<p>CALGARY – The Canadian women’s ski jumping team re-launched following the news that they’ll be included in the 2014 Winter Olympics.</p> <p>The women have a new coach, new recruits, more money from Own The Podium and have invited the sport’s pioneers to get back in the game. All that has happened in the few weeks since International Olympic Committee approved the addition of the sport for 2014.</p> <p>”We have more girls training with us now,” said 15-year-old Taylor Henrich. “I think it’s become more competitive on the team.</p> <p>”We’re all fighting for spots to go to the Olympics now. It’s a pretty demanding sport now. It’s making me more motivated to be the best.”</p> <p>Ski Jumping Canada hosted recruitment camps in Calgary and, from the 150 who attended, chose a dozen girls between 12 and 15 to participate in dryland training this summer.</p> <p>”We were looking for someone who was very comfortable on their skis and of slight build,” said Brent Morrice, chairman of Ski Jumping Canada.</p> <p>”If you are of slight build, you may have trouble competing in downhill and ski jumping would be a perfect area for you, if you have the mindset to throw yourself off a ski jump at 90 kilometres per hour.”</p> <p>Girls from Calgary were recruited because it’s the only city in Canada with the small developmental jumps required to teach the girls the sport. The 2010 Olympic facility in Whistler, B.C., has only the K120 (big hill) and K90 (small hill) jumps.</p> <p>Ted Bafia, who revived the men’s program and got Canadian men jumping in the Olympics again, is now at the helm of the women’s squad.</p> <p>”The girls we’re getting now are very young,” Bafia said. “It takes many years to develop them. It’s not a short process, but we need to start now.”</p> <p>Own The Podium, which awards federal government money to sport federations based on medal potential, has more than doubled the ski jumpers’ allotment for the 2011-2012 season.</p> <p>The reason for that is ski jumping is now seen as a sport that can produce an Olympic medal for Canada in 2014.</p> <p>With virtually no financial support, Calgary’s Katie Willis, Nata de Leeuw and Atsuko Tanaka posted top-10 results internationally in recent years.</p> <p>The IOC twice rejected women’s ski jumping prior to the 2010 Games, saying the sport lacked enough elite competitors. The women took their case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, but couldn’t get the IOC’s decision overturned.</p> <p>Willis and De Leeuw quit the sport to go to university, while Tanaka started competing for Japan.</p> <p>Willis and De Leeuw, both 20, and 19-year-old Tanaka have been asked if they want to return to the Canadian team, which would provide veteran leadership on developing squad.</p> <p>Willis, from Calgary, feels torn between continuing her engineering studies and becoming a full-time athlete again.</p> <p>”I’d sort of moved on after I took a year off,” she said. “I was missing it at the beginning, but I really got into school. It’s very tough. That’s why it’s taking me so long to make this decision.”</p> <p>The last time Willis jumped was in January 2010, at an event in Whistler.</p> <p>Henrich, who was 18th at this year’s world championship, is an athlete to watch. The Calgarian has been jumping for seven years, has some international experience and will benefit from the new opportunities now available to the team.</p> <p>”In three years, she’ll be 18 and she’s already top 20,” Morrice pointed out. </p> <p>The ski jumpers received less than $500,000 over the five years prior to the 2010 Games because OTP didn’t consider them medal-producing disciplines.</p> <p>Ski Jumping Canada will get $294,000 from OTP next winter, compared to the $137,500 they received for 2010-11.</p> <p>Less than $300,000 still isn’t a lot of money when compared to snowboarding, speedskating and freestyle skiing, which each received about $1.5 million last winter.</p> <p>But the ski jumpers can now afford to hire a high-performance director, which every other winter sport has, to chart a course for 2014.</p> <p>Enter former skeleton racer Jeff Pain, an Olympic silver medallist in 2006. He retired last year and has been working on a contract basis for the ski jumpers until they hire a full-time high-performance director. Pain met with OTP head Alex Baumann to present a plan for the women’s team.</p> <p>”Part of the reason I got this contract is I have lived the exact process they’re about to embark on,” Pain explained. “A zero-funded sport, self-funded basically, through limited coaching, to professional coaching, to Olympic inclusion.</p> <p>”I have lived the entire process from zero to Olympics and Olympic medals.”</p> <p>He credits Ski Jumping Canada for operating a women’s program in recent years, which allowed them to out of the start gates quickly when the IOC gave its approval.</p> <p>”They’ve really done quite a remarkable job with nothing,” Pain observed. “They’ve put athletes into the top 30, top 10 and top five in the world. If they hadn’t done that before now, they wouldn’t have a chance.”</p> <p>The young men’s team ranks far behind the powerhouse Europeans, but the men could reap some spin-off benefits from the resources now available to the women’s team.</p> <p>”I think it’s going to bring the spotlight back to ski jumping Canada because the spotlight has been gone since the Horst Bulau days,” Morrice said, referring to Canada’s jumping star of the 1980s.</p> <p> “Once you get a winner again, it will bring it back to the forefront. It’s such an exciting sport to watch and Canadians love winners. I truly believe we will be contending in 2014 and that will bring the men’s program to that next level.”</p> <p>Both Bafia and Henrich say No. 1 on their wish list is a sports psychologist.</p> <p>”This sport is 50 per cent physical and 50 per cent mental,” Henrich said. </p> <p>She wants to immerse herself in the sport, spend more time around the male jumpers and get into more competitions in order to prepare for the 2014 Games.</p> <p>”I think about it every day of my life,” Henrich said. “I talk to my mom and dad about ‘I want to go to the Olympics, I want to be Canada’s best, I want to win gold.'</p> <p>”I’m just that motivated.”</p>
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