Cross Country Canada is taking its lack of medal success in Sochi seriously, and the result is a large shakeup that will affect the entire national ski team.
Launching its first altitude camp of the season at Sunshine Village, Canada’s cross-country ski team has a new look, structure and (hopefully) solutions to get the most out the country’s athletes for the next four years.
Gone is Chandra Crawford (and perhaps others while Cross Country Canada awaits word on more retirements), while new to the team is coach Tor–Arne Hetland, a two-time Olympic and five-time world championship medallist from Norway. Hetland will oversee the team while they race in Europe, working alongside head coach Justin Wadsworth, who now gets more responsibility on his plate, but less time overseas.
Wadsworth, with a new head coach leadership role, will oversee the entire national ski team program and will help integrate the world cup team with the Alberta World Cup Academy. He will travel with the team to larger competitions such as world championships and the Tour de Ski, but will remain in Canmore much of the year.
Louis Bouchard will remain as the top coach in Quebec, while Mike Cavaliere has moved into an executive director role with the Alberta World Cup Academy.
“It’s not that different than the past. I am handing over some of the day-to-day responsibilities to Tor and the AWCA coaches. I’m still overseeing the national team program,” Wadsworth said.
Now with a greater level of responsibility for Canada’s development team skiers, Wadsworth said there will be more shared workouts and camps in an effort to bridge the development gap that has emerged. He will work first hand with younger athletes and coaches to help bring them to the next level, and could see them compete more frequently on lower European circuits. Last year, world cup coaches rotated their coaching duties overseas, but Hetland will now add consistency.
Ensuring all training centres are working together is the first task for Wadsworth.
“That partnership was lacking in the past. We had to start a new direction to work on the development side and have it more tied to the national team program,” Wadsworth said. “We can either let everyone run and hope for the best, or we develop a pipeline. We need to get our development skiers to the next level.”
All national team athletes must be members of training centres, as they must train alongside the AWCA in Canmore, Pierre Harvey Training Centre in Quebec or development athletes can head to a training centre in Thunder Bay, Ont. The Callaghan Valley Training Centre in Whistler has lost its training centre status.
Wadsworth said all training centres must work as an integrated system, communicating together to produce the best results.
“A big part of my job is communication. That made our world cup team and we lived and died by it. It’s key. It makes the whole thing go,” Wadsworth said.
Last year, too many athletes were training independently. Wadsworth wants to move away from that model and build on prior successes.
“It’s not healthy when people are doing so much on their own. We have so few athletes in our talent pool, we have to be more cautious. What we’ve done on the world cup, in placing Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw in the top three overall, we’ve gotta be one of the strongest programs in the world. Right now, we’re recognizing the gaps and narrowing them,” Wadsworth said.
High Performance Director Thom Holland said the changes are positive and he recognizes the organization needs many moving parts to be successful.
“Things have changed on how to build a leadership culture. This will allow for more continuity on the world cup and a step up in our development,” Holland said.
“This is all about aligning what we do in our country. It’s about improving daily training.”
The team concluded its training camp at Sunshine Village this week.
