Beckie Scott, a former Canadian cross-country skier, said in a WADA press release. “If we all agree that WADA should be independent and empowered as the regulator of doping in sport, then how could we not agree to equip WADA with the tools it needs to do its job fully… On behalf of athletes, I feel confident in saying that we are pleased that this decision has been made today in the interest of clean sport.”
The system will reportedly have three tiers of sanctions, with countries committing the most serious and recurring offenses being barred from hosting the Olympics, World Championships and other major events. That would be applied to countries where the government interferes with anti-doping work or manipulates the testing sytem.
The first level of sanctioning would be a result of administrative problems, and is proposed to bring in assistance from WADA in order to return to Code compliance. The second level of sanctions would apply when there are problems in testing procedures, at which point countries will be assessed a fine.
Five countries are currently deemed Code non-compliant: Russia, which has been out of compliance since November 2015, but which has not faced any of the sanctions suggested above, although athletes in some sports have been barred from competing by their individual sports federations; Spain, which has been noncompliant since March 2016; and Brazil, Azerbaijan, and Indonesia, which were declared noncompliant at the Glasgow meeting.
In the future, such countries could face sanctions. But International Ski Federation (FIS) President Gian Franco Kasper does not see it as WADA’s place to offer such punishments.
“Sanctioning entire countries is purely political and I do not agree with this,” Kasper told Insidethegames. “WADA should not be a body which gives sanctions.”
He also did not appear optimistic about the future of clean sport.
“We need to stop pretending sport is clean,” he told New York Times reporter Rebecca Ruiz. “It’s a noble principle, but in practice? It’s entertainment. It’s drama.”
Russia, which is currently non-compliant with the WADA Code, is hosting World Cups in multiple ski and snowboard disciplines later this season, and FIS has made no public show of moving them.
Similarly, the International Biathlon Union (IBU) will see Russia hosting World Cups in March 2017, and also recently awarded Russia the 2021 World Championships.
That was a topic of discussion at the WADA Foundation Meeting. The Compliance Review Committee is beginning action against the IBU, which it sees as having jeopardized its own compliance by awarding a major event to a country which does not comply with the Code.
The Code states that international federations like the IBU must “do everything possible to award World Championships only to countries where the Government has ratified, accepted, approved or acceded to the UNESCO Convention, and where the National Olympic Committee, National Paralympic Committee and National Anti-Doping Organisation are in compliance with the Code”.
The IBU has been given until January to offer a satisfactory explanation to WADA for why the Russian city of Tyumen was selected as the World Championships host site.
International Ski Federation (FIS) President Gian Franco Kasper believes the world’s top anti-doping agency had overstepped its bounds in punishing countries who do not comply with its code, according to in a recent interview with Inside The Games.
The 72-year-old Swiss has been a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Executive Committee since 2003. He has also been a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 2000, and currently heads the Association of International Olympic Winter Sports Federations.
“I have been long enough in the Executive Board of WADA to have my ideas about the restructuring and about what is necessary,” Kasper said in the interview. “It [WADA] should be a testing and technical body rather than making political decisions. Politics should not be in the hands of WADA.”
His view may ultimately come down to one question: is it the job of anti-doping agencies to suspend individual athletes, or to ensure that entire national sports systems comply with the WADA Code? Kasper appears to come down on the side of the former, as he later called efforts to sanction countries who are not Code compliant “politics”.
On Saturday, Kasper will be one of many sports leaders participating in a summit held by the International Olympic Committee Lausanne to review the WADA anti-doping system. (Kasper will call in from South Korea, where he is inspecting the 2018 Olympic preparations.)
For several years, the eyes of the sports world have been on WADA and their handling of state-sponsored doping by Russia and cover-ups by the international governing body for track and field.
WADA’s response after the violations were revealed was initially weak. It did not act for years on information from Russian whistleblowers and its former top investigator, Jack Richardson, revealed that his work had been hampered by the organization’s leadership, specifically current president Craig Reedie.
But by the spring of 2016, WADA was taking a harder line, recommending a total ban of Russia at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
It was the IOC who walked back that effort, instead leaving it up to each international sports federation to decide whether Russians could participate. Russia ultimately sent 291 athletes in 26 sports.
WADA has also recently recommended harsher penalties for countries which do not adhere to the WADA Code, the international agreement which governs anti-doping efforts.
“The World Anti-Doping Code is very clear in this respect: it is the International Federations’ responsibility to ‘do everything possible to award World Championships only to countries where the Government has ratified, accepted, approved or acceded to the UNESCO Convention and the National Olympic Committee, National Paralympic Committee and National Anti-Doping Organisation are in compliance with the Code’,” WADA told Inside The Games. “Since November 18, 2015, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency has been deemed non-compliant with the Code. In light of this, WADA has sought further clarification from the IBU.”
Many in the sports world agree that additional sanctions for noncompliance are desperately needed. Previously, WADA worked primarily to help nations achieve Code compliance but had few tools to punish them if they regressed.
“WADA is independent and they need to be given the authority and the seniority to impose sanctions and ensure that they’re the ones who are responsible for compliance,” Canadian cross-country skier Beckie Scott, the chair of WADA’s Athlete Committee, told USA Today.
Meanwhile, earlier in October WADA strengthened its partnership with Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, with “Project Energia” to investigate the link between organized crime and sports doping.
That is the kind of work WADA should be doing, Kasper asserted, rather than deciding how to punish non-Code Compliant countries.
One of his concerns seemed to be potential inconvenience for sports federations organizing major events.
“This code-compliance idea causes all kind of problems,” the FIS president said.”A country like Spain, for instance, might be code compliant today and not code compliant tomorrow… This fight against doping is, in my eyes, not a political fight.”
Early next month, the Olympic flag will fly at the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, but what message is its governing body, the International Olympic Committee, sending in its most recent decision regarding Russia? (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Note: The following is an editorial from FasterSkier’s editorial board, consisting of its editors, and is not meant to reflect the opinions of our broader staff.
***
On Sunday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board decided against an all-out ban on Russian athletes at the 2016 Summer Olympics, which start Aug. 5 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Instead, the IOC asked each individual sports federation (IF) to do a rigorous review of the Russian entries for Rio and determine whether they have undergone sufficient drug testing to be deemed “clean” and cleared to compete.
The IFs have been left just 12 days and no guidance for how to do this.
The decision was the culmination of a long process – just how long depends on who you ask.
Perhaps the process began in 2010, when whistleblower Vitaly Stepanov initially contacted the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) with information about systematic doping in Russia.
Or perhaps the process began in December 2014, when German documentarian Hajo Seppelt finally broadcast Stepanov’s information to the public on ARD. It was quickly seen around the world.
Later, WADA commissioned several independent reports, the first of which revealed extensive systematic doping in track and field. The first report, led by former WADA President Dick Pound, dropped in November 2015. Maybe the process began then.
Instead of enacting such a ban, the IOC Executive Board delivered a confusing, unclear decision where Russian athletes may participate after meeting supposedly stringent criteria which are not defined; where Russians with past doping violations are treated differently than those from other countries; and where Russian athletes in different sports may be treated completely differently from one another.
The result will be neither fair to clean athletes who were affected by the Russian government’s manipulation of hundreds of positive doping samples over the last five years, nor to Russian athletes themselves.
Some have noticed. Canadian biathlete and two-time Olympian Brendan Green was one of many sharing this image:
With this in mind, here are some questions for IOC President Thomas Bach and his Executive Board.
1) Do you listen to athletes?
A group of influential athlete representatives held a press conference after McLaren’s last Monday. Among them were Canadian cross-country skier Beckie Scott, the chair of the WADA Athlete Committee, and IOC Athletes’ Commission chair Adam Pengilly.
The group advocated for an unequivocal ban on Russian athletes in both Rio and PyeongChang. Before the McLaren report had even dropped, Pengilly explained, they had circulated a letter stating those aims. The letter was endorsed by athlete representatives from more than 20 different sports federations. Clearly, there was widespread support for such a position.
After the McLaren report came out, that position was solidified.
“We would like to highlight our belief that WADA must allow Professor McLaren and his team to continue their investigation, that Russia should be banned from the Rio Olympics, Paralympics, and other international events, and that International Federations must enact sanctions so as to protect clean sport,” the WADA Athlete Committee said in a statement.
It has been clear for quite some time that the Olympics are not about the needs or wishes of the athletes, but that was underlined by the Executive Board’s decision.
“I believe that the Russian federation has mocked the Olympic movement and I worry about the future of clean sport, I worry about the future for clean athletes, the Olympic movement and the Olympic Games,” Pengilly said told the BBC, where he later said he was “embarrassed” by the Executive Board’s decision. “Some have suggested the IOC has passed the buck and I’d have to agree. There’s been an abdication of responsibility here.”
Fellow IOC Athletes’ Commission member Hayley Wickenheiser, the Canadian four-time gold medalist in ice hockey, had this to say:
2) Do you listen to WADA?
For years – literally – WADA obfuscated, ignored whistleblowers and failed to take action when provided with compelling evidence of doping in Russia.
But in the last few weeks, it appeared that WADA had grown a backbone. After the McLaren report was delivered, the WADA Executive Committee published a list of seven recommendations.
The very first one: “The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to consider, under their respective Charters, to decline entries, for Rio 2016, of all athletes submitted by the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and the Russian Paralympic Committee.”
WADA also suggested that Russian government officials be banned from attending Rio.
That might be the main recommendation that the IOC actually upheld: in their decision they wrote that “Nobody implicated [in the McLaren report], be it an athlete, an official, or an NF, may be accepted for entry or accreditation for the Olympic Games.”
In the McLaren report, Russian Minister of Sport Vitaly Mutko is named as having interfered with at least one positive doping case. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s name is mentioned in the report as having personally appointed a Deputy Minister of Sport who helped hide positive tests.
Will either be banned from Rio? Is that under the purview of any international federation, or only the IOC? Will President Bach sign deny those credentials himself?
Otherwise, WADA – a body which is partially funded by the IOC, but did not have the power to enact a ban on Russian athletes itself – was left in the cold.
“WADA is disappointed that the IOC did not heed WADA’s Executive Committee recommendations that were based on the outcomes of the McLaren Investigation and would have ensured a straight-forward, strong and harmonized approach,” said WADA President Sir Craig Reedie. “The McLaren Report exposed, beyond a reasonable doubt, a state-run doping program in Russia that seriously undermines the principles of clean sport embodied within the World Anti-Doping Code.”
3) What do you mean by “reliable adequate international tests”?
The IOC clearly wanted the process to approve Russian athletes for the Rio Games to be onerous, or at least to seem that way.
Long jumper Darya Klishina will be the only Russian track and field athlete competing in Rio this August. The IAAF cleared her because she lives in Florida and has thus been outside the Russian system. Other federations have clearly not been so strict in making their decisions. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
“Under these exceptional circumstances, Russian athletes in any of the 28 Olympic summer sports have to assume the consequences of what amounts to a collective responsibility in order to protect the credibility of the Olympic competitions, and the “presumption of innocence” cannot be applied to them,” the IOC wrote in the preamble to its decision.
And so the board mandated that all athletes be subjected to review by their relevant IFs.
“The absence of a positive national anti-doping test cannot be considered sufficient by the IFs….The IFs should carry out an individual analysis of each athlete’s anti-doping record, taking into account only reliable adequate international tests, and the specificities of the athlete’s sport and its rules, in order to ensure a level playing field.”
Yet there is no definition of reliable – which testing agencies does this include? And there is no definition of adequate – how many tests, over what period of time?
Russian Olympic Committee member Alexander Zhukov was invited to give a presentation to the IOC Executive Board. In it, he asserted that since the first WADA report Russian athletes have been repeatedly tested by international anti-doping agencies and, according to the IOC press release, “the vast majority of the results were negative.”
Yet, the main agency tasked with these tests, UK Antidoping, reported via WADA in June that 16 percent of scheduled tests could not be collected from athletes; a further 736 tests were canceled or declined; and that doping control officers were sometimes harassed and intimidated when they tried to collect samples.
Is this international testing reliable and adequate?
4) Is this fair to Russian athletes?
Without a definition of what constitutes reliable and adequate testing, outcomes for various sports are already vastly different.
The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has banned all but two Russian track and field athletes from the Games. (The IOC went on to actually kick out one of those two, Yuliya Stepanova, a whistleblower who helped bring the entire scandal to light. Nice.)
In the past weeks Bach has talked extensively about the need to balance collective punishment for government action against individual justice. He has said that clean Russian athletes who had nothing to do with the scandal should not be punished. But it seems clear now that in some sports they will be, whereas in other sports they will not (or their doping teammates might even be able to compete alongside, or instead of, them).
5) Is this what zero tolerance means?
One of the IOC guidelines states that any Russian athlete who has served a doping ban cannot compete in Rio.
One can almost see the logic: with many tests manipulated, the chances are higher that those athletes could have had a second positive test. If true, this should have led to a second and potentially longer ban which they would still be serving.
But maybe not — what if they did reform and are now clean? The provision sends an extremely confusing message: past dopers from some countries are allowed a second chance, but there’s no redemption if you’re from Russia. How is that zero tolerance, much less fair?
When Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay (American sprinters previously banned for doping) likely medal in the men’s 100 meters, how will a Russian track and field athlete feel? Probably that it’s absolutely fine to dope – as long as you’re not from Russia.
A busy, busy week on the anti-doping front. The big news for cross-country fans was the hit Norway’s reigning World Cup champion Martin Johnsrud Sundby took regarding his asthma-medication use two seasons ago. But casting an even bigger net — one that has implications for global sport and Russia in the both short and long term — was the McLaren report released Monday morning. (You can find the full McLaren report here).
In this podcast episode, FS takes a shallow dive into the report, illuminates the thoughts of athletes on both the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Athlete Commission and International Olympic Committee (IOC) Athlete’s Commission, and seeks some answers from FS Editor-At-Large Chelsea Little. Yup, there’s a lot in there.
You’ll hear from Richard McLaren, WADA’s independent counsel/investigator, Beckie Scott (Canada) chair of WADA’s athlete committee; Adam Pengilly (United Kingdom) of the IOC athletes’ commission for skeleton/bobsleigh, Hayley Wickenheiser (Canada) of the IOC athletes’ commission for ice hockey, and Ben Sandford (New Zealand) of the WADA athletes’ commission for skeleton.
Note: The interview with Little was recorded Thursday before the International Biathlon Union (IBU) responded to the McLaren report with a press release on Friday.
The day of the men’s 4 x 10 k relay at the Laura Cross-Country Ski Center at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Sweden went on to take gold, Russia silver and France bronze in the event.
Max Cobb’s motivation to voice his disdain for doping dates back to the 1992 Albertville Olympics. Justin Wadsworth’s stems from being an athlete who had suspicions, but moreover, from watching his wife Beckie Scott miss out on her chance atop the Olympic podium after having been beat out by two Russians who were eventually disqualified for using performance-enhancing drugs.
For both, when it comes to Russia, they’re direct.
“The level of fraud and deceit that was allegedly put in place for the Sochi Games around the anti-doping effort is just a complete assault on everything that sport and the Olympic movement stand for,” Cobb, president and CEO of US Biathlon, told FasterSkier this past weekend.
He was reacting to The New York Times report, published Thursday, May 12, that suggested dozens of Russians, including 14 cross-country skiers, participated in a state-run doping program at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
“There’s enough evidence in the past, with how many positive doping cases the Russians have had,” said Wadsworth, who recently left his post as head coach of the Canadian cross-country ski team after five seasons with the team. “I think that alone is enough to have reason to try to put some sanctions on them.”
Russia’s Natalia Matveeva (r), who tested positive for recombinant EPO in 2009 and was suspended until March 2011, joins Norway’s Ingvild Flugstad Østberg (l) and Maiken Caspersen Falla (c) on the podium this past February at the 2016 classic sprint in Drammen, Norway. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Wadsworth was referring to a trend leading up to the 2010 Olympics, in which about a dozen Russian cross-country skiers were suspended for failing drug tests between 2001 and 2009.
“When I first came onto the international scene in the late ’80s, I went to ’89 World Championships in Lahti, and during that whole time I was naive…,” Wadsworth, a former U.S. Ski Team member, recalled. “You learn over the years, you see enough stuff that you just know what’s most likely an athlete that’s doping. You can’t come out and say, ‘Yeah, for sure,’ unless you see the needle going in the arm.”
That’s what makes the current case so complex, with the head of the Sochi anti-doping lab, Grigory Rodchenkov, releasing a list of Russian Olympians handpicked to receive illegal drugs at the 2014 Games.
It’s his word — a man whom the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accused of taking bribes and destroying more than 1,400 samples, who was forced to resign and now lives in Los Angeles — against the Russian government’s. The tests were allegedly tampered with, so investigators will have to find evidence elsewhere to convict athletes like Alexander Legkov, who won gold in the final race of the Sochi Olympics, the 50-kilometer freestyle mass start.
The Russian Sports Ministry might even sue The New York Times, according to RT, a Russian government-funded media outlet.
“We are considering a lawsuit,” Russia’s Deputy Minister of Sports Yury Nagornykh told the Russian News Agency TASS. “They asked us to give comments on 66 athletes who are a part of Russia’s ‘doping program’. We said that we don’t have such a program.”
Rodchenkov claimed he concocted a “three-drug cocktail of banned substances” mixed with liquor, with “one milligram of the steroid mixture for every milliliter of alcohol.”
Apparently, he dissolved the drugs in alcohol to speed up the absorption, making Chivas whiskey for men and Martini vermouth for women.
“All athletes are like small children,” Rodchenkov told The New York Times (NYT). “They’ll put anything you give them into their mouths.”
“Athletes drink Chivas before competing? I can’t take it seriously,” Russian cross-country skier Sergey Ustiugov, who was not named in the NYT report but competed at the 2014 Olympics, told RT.
Alexander Legkov (standing) celebrates Russia’s silver in the men’s 4 x 10 k relay, their nation’s first medal in cross-country at the Sochi Olympics. He went on to win gold in the final race of the Sochi Games, the 50 k freestyle mass start, and Russia swept the podium.
“What happened yesterday [the release of NYT article] is totally absurd,” Legkov said at a press conference. “Alcohol with steroids is ridiculous. I didn’t take a sip of alcohol when I was meeting with friends because I was preparing for the Olympic Games. I know nothing about steroids, I don’t know how they look like. I took the article as an April [Fools’] joke.”
Legkov also called Rodchenkov’s comments groundless.
“It is a political game. Everybody is set against our country because it is one of the strongest in the world,” he said.
The NYT pointed out that, according to WADA statistics, Russia had the highest number of athletes caught doping in 2014.
While Russia fights to defend its winter athletes, its sport officials are simultaneously trying to ensure their track-and-field athletes can compete at the 2016 Summer Olympics in August in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“Serious mistakes have been made by the federation management, along with athletes and coaches who have broken anti-doping rules and neglected the principle of fair play,” Russia’s Minister of Sport Vitaly Mutko wrote in a statement to the British newspaper, The Sunday Times, this weekend. “Let us be clear. We are ashamed of them.”
Track and fields’ international governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), suspended Russia’s athletics team in November following a WADA investigation that found it guilty of state-sponsored cheating.
“We do not deny having a problem in Russia, and we are doing everything possible at state level to eradicate doping, including punishing athletes and coaches,” Mutko wrote.
Russia will find out June 17 whether its track and field team will be allow to compete in Rio.
“We are very sorry that athletes who tried to deceive us, and the world, were not caught sooner,” Mutko added. “We are very sorry because Russia is committed to upholding the highest standards in sport and is opposed to anything that threatens the Olympic values.”
‘The Needle Going in the Arm’
Cobb didn’t witness doping firsthand, but his opinion on the matter goes back to one of his first Olympic experiences, a night or two before the first race in Albertville, France.
“We were up in Les Saisies and one of our coaches who I was in the sauna with was dragged out to go help translate between a Russian coach and the village medical doctor,” Cobb recalled of the 1992 Games. “Because our coach’s English wasn’t that good, I went along to help translate as well. The situation was, the Russian coach said, ‘One of our athletes is very sick and will die if he doesn’t get a cortisone injection.’ So I was helping to translate that to the French doctor, who spoke English pretty well.”
While emphasizing that point over the next few minutes, the Russian coach explained that the athlete was having an allergic reaction to a protein injection he received.
“The French doctor said, ‘Yes, I know. I can see that he’s having an allergic reaction, but cortisone is a controlled and banned substance, and unless I can examine the athlete I can’t give it to him,’ ” Cobb recalled. “ ‘And yes, I know he will die if I don’t give it to him.’
“That was really how my experience at the Olympic Games began,” Cobb continued. “That was the case of [Russian biathlete] Sergei Tarasov, who was given an injection of blood that was either not his own or had been spoiled by not being refrigerated in an effort to blood dope him before the first race in Albertville.”
That story surfaced last year when Tarasov, who went on to win an individual gold at the 1994 Olympics, turned 50 and gave an interview to a Russian magazine.
Cobb recalled that story and compared it to the current accusations against Russian athletes across multiple Olympic sports.
“This is an issue that has been a violation of the basic principles of sport, that has been — because it was, in many cases forced on athletes with the threat of losing their support if they didn’t comply — an issue that needs to change,” he said. “I believe that with whistleblowers, athlete insiders and RUSADA [Russian Anti-Doping Agency] insiders coming forward at this time, taking the immense risk to come forward and tell what’s going on in an effort to change the system, that incredible sacrifice on their part needs to be met with support from sports leaders. If we don’t support that now, I’m sure it will be decades before it would ever happen again.”
Cobb didn’t see the needle going in Tarasov’s arm back then, and he, like everyone but Rodchenkov who has so far come forward about the 2014 Olympics, didn’t witness the Russians cheating in Sochi.
The all-Russian podium in the Sochi Olympics 50 k freestyle mass start, with Alexander Legkov (3) placing first, Maxim Vylegzhanin (7) in second for his third silver medal of the Games, and Ilya Chernousov (8) in third.
But Wadsworth claimed that’s what the Russians were up to immediately after they swept the podium in the 50 k, with Legkov leading fellow countrymen Maxim Vylegzhanin and Ilya Chernousov across the finish, respectively.
“If Rodchenkov knew my story, he would not even mention my name,” Legkov told MatchTV, according to a translation. “Since 2010, I have been working with foreign experts, I am absolutely not with Russian coaches, live all the time in Switzerland in an apartment in Davos. Before the Olympics, I have taken 33 doping tests.”
Meanwhile, Chernousov was another athlete who trained independently of the national team. After the Sochi Olympics in the spring of 2014, Chernousov began working with Vegard Bitnes, a Norwegian coach.
“We were one of the groups from [Russian] Federation, (Reto Burgermeister/Isabelle Knaute was an other),” Bitnes explained in an email to FasterSkier. “I planned all training, and had all control of training … we had our own camps and training.”
In the last two years, Bitnes explained that he and Chernousov only joined the Russian national team for two or three training camps, holding more camps with other national teams, like Sweden.
“We had some camps with Team Northug [Norwegian Petter Northug’s personal team], also with the Canadian team,” Bitnes wrote. “We was in some sport events in Norway, where we had trainings with French team, also US ski team athlete… So, we was almost never with the RUS team.”
Technically, Bitnes was a Russian national-team coach. He recently parted ways with Chernousov to become the head women’s coach of the Austrian biathlon team, effective May 1.
“The end of my work has nothing to do with the latest from RUS team,” he wrote. “I wanted to turn back to the IBU and Biathlon again. I hope for the best for Ilya and his training in the future.”
As for the allegations that 14 of 20 Russian cross-country skiers in Sochi — which may or may not include Chernousov — were doping, Bitnes wrote, “I can not comment so much, because it is from a time before I had anything to do with the RUS team. I can only say that it’s frightening to see/hear about this. Based on a general base. I hope WADA and IOC [the International Olympic Committee] will get to the bottom of those obligations, so we can clean up this mess. If this is true, its a very very sad thing.”
The Russians celebrate their silver medal in the men’s 4 x 10 k relay at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, with (from left to right) Dmitriy Japarov, Maxim Vylegzhanin, Alexander Bessmertnykh, and Alexander Legkov.
Wadsworth is confident it’s true. The former Canadian coach recalled suspecting something fishy was going on with the Russians during the men’s 4 x 10 k relay in Sochi as he watched Legkov put down the fastest time on the third leg.
“What I saw with the rest of his form that year and on that course, when I saw him hop-skating pretty much the whole course, especially the last hill coming into the stadium, the way he was looking on his face after pushing so hard — because the Russians were quite far behind and he really pulled them into medal contention in that race — and I just didn’t believe what I saw,” Wadsworth said. “And then in the 50 k, it was, at the end, the pace and the pushing. In the early part of the race, there were so many guys up toward the front, but in the last few kilometers, again, it just didn’t look right to me. And I always carefully think that through in my head as far as, is this a great performance we’re seeing or is this something else? And what I saw, I just thought it was something else.”
“I always carefully think that through in my head as far as, is this a great performance we’re seeing or is this something else? … I just thought it was something else.” — Justin Wadsworth
So he spoke out about the Russians after the 50 k and accused them of doping in a post-race interview with FasterSkier. FS then asked Legkov what he thought of Wadsworth’s accusation in the post-race press conference. Legkov laughed off the comment.
“I have to always be clear with this, I wasn’t making any excuses for our team, I was simply commenting on something I saw from the athletes on the field of play,” Wadsworth recalled this past Saturday.
“I fully accept our team’s preparation for the Games and our waxing issues … we had our own issues and we debriefed those and learned from those,” he continued. “But I think if I was potentially another coach who had athletes, like [Norway’s Martin Johnsrud] Sundby, who was fourth in that race and missed out on a chance at a medal … I guess I’m always surprised the Norwegians don’t speak out. They have so much power in our sport and they chose to do nothing with it except make things better for themselves on the World Cup.”
An email to Vidar Løfshus, director of the Norwegian Ski Federation, seeking comment on the recent allegations against Russia was not returned by press time.
“It’s just really surprising to me that nobody wants to speak out more. I can understand we all want to focus on our teams and on our own business, but that’s not to the point when there’s something going on like systematic doping,” Wadsworth said.
As for the athletes, “I expect them to focus on their training and themselves, but when it comes down to it, if there’s enough evidence and they’re tired of it, then they should probably speak up,” he added. “The athletes do have a powerful voice and they should use their athlete representatives to push FIS to do a better job and to push the IOC.”
Shocked But Not Surprised
One athlete who carefully crafted his responses in an email to FasterSkier was France’s Robin Duvillard, who placed sixth in the 50 k. Should the Russian cross-country team be disqualified and its results voided in Sochi, Duvillard would move up to third place and technically a bronze medal in that race.
France’s bronze-medal men’s 4 x 10 k relay team at the Sochi Olympics: (from left to right) Ivan Perrillat Boiteux, Jean-Marc Gaillard, Maurice Manificat, and Robin Duvillard.
“I would like to be clear about the fact that what I read in the newspaper yesterday are only suspicions,” Duvillard wrote on Friday. “I don’t want to blame them if some of the information is not true.”
If everything in the reports is true, “I am shocked, sure. But not really surprised,” the 32-year-old continued. “I am shocked about the fact that it was organized by the authorities. Not because some athletes are doped. In the past, we already discovered that athletes were doped, and I know that it can happen again.”
In Sochi, Duvillard stood on the podium with three teammates, earning bronze in the men’s relay behind Sweden in first place and Russia in second.
“The only thing we can do is to trust [WADA] AMA to achieve anti-doping tests,” he wrote. “And what I have read yesterday is that they failed in Sochi, because Russian authorities were more powerful than them. But now I need to keep my faith in AMA’s work if I want to live my sport serenely and not getting paranoiac.”
Considering the news that immediately followed the 2014 Olympics, in which Russian skiers stated they had used xenon gas in training — a controversial but not-yet-banned substance (before WADA banned it in May 2014) — along with the Russian-athletics scandal unveiled last year, Duvillard had his suspicions.
“I suspected that a doping scandal could break out in Sochi, considering the bunch of money they put into it, and because Putin wanted to show the world that Russia is still shining,” he wrote. “But I can’t say I really suspected the cross country athletes being doped in the 50k. Sure, they were way faster than me in the last hill, but they were faster many many times in the past, so why not once again?”
Since the NYT report hit the world wide web last Thursday, Duvillard has received numerous messages congratulating him on the potential bronze medal.
“In a way, I would be glad to get this medal, because that would award all the work I have done to get in shape on that race,” he wrote. “But in another way, the party would be spoiled forever! Because any time I would watch again that 50k, I would find myself crossing the line in 6th place, and any time I would watch the closing ceremony with that amazing podium into the stadium, I wouldn’t see me on it.”
“Sure, they were way faster than me in the last hill, but they were faster many many times in the past, so why not once again?” — Robin Duvillard, sixth in the men’s 50 k at the 2014 Sochi Olympics
The redistribution of medals is a drawn-out process that involves legal battles handled by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but if you ask Wadsworth, whose wife fought for her medal two years after the fact, it needs to happen.
“If nobody does anything, nothing’s going to change,” Wadsworth said. “… It’s great for [Beckie] to have the gold medal in the house and get recognized for that, but on the day, that’s what you as an athlete, that’s what you dream about, that’s what you work hard towards and when you get that robbed from you, it doesn’t matter what happens in the future.
Alexander Legkov (3) beat out fellow Russians Maxim Vylegzhanin (not shown) and Ilya Chernousov (r) for gold in the Sochi Olympics 50 k freestyle mass start. Vylegzhanin took silver by 0.7 seconds, just a tenth of a second ahead of Chernousov in third, and Norway’s Martin Johnsrud Sundby (1) missed a medal by 0.2 seconds in fourth. Not shown: Sergei Dolidovich of Belarus placed fifth, 14.3 seconds after Legkov, and France’s Robin Duvillard was another 0.6 seconds back in sixth.
“I think what really needs to come out from all this is not the results getting stripped — you know, Robin Duvillard, he might get the medal, but he’s not going to get to feel what it felt like to stand on the podium in the closing ceremonies down in Sochi, to get a medal around his neck, so that whole thing is lost,” Wadsworth continued. “What really needs to happen is things change for the future so that clean athletes have an opportunity.”
Should the entire Russian cross-country team be suspended, some clean Russian athletes will get caught in the aftermath, he noted.
“But those athletes should speak out and say what they know as well because it’s the Russian athletes that’s getting cheated the worst in the very end,” Wadsworth said. “They’re the ones that are going to have the health issues in the future and they’re also the ones that are going to miss out on future opportunities if their team does get allowed to race. And they’re the ones at the end of the day that have to look at themselves in the mirror and know they cheated.”
FIS and the IOC
As for how the International Ski Federation (FIS), the sport governing body for cross-country (as well as several other winter sports), FasterSkier first obtained a statement on the matter via email.
“FIS is deeply disturbed by these allegations and will provide all possible cooperation to WADA and the IOC with the investigation,” the statement noted.
In a follow-up phone interview on Monday, FIS Secretary General Sarah Lewis said, “We also will make sure that we are looking into our processes which we can control, as opposed to the Olympics where we are playing a facilitating role but not directly controlling the testing.
“Certainly for everybody it’s a wake-up call to what may have happened and what therefore has the potential to happen,” she continued. “I’m very sure that there will be a very careful analysis of the situation to make sure that this cannot happen going forward.”
Kikkan Randall (U.S. Ski Team) at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Kikkan Randall, chair of the FIS Athletes’ Commission who competed for the U.S. in Sochi, wrote in an email that the latest news was “definitely disturbing and if it turns out to be true, it is really unfortunate and unfair for those athletes that competed clean in Sochi and missed out on medals.
“The FIS Athlete Commission had previously written a letter to WADA after the news came out about Russian Athletics calling for further investigations into other sports, especially cross country skiing,” Randall added. “We hope WADA can get to the bottom of this and I know FIS will be in full cooperation to help out however they can.”
As for the U.S. cross-country team, head coach Chris Grover said they’ve been following the news closely.
“I guess our initial reaction is that we are disheartened and disappointed, and really disappointed that there might be a tie to cross-country here,” he said on the phone this weekend before convening with the team for its first training camp of the 2016/2017 season.
“It’s something we’ll talk about as a group but we haven’t,” Grover said. “Every time any sort of doping scandal comes up, we definitely talk about it as a group. It reinforces our resolve by lead by competing clean. And the exciting thing that we have talked about before, is that we know that we can win when we are doing it clean, because we’ve done it so many times before. That’s the silver lining for us … We can’t get hung up in what other people may or may not be doing.”
“The exciting thing that we have talked about before, is that we know that we can win when we are doing it clean, because we’ve done it so many times before.” — Chris Grover
Asked if he had suspicions about doping in cross-country skiing, he said, “I’ve never felt 100-percent confident that the sport is 100-percent clean. I’ve felt that it’s clean enough that we can win. I think that all of us feel that it’s a lot cleaner than it was when we first got involved in the sport.
“We’re really interested in how this story unfolds,” he continued. “We are grateful to the media sources that are following this closely and are doing investigations. We will always, from the USSA [U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association] side, take an active role in working with the USOC [US Olympic Committee] and FIS to ensure that proper steps are taken, that we are getting a clean sport and a level playing field.”
Grover is also chairman of the FIS Cross Country World Cup and Continental Cup sub-committees. FIS plans to meet in Cancun, Mexico, for its 50th International Ski Congress from June 5-11.
“To be perfectly honest, the situation was and is on the agenda based on the WADA report on November,” Lewis said of the planned discussion of Russia at those meetings. “It’s on the agenda of the Council. The Congress is not dealing with daily business … The whole WADA report and the situation with the Russians is on the agenda of the Council already, and now obviously there is more information to be able to discuss and address.”
Update: The IOC Executive Board held a special meeting on Tuesday with IOC President Thomas Bach calling for additional anti-doping measures. The IOC retested 454 selected doping samples from the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, and as a result, up to 31 athletes from six sports could be banned from the upcoming Olympics in Rio. The IOC is also planning on retesting 250 samples from the 2012 London Games.
“The aim is to stop any drugs cheats coming to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro,” an IOC press release stated.
“Swift and decisive action will also follow the controversy surrounding the anti-doping laboratory in Sochi,” it continued. “Meeting Tuesday, the EB of the IOC has requested WADA to initiate a fully fledged investigation into allegations that testing at the Sochi Laboratory was subverted. The IOC for its part will instruct the Lausanne Anti-Doping Laboratory, where the Sochi samples are stored for ten years, to proceed in cooperation with WADA with their analysis in the most sophisticated and efficient way possible.”
The IOC has asked the Russian Olympic Committee to ensure the full cooperation of the Russian side in the WADA investigation.
“Based on the result of this investigation the IOC will take swift action,” the release said.
Beckie Scott with the gold medal she was awarded at a ceremony in Vancouver in June 2004. A former Canadian cross-country skier, Scott finished third in the 5 k pursuit at the 2002 Olympics but was awarded gold two years later when the two women ahead of her were disqualified for using performance-enhancing drugs. (Photo: Cross Country Canada)
Below is a transcript of a speech Beckie Scott gave Thursday at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Executive Board meeting Montreal. A Canadian Olympic gold medalist cross-country skier and chair of WADA’s Athlete Committee, Scott urged the agency to use its influence to “to expand and strengthen the investigations and stand up for the protection of clean, legitimate athletes in sport” and “use that influence with respect to Rio and Games beyond that.”
***
“In what I would call an extraordinary measure and unlike all the meetings prior, there was only one significant outcome presented. It was an open letter renewing the call to expand the investigation into Russian doping. Following the release of the report of the Independent Commission of Russian Athletics last fall, we also took that opportunity to publicly announce our support for the whistleblowers Vitaly and Yuliya Stepanov. This was posted to the WADA website and can still be found there.
You may remember that we originally put this call out in November of last year almost immediately following the report and [there were deep implications] in the utter, complete implausibility of this system [Russia’s doping system] being in place to service only track and field athletes. That the curtain had been pulled back to reveal such corruption and widespread prolific abuse of the rules and laws of sport and nothing was done, was almost incomprehensible to the athlete community.
Indeed, the path of action and follow-up combined with the growing sentiment among the athlete community that there were leaders in sport who just wanted this to go away, led to a barrage of letters and communications to us from athletes around the world asking us — as the voice and representatives of clean athletes — to do more, to ask for more and to please stand up for the rights and protection of clean athletes. We have received communication from athletes from all sports around the world, including the FIS [International Ski Federation], the IBU [International Biathlon Union] , the IBSF [International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation], the USOCAC, the German NOCAC, the Canadian NOCAC, and the British NOCAC, as well as swimmers from Zimbabwe, Australia, curling — I could go on, but I will stop there because all I really want to do is highlight the fact that nationality and sport do not seem to be a significant factor in this movement, as the emotional and growing call from athletes for leaders of sport to expand and strengthen the investigations and stand up for the protection of clean, legitimate athletes in sport…
And so, we persist. We continue to ask that more is done and we maintain that position that the protection of clean athletes and fair sport is at the heart and forefront of all decisions.
In that light, we have four proposals. They are as follows:
There have to be sanctions for the very serious infraction of non-compliance. This is a task we propose is undertaken by the current CRC [Compliance Review Committee] and we wish that the format is developed with suggestions and a policy is adopted as soon as possible.
We propose that WADA should have the autonomy and authority to impose immediate sanctions and penalties, in the case of extraordinary revelations and and circumstances, such as Russia. For athletes to have to wait six months or longer to know what is going on as due process as unfold and decisions are made, is too long.
We fully acknowledge and we fully understand that WADA does not have jurisdiction over the Olympic Games. WADA does have, however, influence. And the clean athletes of the world propose that we use that influence with respect to Rio and Games beyond that, athletes strongly feel that if there cannot be a guarantee that athletes there are professionally clean and not involved in doping activity, then they should not be there.
Finally, with respect to whistleblowers, we must develop and institute a method to ensure the safety and the confidence, and the care of whistleblowers. They must be encouraged and they must be taken care of. This is imperative.
So the clean athletes of the world demand that more is done. They demand that investigations are initiated and carried out. That athletes, officials, organizations, and even countries are sanctioned accordingly and in a timely manner. The whole anti-doping system requires athlete buy in. It requires athletes to believe it is working. It requires athletes to believe that winning without doping is possible. If we do nothing, if we don’t investigate, lead investigations and not just follow up on television programs, if we don’t sanction, then we lose not only the athletes’ belief in the system, but we lose the belief that winning clean is possible.”
Canadian head coach Justin Wadsworth leads his team during a training session at the Ski Tour Canada in Canmore, Alberta, including athletes Jess Cockney (l), Len Valjas (behind Wadsworth), and Alex Harvey. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Since spring 2010, three-time U.S. Olympian Justin Wadsworth has served as head coach of the Canadian national team. On Monday of this week, Cross Country Canada (CCC) announced Wadsworth’s resignation, effective at the end of the 2016 race season, just days after the inaugural Ski Tour Canada (STC).
In a phone interview on Wednesday, Wadsworth, 47, a California native who lived in Bend, Ore., and now resides with his family in Canmore, Alberta, discussed his thoughts about a range of topics relating to his coaching career. He has led the team through its days as a fully funded program to more recent leaner fiscal times, as well as a World Championships gold medal in 2011.
FasterSkier:When you arrived home last Saturday evening after the STC and had a moment to exhale, what were your impressions of Canada’s first Tour?
Justin Wadsworth:Overall it was just a really great thing for all of the ski community in Canada. We had a lot of different crazy things happen. We had really good high-end results, we had some of our development skiers score their first World Cup points, we had other skiers really take away a lot from racing head to head against the world’s best. Each of the stops along the way during the Tour was a confirmation that skiing is alive and well in Canada. A lot of excitement and a lot of great volunteers that were willing to step up to the plate. I think the whole thing, when we look back on it, is a real positive, and for me as a coach of the national team, all the staff and athletes gave it everything they had. At the end of the day, when that happens, I actually don’t care as much about the results, it’s more about the process and everybody just giving it their all and that happened. I was impressed with the whole thing — all the coaches from the training centers and the club coaches that joined us worked together with the wax team. It was just a real positive, and I think it was a good stepping stone for our ski world in Canada.
FS:For athletes and spectators, really across the board, the Tour seemed to be a success. How do you build on that momentum and convince the majority of European athletes and national ski organizations to bring the World Cup to North America more often?
JW: I think the first thing you do is you get the big players in the game, like the Norways and the Swedens and other European countries — and also Canada and the U.S. because we are players, too — they all need to put the pressure on FIS [the International Ski Federation]. They actually need to make it a World Cup like other sports that are World Cup, say speed skating, biathlon, they go way more places than we do. What we have been competing in over the last thirty years is a European Cup. You can’t really count when you go a couple times a decade to a different continent as a World Cup. I think that would make things more interesting for all the skiers, it’s going to put financial pressure on different countries when they have to travel internationally. It’s just not right that North Americans and Japanese and Koreans and even Russians to a certain extent, pay the price for having to travel to Central Europe and Scandinavia to do all the competing. First, it’s financially hard long term and at the same time, it doesn’t ever give us the opportunity to race at the same level, on the same playing field — the same level playing field and we are living out of hotels all year. The Europeans got a little bit of taste of that for two weeks and we do the same thing all the time in Europe. I think putting pressure on the FIS from the ski community and even people like [U.S. Ski Team Head Coach] Chris Grover that leads the FIS Cross Country Committee and other people. We really need to keep putting pressure on the FIS to come to other places and we also need the U.S. to step up to the plate and start hosting some World Cups because they have been riding for free, getting quota for free on our World Cups up here. And you know what? I think it’s great, it’s a good opportunity for them, but it’s time for the power of the U.S. to step up to the plate and take some responsibility and developing skiers in North America by having World Cups in the U.S. and share some of the burden.
FS:Many of the European skiers remarked on the heavy travel load during the Tour’s first four stages. It was three different venues, all separated by long bus rides, in as many days. Are you thinking maybe a Tour concept where perhaps four stages are in Canmore and four due south in say, Soldier Hollow?
JW: I think there are a number of different options and the U.S. doesn’t have to start massive and have a Tour or anything, just hosting one World Cup. Next time it might not be a ski tour in North America and it could be two or three World Cups tops. Quebec, I’m sure, is game, Canmore is game, so one more stop either in the East or the West of the U.S. would be a perfect compliment and take some of that load or responsibility away from the Canadian organizing committee that really lays everything out there for North Americans. But you know, the U.S. kind of gets a ride on our coattails as far as the quota and everything else. We want to share, we want to be working with the U.S., but at the same time I don’t know how many years now, it’s been three World Cups that have happened in Canada with no reciprocation in the U.S. since the pre-Olympics in Soldier Hollow.
Justin Wadsworth is stepping down from his position as head coach of the Canadian national team after nationals next week after five seasons with the team. (Photo: FIS/NordicFocus)
FS:In Canada, aren’t things a bit different in terms of seed money for big events like the Tour. Doesn’t the provincial government in Calgary provide money for the Canadian World Cups?
JW: For sure, the government money is more reliable probably, but they still have to make the ask for it, and there is still some financial risk involved with hosting. That’s why by the U.S. hosting one World Cup — I think they have done the same for alpine in the past and with a lot more regularity — they need to step up to the plate with cross-country skiing. I think they just, they really, I feel like they let down the U.S. Ski Team. You saw how many Americans want to watch cross-country skiing, in some places there were as many American fans at the Tour as their was Canadian fans. I’ve always pushed on this to [USSA Vice President Luke] Bodensteiner and other people, that that should happen, and they need to make it happen. Where there is a will there is a way. The World Cup started here in Canmore with one person, Dale Swanson, wanting to make it happen because [my wife] Beckie [Scott] and Sara [Renner] came to him because they said we really need World Cups at home for ourselves and also for our development.
JW:When I came into the program there was a lot of talented athletes: Alex and Devon and Ivan were all part of the team, and Chandra. And I knew [former head coach] Dave Wood well and I knew the program well, my wife was in the program over the years, and I’ve been quite close with that team. Dave had set up many good things and had done a lot of altitude prep training with his team. So when I came here, I felt like things were in relatively good shape. I also saw some opportunity to make some improvements in training, but especially try to have more consistent results with the best skiers. That was just one thing I saw, skiers having one or two results a year versus, if you can have one result a year, say a top five overall, like Devon had in 2008 or 2009, that should be possible many more times just with some small tweaks in training. I was also very grateful to have a good system in place and just saw some chances to work on the strength side of things, on technique, and also add some of my own personal touches in training. Of course all coaches are different and bring something new. Anytime you get a new coach, athletes get excited and are willing to work a little bit harder or at least a little more than for some of the coaches that have been around for awhile.
FS:What were some of those personal touches that allowed you to make your mark on the Canadian program?
JW: My philosophy has always been on the side of quality and making sure every workout has a purpose and is executed well. Whether that’s a simple two-hour run or a high-intensity lactate workout, each session has a real purpose. I had athletes emphasize, “What are you are trying to get out of that session physiologically?” and not be training for hours. I think that’s what I brought to the team. For example, Devon on the year he was second in the World Cup, he trained just over seven hundred hours because not everyone has to train more. A lot of it is about quality and just bringing the right focus and being rested for a lot of key workouts. I’ve also been heavy into technique. I really wanted to try to bring some technical improvements that I feel when I am skiing, and I think we are trying to bring that directly from past racers to my athletes. I think I have the feel and can describe the feel of certain techniques and those are two of my strengths.
FS:You were a World Cup and Olympic coach for the U.S. Ski Team. What were the major differences you saw between the two North American programs?
JW: It was like going into California in the 1800s, it was a gold mine. I mean, we had so much more of a budget here in Canada to do things, and to do things the right way. I always felt like the U.S. — and to their credit they have come a long way with the money they have — in the Canadian system, there is not as much nickel and diming. As a coach I could do things the right way. I had performance in the background, if it is not going to change performance, you should not spend money on it. It really needs to be performance based and driven, like the bus at Tour de Ski, and creating training camps to do things right at altitude. The way we were doing it at the time meant going to Hawaii, even though that camp cost us going to Park City. Some people saw it as an extravagance, but we had the resources to do things the best we could and we had a couple of skiers second and third overall in the World Cup. Everybody on the team had podiums and we had everybody in the [World Cup] Red Group for a while, those kind of things, when we spend money the right way, we are able to base things on performance and really push hard. I think the results come, of course, if you have the talent to do it as well.
“It was like going into California in the 1800s, it was a gold mine.” — Justin Wadsworth on transitioning to his role as Canadian head coach in 2010
FS:How long have you been contemplating stepping back? After the 2014 Olympics, it seemed like there was a rift within CCC’s coaching and management structure. Where did you stand emerging from those discussions that spring of 2014?
JW: Yeah, it was a lot of eggs in your basket, and then you don’t get the results and the outcome you want. You really need to think hard about a bunch of things and we did that. I had always had my eye on the long term with the team — four, six, eight, ten years — I’ve always wanted to be part of the system for a long time. I would say midway through the year this year, I started to feel like I wanted and needed to give the athletes more and especially in wintertime. In the summer, I live here in Canmore and I have really great access to them and we do a lot great training together. But in the winter, just traveling all the time, I had to scale back from what I had done in the previous quadrennial, and that’s when I started feeling, like, first, I am missing my family and having a hard time being away from them. The second part, I felt like the athletes always deserve the best. Maybe not being around for periods this winter wasn’t the best, for sure it was more about my family, but it was just in this last winter that I started to think about making some changes.
As the kids get older, when they are very young, even though it is extremely hard on Beckie to take care of them at a really young age, they don’t miss you, they don’t feel that piece of it. But now with them being older, I want to be around for them and show them that they are the most important thing in my life. They are ages now [5 and 8] that I can do things with them and we have a lot of fun as a family. We had a lot of fun when I was coaching and it was a big part of our lives for all of us, and I don’t think we would trade it, but it’s time to move on to normal lives and we’ll see if coaching is part of that in the future, but right now I’m going to take a break from that.
FS:And how did it work out in the spring 2014 when you remained head coach but were focused on athletes here in Canmore?
JW: Names had shifted or press releases came out, but really our coaching structure didn’t change much. We tried Tor Hetland for a year and he added some things to our program that were positive, and at the same time he didn’t work with our system maybe in the way we were hoping he would. So my role definitely went back to working a little bit closer with my personal athletes that I was coaching: Devon, Ivan, Lenny, Graeme Killick … because when Tor Hetland was there he definitely took over the reins a bit with those guys. We were supposed to work together a bit more, but he took over the reins a bit more and did things his way. I appreciate Hetland, he has a ton of good qualities as a coach and he is doing a good job with the Norwegians now, but at the time that role for me changed a bit. I wanted to be working with the athletes closer and so what I did this year more closely related to what I did from 2010 t0 2014. But also this year, I took on the added responsibility of all the logistics basically for the team, and a number of other things. Before I took that on, there was somebody else helping us. I had a big load this year, I did all the plane tickets, hotel reservations, logistics, a lot of working with the organizing, helping with the wax team and some of the stuff with the wax truck that we have. And all those things take time and energy along with normal head coach duty and camps and coaching my personal athletes. That was another small piece, it didn’t become overwhelming, but it was a lot to deal with and took a lot of my time, which left me with less time with my family.
FS: In your eyes, what is that missing piece that possibly prevents North America from having a consistent revolving wheel of top-tier skiers that, say, Norway has?
JW: I think that is a really easy thing to answer actually. It’s just the amount of competition our athletes see on a regular basis. It is that simple. Even if we send athletes on two trips a year as juniors, maybe twice a year, it costs quite a bit to send a junior to Europe twice in a season, even though they are for short periods of time and they are getting short exposure to racing, high level racing where they are pushing themselves or they learn new things. And until we go, “You know what?”, our base of skiers at a super-high level in North America will be in the same situation. I also feel like in conjunction with that is the age we feel like our skiers can train full time in an organized systematic professional way. That happens three or four years later than at the elite end in Europe. Just in high school here as a 17 year old you are not really getting pushed; it’s more still about fun. We don’t have the professional-based system like athletes 17 and 18 in Norway, where they are maybe part of a ski gymnasium, and they are educated in physiology, and they are racing at a high level and all those things happen, and our athletes don’t get that if they go to college, until they are out of college. Or if they choose not to go to college even, it take years to get the right skill level and get the right results. You can do that starting in your young twenties in the U.S. and Canada, but you have to be at a pretty high level for the U.S. or Canadians to take you internationally on enough trips and get enough exposure. So I really feel like we have to say we are going to be leaders in developing in general, and we can develop young skiers like Alex or Jessie, there are always outliers. But in general, our society just doesn’t promote endurance sports like cross-country skiing or lesser-known sports to be more professional and more organized at a young age.
However, we see it in hockey, we see it in basketball, and in our kind of sports, it’s more about having fun. But don’t get me wrong, I think at every level of your team you need to have fun, you need to enjoy the process, but I’m talking the difference of going on a two-hour mountain bike ride versus running or rollerskiing or something a little more focused like your counterpart would be doing in Norway.
It’s part of our society, but at the same time we are not organized and systematic at young ages. I’m talking 16 and 17. People say that’s too hardcore or too strict, or we are not having fun, but you can do all that you can still have fun, but also make those jumps at a younger age. Maybe we are just not setup for that, and that is why it’s tough getting people to accept that in North America.
FS:What do you remember as your proudest breakthrough moment as a coach?
JW: For sure, the gold medal in Oslo in the team sprint. Winning, not just getting a medal, but winning in Oslo and beating the Norwegians specifically and some of the choices we made a round that race. Both Devon and Alex skipped the 15 k leading into that race, which at the time was taking a chance because in the 15 k, both of them could have had a really good result. That was one of those things that no one ever realizes, that we made that call, they took a big risk and the risk paid off and that made it all the more sweet.
So that medal at World Championships 2011 for sure is massive. Historic at the time and it will always be the first gold medal won at the world championships by a male, I think by any Canadian.
The other thing, having and building a really tight team. We had a lot of years where our team was really tight, and waxing team, and the other coaches. I think that’s something I am really fond of and proud of, and I think that contributed to the results.
Canadian head coach Justin Wadsworth runs a ski down to Russia’s Anton Gafarov after he broke his ski in the semifinals of the skate sprint at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
FS: What’s the redo? The thing you’d like another shot at?
JW: Of course Sochi happened, that was probably, if I had one thing I wished we could’ve changed, I really felt like those two weeks were tough on our team and we were there to medal. I really felt like the athletes were in great shape. It’s one of those things. The year after that we really worked hard with our wax team and tried to get better and better, do gap analysis on everything, and we still continue to do that. For a small team, we have come through in the big races at World Championships with medals in Falun and Val di Fiemme and Oslo. There are not many small countries that can do that and a lot of that goes to our wax team. In Sochi, I just wished we could have had a better opportunity to provide our athletes with even better skis.
FS:How old are your kids and what do you have planned in the near future?
JW: Teo is 8 and Brynn is 5. This summer, Beckie is working for WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] in Rio and we are going to take the opportunity to go there as a family. After the Olympics, we’ll take a family trip to the Amazon. We have had some time in the past to do that, but it’s been really hard in the past to take three weeks and do something like that, it was impossible. Now, there are things I want time for and not to be worried that I’m not providing my athletes everything I can during those vacations. I just want to be stress free and released in my head about that.
FS:Last thoughts about coaching and where you stand?
JW: I don’t have feelings like I don’t want to do it, but I also don’t have feelings like I have to get back on the World Cup with another team next season. I am really in a good place. I want to keep helping the ski team in Canada and I’ll do that any way I can. I just need to take a break from coaching and being on the road. I’m wide open. If something else presents itself that gives me as much passion as skiing does, then I definitely would look at that as well. For me, and for Beckie as well, it’s about our passions. For her, it’s helping with the aboriginal youth in northern Alberta that are totally disadvantaged.
I have been really lucky coaching what I believe is the best team in the world and I’ve really enjoyed. it.
Canada’s Beckie Scott (right) and Sara Rennner receiving their silver medal in the team sprint at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy. That was two years after Scott belatedly received the gold medal she won at the 2002 Olympics, after fighting long and hard to earn it when the first two finishers were found to be doping.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced a new plan this week: that at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, there would be official medal ceremonies to redistribute medals in any events where initial medalists were disqualified because of doping infractions.
Medals are usually awarded the day or night of the competition at Olympics and World Championships, but the laboratory processes for some doping tests and the notification and disciplinary machine can take longer than that to roll into gear. As a result, at recent Olympics, medals that had already been awarded have later been stripped from the initial winners after the test results go into force.
There are some official provisions to expedite the process. The Court of Arbitration for Sport has an Ad Hoc arm that works at Olympic Games and in the ten days before, trying to process cases as quickly as possible. But things still sometimes drag on.
And that means re-awarding the medals to the next athletes on the results sheet, possibly months or years down the line. When Beckie Scott, the Canadian cross-country skier, eventually received a gold medal in the pursuit at the 2002 Olympics, it was because the first- and second-place finishers had been kicked out for doping. Scott had initially placed third.
(And her journey to receiving that medal was long: it involved arguing that all of an athletes medals from a Games should be stripped if they are found to be doping during the Olympics).
When she finally received her gold medal, more than two years had passed and Scott stood on a podium in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her parents, not her fellow competitors. 500 people showed up. It wasn’t at an Olympic medal plaza.
This was fun, said Devon Kershaw (left), who won the 2011 World Championship team sprint with Alex Harvey. But so was the race itself and knowing that they were absolutely the best that day.
“I can’t say that part hasn’t been fun,” she said in a news story at the time. “My first choice would have been to stand on the podium at the Olympic podium in Salt Lake City and accept the medal there.”
“I did witness Beckie Scott’s silver medal ceremony,” teammate Devon Kershaw wrote in an email. “They had a little podium for her. They called her up. She got her silver alone on a podium in a Canadian city – far from the 50-60,000 cheering fans of Salt Lake. Hell, it wasn’t even winter. Then, I saw it again some months later – but this time for the gold medal that was rightfully hers. Same deal. Alone on the podium. Canadian city. Some speeches. Only this time they played the national anthem of Canada and raised the flag.”
Sir Craig Reedie, the president of WADA and also the vice president of the International Olympic Committee, announced that for the first time new, complete medal ceremonies would be held after the Rio de Janeiro Summer Games in 2016 for athletes who were moved up the result sheet later due to doping infractions.
“We are going to make sure that, when the medals are re-awarded, they are presented properly,” Reedie said, according to the British newspaper The Guardian.
He emphasized that all winners should get their “moment in the sun.”
It’s unclear what that will entail logistically, or how long after the Games such medal ceremonies will be held, in the case that drug tests take so long that some athletes have already left the Games.
Canadian skier Kershaw, himself a three-time Olympian who has competed against athletes who were later banned for doping, echoes these questions.
“Are they going to gather the other medalists and ask them to a) travel to the location of the Olympics in question for said ceremony b) bring their medals with them c) dig out their Olympic clothing (the official prize ceremony clothing of course)?” he wrote. “I understand that the IOC would rather do this in a quicker time-line,” he wrote. “Something like a few days after the athlete-in-question fails the drug test, so the Games would still be going on and a lot of these problems outlined above would be easier to deal with.”
It’s clear that not all doping cases are resolved in a few days, though.
And, having won a World Championships medal himself, Kershaw doubts that any makeup ceremony – even if it was at the Games itself – could really replicate the energy and atmosphere of the first one.
“The reality is that when someone is cheated out of a medal at a championship like the Olympics, a ‘fake real thing’ will never be the same – not even close to the ‘actual’ real thing. The flags have already been raised. The anthems sung. The slow-mo replays with the real tears of emotion after the race played and re-played. Simply put – the ‘actual’ moment is forever done. A contrived ceremony at a later date is just that – official or not. Contrived.”
In other words, to use Reedie’s language: the sun just doesn’t shine as bright a few days later, much less a few years.
But other athletes seem to be enthusiastic.
“One of the best moments of winning was standing on the podium and hearing my national anthem play and seeing my flag raised,” Jamaican sprint World Champion Danielle Williams told the BBC, while noting that she hoped to never found herself in that situation. “So I could definitely understand that an athlete who didn’t get that chance would love it. I would support that.”
Since no further details have emerged about how the ceremonies would be executed, or if they would still be arranged for athletes like Beckie Scott who only receive their gold medals 2 years after the Games, it’s hard to say whether it’s a proposal to be considered seriously.
But it’s clear that the international sports community desperately needs to provide solutions after a doping scandal roiled the track and field community this summer, with implications that one in three medals awarded between 2001 and 2012 in endurance events at major championships went to athletes with suspicious blood profiles.
“Doping like no other issue hits athletes where it hurts: at their one shot at glory, at their own opportunity of a gold medal, and that is why we must continue to work together to protect clean athletes,” said WADA Director General David Howman at the 2015 International Athlete Forum for 2020 in Tokyo, Japan, at the beginning of the month.
While briefly touching on recent scandals only by noting that “doping is still king in terms of its importance as an ethics in sport issue,” Howman instead focused on promoting integrity in sport, noting the agency’s history since its creation in 1999 and attempting to shift the language from the negative phrase “war on doping” to a more positive one, “the protection of the clean athlete.”
He offered no specific plans, however, and Reedie’s proposal seemed no more tangible, either.
Whether the ceremonies become a real thing or not, Kershaw says that athletes should focus on what they can control, and make their own memories.
“I guess my opinion is this: if you are a racer – it better not be about the medal,” wrote the 2011 World Champion in the team sprint. “It better not be about the ceremony. The accolades, the adoration and the pomp and circumstance. Because if you get cheated out of a medal – you will be really, really, really crushed. Those ‘real’ moments are gone forever, never to be replicated or faked back into reality. But – the memories you have about that perfect race that YOU executed should remain.
“The medal is nice,” he continued. “The clapping fans too. The money does help of course – you can’t lie about that. But over the years the medal gets dusty. Your children barf on it. There’s a new champion on tv. You get a little fatter. You ski much slower and probably can’t fit into that race suit that your son now calls ‘old school’ and wears to spring series – racing in it as a ‘throw-back.’ You look back at your equipment that you used to win that medal and it looks hilariously ghetto. You even may ask yourself ‘how the hell did I even make it 1km on this garbage let alone 50?’ But – through it all, those memories above that you shared with your team, your country, your family, your friends and yourself remain. And you should pat yourself on the back at that moment, for that’s why you went through the journey in the first place.”
Perianne Jones (Canadian National Development B-Team) races to 32nd for her best World Championships distance result at 2015 World Championships in Falun, Sweden. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
For the last 12 years, Perianne Jones was more or less on autopilot, leading the life of a professional nordic racer in Canmore, Alberta, and giving little thought to what would come after skiing.
The 30-year-old Canadian national-team member and Nakkertok Nordic prodigy had moved west from her hometown of Almonte, Ontario, immediately after high school. She immersed herself in full-time training and racing, and by 2009, made the Canadian World Cup Team.
Two Olympics and five seasons later, Jones was inching toward retirement. Health issues stunted the start of her 2013/2014 season; she discovered in the fall of 2013 that she had hemochromatosis, a genetic condition that causes too much iron in the body. She spent the next few months working to manage her iron levels and returned to the World Cup circuit in late December 2013.
Canadian biathletes and fellow cross-country skiers cheer on their own Perianne Jones on the first leg of the 4 x 5 k relay at the Sochi Olympics. the team finished 14th, one place better than their finish at the 2010 Vancouver Games.
Two months later, she competed at her second Olympics in Sochi, Russia, placing 23rd in the freestyle sprint for her personal Olympic best. In the classic team sprint, she and teammate Dasha Gaiazova placed 11th after notching third in the same event at the 2013 Sochi World Cup a year earlier.
Jones ended her season with a second-place finish in the freestyle sprint at 2014 Canadian Nationals in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, and was subsequently named to the national development B-team last May.
Also last spring, her coach, Eric de Nys, left the national team to head up a new training program in Canmore: the WinSport Junior Cross Country Ski Team. Jones lost the bulk of the funding she had received as a World Cup Team member, yet decided to continue on for another season.
“I, for sure, wanted to do another year after Sochi, and do things right,” she said on the phone from Canmore in early April. “… [Not making the World Cup Team] was a bummer, but at the same time, I know I didn’t make the criteria. I had one top-ten two seasons ago and you needed two top-twelves. I was put on the development team, so it meant that this past season cost me way more than it ever has…”
“I, for sure, wanted to do another year after Sochi, and do things right.” — Perianne Jones
As a development athlete, she said the costs amounted to $40,000 to $50,000, and that included government assistance as a carded athlete.
“Even if you’re carded, you still have to pay for a place to live,” Jones said. “And living in Canmore is not cheap.”
Carded athletes essentially receive an allowance each month, she explained. The government cuts qualifying individuals checks that could be used for anything — even a flat-screen TV — but the amount is generally considered a living allowance.
“As a development skier, you have to cover housing and your team fee, which is around $10,000 and your winter expenses on the road, and then your flights to and from and around Canada,” Jones said. “It adds up.”
Without stressing too much over finances, she focused on the 2014/2015 season and logged some of her career-best distance results, placing 32nd in the 10 k freestyle and 37th in the skiathlon at 2015 World Championships in Falun, Sweden.
Canada’s Perianne Jones racing to fifth in the 1.4 k classic sprint at 2015 World Championships in Falun, Sweden. She placed 24th overall. (Photo: flyingpointroad.com)
Also in Falun, she finished 24th in the classic sprint and was 21st for a season best in the preceding World Cup classic sprint in Östersund, Sweden.
“This past year I was healthy the whole season, which was quite an accomplishment for me,” she said. “It wasn’t my best season in terms of results, but health-wise it was really good. … I was pleased with both my sprints in Östersund and at world champs. It always can be better for sure, but I don’t have any regrets.”
In Falun, she announced she would leave the international-racing scene at the end of the season. She capped off her career at 2015 Canadian Nationals in Thunder Bay, Ontario, winning the classic sprint, placing second in both the 5 k freestyle and 10 k classic individual races, and fifth in the 30 k freestyle mass start.
In Thunder Bay, Nakkertok hosted a retirement dinner in her honor, complete with a video and several athletes and her brother Kieran Jones — Nakkertok’s head coach — speaking about the impact she had on their ski careers.
“That was the only time I cried all week,” Jones said. “The ski club has been a huge part of my life and maybe I didn’t realize how I had been a part of them so much in the last ten years because I haven’t been around that much. I would totally love to go back to Ottawa and be a part of that some more.”
She clarified that her involvement with Nakkertok would most likely be as a volunteer.
“I have an interest in being involved, not necessarily in coaching at a high level, but when I was growing up with Nakkertok the ski club was entirely volunteer run,” she said. “I will be involved with a ski club wherever I end up. I will miss certain parts of skiing, but to have Joel still a part of the team will be an easier way to make that transition.”
On Friday, Jones and her husband, Joel Jaques, a national-team wax technician, hopped aboard their 32-year-old Dodge getaway van and began a road trip to Ottawa. She guessed they might be gone for at least a month, with Jaques heading back to Canmore for a week in the middle of their trip for a training camp. How far they’d go depended on how the van ran. They bought it in February, about the time Jones knew her career was winding down.
“We were just kind of joking about vans; there was one in Canmore and we offered the guy quite a bit less than he was asking and he said sure, and we’re like, OK, I guess we’re doing this,” she said.
If they have time and the van makes it to Newfoundland, a friend offered to keep the van and buy their plane tickets back to Canmore. There, Jaques will go back to work with the national team and Jones will decide on her next move: she’s considering studying healthcare in Calgary or Ottawa.
Meanwhile, she also planned to start working in Canmore to cover the cost of last season. While she essentially made up her mind to race one last season a year ago, the bill she received at the end of it ultimately solidified her retirement.
“At the beginning of [last] season, I thought if I work and keep skiing, I would need to make the World Cup Team and need other women on the World Cup Team around me to keep going,” she reflected. “As the season kept going, I was realizing that even if all those things came into place, I wasn’t motivated to keep training for another year.”
Perianne Jones racing to 29th in the Canmore World Cup in February 2010. (Photo: Win Goodbody)
After graduating high school, Jones started a fall term the University of Calgary, but found the commute back and forth from Canmore difficult. She took an online course at Athabasca University, but realized that didn’t work for her, either. Instead, she spent the next 12 years focusing on skiing.
“I’m happy with the decisions I made and I’m sure my ski career was the best quality,” she said. “Hindsight’s twenty-twenty; there’s always things that could’ve gone better, but at the same time I was able to commit 100 percent to skiing. Although I’m not educated right now, I’m really looking forward to going to school and I can put 100 percent of my energy into school.”
Jones and Jaques were also looking forward to having the freedom to visit friends this spring.
“I’m looking forward to waking up and being able to what I want to do for exercise,” Jones said.
“I will not be out on my rollerskis,” she added with a laugh. “So far it doesn’t feel a whole lot different. I feel pretty good about my decision, and I’m confident it was the right one. So many people say that it’s really hard [to retire] and some people say it’s awesome, but I think it depends on the person. I have enough plans to keep me busy; I don’t think I’ll be bored.”
Looking back, she credited her two national-team coaches, de Nys and Justin Wadsworth, for the longevity of her career. She worked with de Nys, a development coach before he became the women’s national-team coach, for most of her senior years.
“Eric really got to know me as an athlete and I got to know him as a coach, and I really trusted him and we were able to work well together,” Jones said. “And Justin, he’s been with the team since [2010] and he wasn’t my personal coach until this past year, but the transition was pretty seamless … I don’t feel like I lost Eric as a coach this year, but I feel like I gained Justin. Whenever we had a question about something, either of us could easily call Eric or visit him in his office.”
In her career, Jones notched three top-15’s at both Junior World Championships and U23 World Championships, finishing eighth at 2008 U23’s in Malles Venosta, Italy.
Canadians Perianne Jones (l) and Dasha Gaiazova celebrate their first bronze together in the Sochi World Cup classic team sprint. (Photo: Chandra Crawford)
“I had some really good World Junior experiences, some good results and some really fun times with the team,” she explained. “For sure, the two medals that I won with Chandra and Dasha respectively in Milano and Sochi were highlights.”
In 2012, Jones and Chandra Crawford teamed up for third in the World Cup freestyle team sprint in Milano, Italy.
Jones also recalled making the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, as a major high point. She qualified in 2009 when she and Sara Renner placed sixth in the World Championships classic team sprint in Liberec, Czech Republic.
“That was the first time we got to go to the medal ceremony … and it was with Sara, who was a pretty big mentor,” she said. “I was actually never really on the team with Beckie [Scott] or Milaine [Thériault], but I traveled quite a bit with Sara. … Having them come before me and have the results that they did and just being the people that they are, they made it pretty appealing to chase after ski-related goals … Everything was so positive that I never I had any doubt that A.) I would enjoy it and B.) it would be possible.”
The last of Canada’s three veteran females to retire — following the departures of Crawford and Gaiazova from the national team last year — Jones was excited to see what the next generation of women could accomplish.
“I spent the majority of the season on the road with Emily [Nishikawa] and that was just awesome,” she said. “I’m glad I was there for that and able to witness her best season ever, and I think it’s a sign for really great things to come. There are younger women coming up, too, and they have Emily to look up to so there’s no doubt in my mind that they will do great things.”
Regardless of where she attends school, Jones envisioned that she and Jaques would end up living somewhere in western Canada.
“We don’t really want to leave Canmore,” she said.
Several members of the 2014 Canadian Olympic cross-country ski team get the perfect photo opp at the Olympic rings in Krasnaya Polyana, Russia. (From left to right): Perianne Jones, Amanda Ammar, Heidi Widmer, Brittany Webster, and Emily Nishikawa. (Photo: Emily Nishikawa)
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/03/JCL_3517_1W.jpg")
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2011/03/0000073865_HiRes_05TNFK10073NY90D67D6P01HWBNL.jpg")
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/07/Nishikawa-Kershaw.png")
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2010/02/kershaw.jpg")
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/05/IMG_06121.jpg")
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2011/03/ts-medals-web.jpg")
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2018/03/Kershaw04032018fm1249.jpg")
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/11/DSC_0195-e1478287793405.jpg")
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/01/Podium22117fm0018.jpg")
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/08/Out-for-a-day-hike-on-one-of-our-acclimatization-days.jpg")
![FIS Logo](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2008/12/fis-logo-med.jpg"){kind=logo}
![The Olympic flag will fly at the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, next month but what message is its governing body, the International Olympic Committee, sending in its most recent decision regarding Russia? (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/07/Olympic_flag-e1469478753946.jpg")
![mclaren report podcast](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/07/mclaren-report-podcast.png")
![Men's relay day at the Laura Cross-Country Ski Center on Sunday at the Olympics in Sochi, Russia.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/mens-relay-day.jpg")
![Ingvild Flugstad Oestberg (NOR), Maiken Caspersen Falla (NOR), Natalia Matveeva (RUS), (l-r), claim the podium in Drammen (NOR). (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus.com)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/02/Podium160203mf300.jpg")
![Alexander Legkov celebrates Russia's silver in the men's 4 x 10 k relay, their nation's first medal in cross-country at the Sochi Olympics. He went on to win gold in the final race of the Sochi Games, the 50 k freestyle mass start, and Russia swept the podium.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/Legkov-celebrates.jpg")
![The Russian podium grinning ear-to-ear after Alexander Legkov (3) won gold, Maxim Vylegzhanin (7) earned his third silver in Sochi, and Ilia Chernousov took bronze in the 50 k freestyle mass start, the last race of the 2014 Winter Games.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/50k-podium-actually-smiling.jpg")
![The Russians celebrate their silver medal in the men's 4 x 10 k relay at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/Russia-celebrates.jpg")
![France's bronze-medal men's 4 x 10 k relay team at the Sochi Olympics. From left to right: Ivan Perrillat Boiteux, Jean Marc Gaillard, Maurice Manificat, and Robin Duvillard.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/france-celebrates.jpg")
![Alexander Legkov (3) beat out fellow Russians Maxim Vylegzhanin (not shown) and Ilya Chernousov (r) for gold in the Sochi Olympics 50 k freestyle mass start -- the last race of the 2014 Games. Vylegzhanin took silver by 0.7 seconds, just a tenth of a second ahead of Chernousov in third, and Norway's Martin Johnsrud Sundby (1) missed a medal by 0.2 seconds in fourth.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/50k-oslo-finish.jpg")
![Kikkan Randall at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/randall110214al014.jpg")
![Beckie Scott with the gold medal she was awarded at a ceremony in Vancouver in June 2004. A former Canadian cross-country skier, Scott finished third in the 5 k pursuit at the 2002 Olympics but was later awarded gold when the two women ahead of her were disqualified for using performance-enhancing drugs. (Photo: Cross Country Canada)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/05/1617-jpeg.jpg")
![Canadian head coach Justin Wadsworth leads his team during a training session at the Ski Tour Canada in Canmore, Alberta, including athletes Jess Cockney (l), Len Valjas, and Alex Harvey. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/03/Feature160307mf268.jpg")
![Justin Wadsworth is stepping down from his position as head coach of the Canadian national team after nationals next week after five seasons with the team. (Photo: FIS/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/03/84060_G08_W01.jpg")
![Canadian head coach Justin Wadsworth runs a ski down to Russia's Anton Gafarov after he broke his ski in the semifinals of the skate sprint at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/IMG_2245.jpg")
![Canada's Beckie Scott (right) and Sara Rennner receiving their silver medal in the team sprint at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy. That was two years after Scott belatedly received the gold medal she won at the 2002 Olympics, after fighting long and hard to earn it when the first two finishers were found to be doping.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2009/05/renner1.jpg")
![Canada's Perianne Jones (Alberta World Cup Academy/National Development B-Team) racing to 32nd for her best World Championships distance result at 2015 worlds in Falun, Sweden. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/02/Jones24022015cm62.jpg")
![Canadian biathletes and fellow cross-country skiers cheer on their own Perianne Jones on the first leg of the 4 x 5 k relay at the Sochi Olympics on Friday. Jones dropped to 14th and the team finished 14th, one place better than their finish at the 2010 Vancouver Games.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/IMG_6692.jpg")
![Canada's Perianne Jones raced to fifth place in her qualifier to finish 24th overall in the 1.4 k classic sprint in Falun, Sweden for the 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. (Photo: flingpointroad.com)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/02/SMF2195.jpg")
![Perianne Jones (CAN) was 29th in the Canmore World Cup on Feb 5, 2010. Photo: Win Goodbody.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2010/02/20100206Canmore-341.jpg")
![Canadians Perianne Jones and Dasha Gaiazova celebrate their first bronze of the season, and together, in the Sochi World Cup classic team sprint. (Photo: Chandra Crawford)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/02/photo-4-1.jpg")
![Several members of the Canadian Olympic cross-country ski team get the perfect photo opp at the Olympic rings in Krasnaya Polyana, Russia. (From left to right): Perianne Jones, Amanda Ammar, Heidi Widmer, Brittany Webster, and Emily Nishikawa. (Photo: Emily Nishikawa)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/1800377_10152004281380749_947633605_n.jpg")