Here in Toronto there are cheap skiing/boarding lessons offered by the city at very, very tiny hills. And it's probably cheaper to ski at somewhere like Vancouver's Cypress Mountain than it is to figure skate at Joanne McLeod's rink.
Skate Canada doesn't really have anything at the younger levels. It's pretty much parents and former skaters teaching kids how to skate. There's no identifying potential talent. SC needs to focus on how to encourage the early skaters, and for that to happen, it would take a lot of changes.
They aren't dirt cheap, and neither is hockey, but they are lower cost at the mid-range level where potential talent is recognized before plans for big moves to elite training centres start being considered. It's also a lot easier to grab sponsors in skiing and snowboarding to help with expenses, and hockey is so pervasive in Canada that nearly every community has a solid peewee to pro pipeline talented kids can rely on along with access to used gear, local business financial support, and group training sessions.
I teach 7 & 8 year olds. Most of the kids (girls and boys included) play soccer in the summer and hockey in the winter. They take skating lessons until they are good enough skaters to play hockey and then quit. Many ski or snow board recreationally and have pools in their backyards, but these are leisure/family activities to them, not 'sports'.
100%. Dismantling Canadian jr team (which means no funding) and coming up with the joke of a next-gen team they put together, especially in ladies
. Obviously, someone is kissing *ss or greasing palms there. The percentage of revenue that goes to skaters vs their "overhead" is obscene.
This. Canada won no medals in 1980 and the 4-medal haul in 2018 was not the norm. That said, if Skate Canada would stop trying to appeal to the mainstream and just embrace figure skating as the fabulous, over the top, outrageous LGBTQ-friendly
sport that is, maybe they'd have more success.
A skater like that would obviously be sent out. But that’s neither here nor there, since the skaters not being sent out are people who don’t have the big jumps and/or consistently fail to land them.
I know, though SC has been very stringent with their criteria. But the skaters who aren't consistently landing the big jumps need to experience the competitive environment. Skating against stronger competitors can be a huge motivator. And even feeling that your federation has some faith in you can help motivate as well. If you don't feel like your federation things you deserve to compete, what's going to make you want to continue in the sport?
That would be great if Canada didn't have a long history in figure skating as one of the sport's major countries. While not every year is expected to bring a multi-medal haul, Canada has taken home at least one figure skating medal in almost every Olympics over the last 70 years. It's been more than 40 years since Canada failed to win anything in figure skating at the games. From that perspective, it's something of a big deal to go home empty-handed.
This. Canada won no medals in 1980 and the 4-medal haul in 2018 was not the norm. That said, if Skate Canada would stop trying to appeal to the mainstream and just embrace figure skating as the fabulous, over the top, outrageous LGBTQ-friendly
It might not directly lead to medals and maybe not even indirectly but it will make figure skating a fun sport with lots of participants many of whom will develop a lifelong interest in the sport. Figure skating doesn't just need Olympic-caliber skaters. It needs judges and accountants and volunteers for local clubs.
But things change. The US used to always have contenders in the Womens division. Then we stopped. And we used to rule ice dance, then our dance program was laughably bad and now we have contenders again. At one point we had Pairs who would vie for the podium and now we don't.
That’s what domestic events are for. They’re the stepping stone to the bigger completions.
Every assignment costs money. If they’re not motivated to do what is necessary to get out internationally, I don’t see why being sent places where they’re completely out of their element would make a difference.
My silly comment meant that I WANT Skate Canada to stop enforcing rigid and traditional gender roles. Embrace jock butch women skaters, femme men skaters, non binary skaters like Leduc, etc. And ban Julie Marcotte's treacly music collection.
Team sports are what parents gravitate to, and thus their kids. And parents themselves have to invest time in figure skating in some way. Accountants, judges, volunteers for dressing rooms etc. And parents aren't doing it. We're too scattered, we don't really invest in facilities that do just figure skating that accommodates novice/junior skaters. Canada is a big country. We don't send our kids off to Van or MTL or TO and board them like they do in Russia for instance. What can be done, is being done. Identifying talented skaters is part of the problem, but even if they were and they lived in Iktoyutuk, the coaches aren't going to move there and the skaters aren't going to move to a training facility until they're middle teens for sure. We've been lucky and I've liked it. But some years or decades we aren't going to be. I don't really see a solution per se.
Double post..............yes oh gawd yes x 1000.And ban Julie Marcotte's treacly music collection.
Is it possible that SC doesn’t have the funds to send out skaters to any more events than they already are?
They would have more money if Slipchuk hadn't been sent to the Olympics. Why did he need to be there?
The thing is Canada did really well in these Olympics. We over exceeded projected medal counts.
Zukiwsky was there too, wasn't he? Could have done without one of them.
I really enjoyed Maddie Schizas. And Gilles and Poirier.
SC charges $45/yr per skater stepping on any club ice across Canada. There are 130,000 skaters per year registered. There are over 5800 coaches paying over $100 a year to register. And the only real benefit any of them see is accidental insurance coverage. On top of that, they get a cut of all club competitions held across the country AND everything is basically run by volunteers. So I have a really hard time understanding why they don't have funds...
