Young athletes are legacy of Vancouver's 2010 Winter Games
Credit to Author: Randy Shore| Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2020 14:00:14 +0000
Caitlin Nash and Natalie Corless were grade-schoolers when the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games were hosted by Vancouver and Whistler.
“Growing up in Whistler I was always surrounded by high-performance athletes,” said Nash, 16. “Being immersed in the Games and that culture was something that definitely put me on to luge and started my sporting career.”
Not yet high school graduates, Corless and Nash are now competing at the highest levels in luge and making sport history with cool intensity. The Whistler-based twosome has been moving up the junior ranks steadily and last season started to dominate their peers as singles and as a team.
Last year — their first as a team — they won the International Luge Federation Crystal Globe as the top pair in Youth ‘A’ Women’s Doubles. Then, in December, they smashed the gender barrier to become the first female pair to compete against men in doubles luge at the World Cup.
Women and men compete separately in single luge, but there is no separate event for women’s doubles at the Cup. But there is nothing that says women can’t compete in the doubles, except it had never been done before. When Canada had the chance to add a second sled to the doubles’ field, Corless and Nash slid right in as they had successfully completed a Nation’s Cup qualifying race just two days earlier.
“We knew at the beginning of the season that the World Cup was coming to Whistler and it was in the back of our minds,” said Corless, also 16. “We had some of our best runs that week, so we were able to compete.”
“Being able to race in the World Cup on home ice and being the first women to compete in a doubles race was an unforgettable experience,” added Nash.
The teens struck again in January, scoring Canada’s first medal — a surprising silver — at the Youth Olympics in Switzerland.
“We’ve been working hard to get them ready,” said coach Matt McMurray. “They are a big part of the legacy of the (2010) Games.”
Nash and Corless have benefited from a variety of Olympic-legacy organizations, including NextGen and the Canadian Sport Institute-Pacific, among others.
“Just keeping the (Whistler Sliding Centre) track running is critical to their training and if we didn’t have that, we’d be up the creek,” McMurray said.
In the aftermath of the Games, Whistler hosted a series of public events to attract young people to winter sports.
“I tried luge out and I immediately loved it,” said Nash. “I think I did seven runs the first day and started training the next week.”
Nash and Corless are already talking about sport as a career.
“Something clicked in my mind that luge is something I really want to do and in order to succeed I know that I will really have to put the work in,” said Nash. “Finally, those results are starting to show.”
The girls are currently training in Europe for the Luge Junior World Championships in Oberhof, Germany.
“We are away from school for about two months, so we really have to keep in touch with our teachers,” said Corless. “With so many athletes in Whistler, the teachers are really good at staying connected.”
Caitlin Nash and Natalie Corless of Whistler are seen during the first run of doubles luge during the Viessmann Luge World Cup in Whistler.
LEGACIES NOW AND FOREVER
2010 Legacies Now was the organization created to ensure that the 2010 Games wouldn’t be a one-and-done affair. If B.C. was going to host the Games, the goal was that the impact should be felt for generations, said Bruce Dewar, president and CEO of LIFT Philanthropy Partners and former CEO of 2010 Legacies Now.
Yes, we would build things: tracks, rinks, highways and SkyTrains. But we would also build organizations, capacity and character.
From the bid, viaSport was founded to encourage youth amateur sport, and Decoda Literacy solutions was created to ensure children, and especially Indigenous communities, have the tools to thrive off of the playing field.
Legacies Now has reorganized and rebranded as LIFT to support social-purpose programs across Canada. Their partner, KidSport Canada, subsidizes the cost of sports programs to ensure Canadian children don’t suffer from financial barriers to participation.
KidSport has provided funding to Tiana Sacco, a Grade 12 student who plays on Britannia Secondary’s senior basketball team. She also travelled to Toronto in 2017 for the North American Indigenous Games, and hopes to compete at those games this year in Halifax.
Tiana Sacco of Vancouver’s Britannia Secondary at this week’s city semi-finals basketball game. (Arlen Redekop / PNG staff photo)
No one in Sacco’s family played basketball, but she started in Grade 4 and has been a role model to her younger female cousin, who is now also excelling at the sport.
“I think that just playing a sport is pretty empowering for girls, especially when you play from a young age and play all throughout your life,” the 17-year-old said. “When I was younger, a lot of people would say you throw like a girl, or you run like a girl.”
But when she’s on the basketball court, she is playing like a girl, along with many other girls, and she’s proud of it.
She credits her involvement with the sport for teaching her how to manage her busy schedule and focus on a positive pastime; to give back to her community by volunteering with organizations such as Girls Who LEAP; and to control her emotions on the court and to work hard as part of a team.
“You really have to work for what you want. You aren’t just given it. You can’t already expect to win or have the best outcome — you have to really work for it,” she said.
Sacco was a young girl when the Olympics were here, and remembers attending a curling match with her grandmother. Representing Canada at a future summer Olympics would be a dream.
“That would be pretty cool.”
Tewanee Joseph was the CEO of Four Host First Nations, a non-profit organization created after Vancouver was awarded the Games to encourage inclusion of Indigenous people. Ten years after the Olympics, he believes even more could be done to support youth like Sacco to pursue athletics.
But, overall, he thinks the legacy of the 2010 Games has been positive for First Nations people, resulting in a better understanding of Indigenous culture and increased business opportunities through collaboration in areas such as tourism or development.
“From an Indigenous perspective, it really brought First Nations, Inuit, and Metis people to the forefront,” said Joseph, a member of the Squamish nation.
“I think it broke down those barriers that might have been there. And it was the Games that allowed us to do that….. It was the greatest accelerator of relationships that I have seen, and it was because there was an openness that these were Canada’s Games.”
In the years leading up to the Games, Joseph visited Indigenous communities across Canada and extended invitations for them to play a role. At the time, he promised that First Nations’ involvement in the Games would amount to “more than beads and feathers,” and believes that was accomplished.
“For Vancouver and Canada, we are looked at around the world of how collaboration and inclusivity could work,” said Joseph, who has since consulted with the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand about increasing Indigenous engagement in that event.
Tiana Sacco (right) of Britannia Secondary playing the city semi-finals of girls’ basketball this week against Eric Hamber. (Arlen Redekop / PNG staff photo)
Games Venues Still Popular
The physical legacy of the 2010 Games is evident everywhere you look in Vancouver and Whistler, with displays, museums and monuments.
It’s the infrastructure and athlete support programs that power Canada’s top athletes 10 years later.
“We heard through the bid phase that athletes and athletic organizations were looking for long-lasting benefits, win-or-lose the bid,” said Dewar. “We wanted to make sure to help not only the elite athletes, but everyone who wants to participate in sports.
“We were also looking for ways the Games could be a catalyst for social change,” he said. “That was an area where other major events didn’t always deliver.”
Whistler Olympic Park provides opportunities for the public to snowshoe, toboggan, cross-country ski and even learn biathlon, and the proceeds go to support youth programs.
The Whistler Athletes’ Centre housed 3,500 Olympians and Paralympians during the Games and today hosts world-class training facilities and accommodation for high-performance athletes and sports enthusiasts of every description.
The Whistler Sliding Centre is open to any member of the public brave enough to climb into a bobsleigh. Heck, they even have wheeled sleds in the summer.
The courses for luge, skeleton and bobsleigh offer young people a chance to pursue excellence without heading all the way to Calgary’s Canada Olympic Park. The National Training Centre in Whistler draws athletes from all over the world, while the B.C. Sliding Development Centre offers training in sliding sports for every skill level.
In Vancouver, venues such as the Richmond Olympic Oval were designed to keep on giving to the community long after the Games were over.
“Building infrastructure for the Games is always a challenge, and you don’t want to be left with a white elephant,” said Dewar.
Richmond insisted the oval had to be a multi-sport venue and provide sporting opportunities for elite athletes and events for every level of competition.
“We designed it from the beginning to stay in the community and add value, rather than building for the Games wondering how to make it useful afterwards,” he said. “We built the retrofit in from the start.”
Canadian long-track speedskaters won five Olympic medals — including two gold — at the Richmond oval in 2010.
Today, the oval is home to Canada’s women’s volleyball team, and training programs for future Olympians in a variety of sports. The oval has two ice rinks, a climbing wall, two sprinting tracks and room to host top-level tournaments in table tennis, fencing, basketball, martial arts and wheelchair rugby.
“The old thinking was to bid based on what your city could do for the Olympic movement,” said Dewar. “But there’s been a pivot and we were thinking about what the Games could do for our cities. Vancouver and London were very much involved in that conversation. We didn’t want to do anything that was just for the sake of the event. It has to have broader benefits.”
This month the oval is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Games with a roster of events for the public. Experience everything from public skating and memorabilia displays to figure skating and speedskating demonstrations Feb. 21-23. Canada will take on the U.S. in women’s para hockey on Feb. 21, and Olympic athletes will be on-hand to sign autographs Feb. 22.