World Cup racing returns to Canmore this Friday with the 10km interval-start skate, shortly followed by three more races over the next four days. It will be the first time that the World Cup is at Canmore Nordic Centre since 2016, and the sixth time in the last twenty years. We’ll have more race-specific previews later this week, but for now, here’s a look at the venue itself, and the wide-ranging benefits of being able to claim consistent early-season snow. This is a favorable piece, to be sure, but is not sponsored content.
By Gerry Furseth
In Canmore, it all starts with snow farming. The end results include building the ski community, hosting ski races, developing the next generation of racers, and driving the regional economy. We will start at the beginning, go to the end, and then stop.
Snow farming is building a crop of snow during the spring, storing it through the summer, and spreading it out in fall to open ski trails long before natural snow is available.
Snowmaking is combining water and electricity to generate snow, which is most commonly spread out on trails. This process occurs during winter or fall.
The annual cycle at Canmore Nordic Centre starts with snow farming. From January to March, the staff make snow at two sites at the venue. In April or May, these two sites are covered with half a metre of sawdust to insulate it for the summer.
In October, the farmed snow is spread out over about two kilometres of trail, centered on the biathlon stadium. This is Frozen Thunder.
As soon as the weather is cold enough and the weather predictions are favourable, snowmaking begins. This new snow is used to maintain and expand the original 2km of trails, building out to fill the Banff recreational loop to the meadow (the Chandra Crawford hut), the cross-country race trails, and the biathlon race trails. The rest of the recreation trails rely on natural snow.
The benefits of this unnatural resource are legion. None of the below would happen without snow. Most of these facts were provided by the Canmore World Cup Event Chair, Norbert Meier, in a recent phone interview.
Frozen Thunder
Most years, this is the first groomed skiing in Canada. Other areas may open earlier in good snow years, but teams can make plans knowing that Frozen Thunder will consistently and reliably open on October 20th. This season has been a good reminder that not all years are good snow years.
In addition to being an economic driver, the reliable snow allows for racing in October, November, and December, far earlier than would otherwise be the case.
While Alberta Parks pays most of the costs of snowmaking, the main users of Frozen Thunder also contribute.
“Nordiq Canada, Nordic Alberta, Biathlon Canada, Biathlon Alberta, and the Alberta World Cup Society,” said Meier, listing primary supporters of the loop. “Those five organizations contribute about 70-75 thousand dollars in October to the cost of rolling, of taking the snow from where it’s been stored and putting it onto the trails.”
Economic
The easiest benefit to measure, from Frozen Thunder forward, is economic.
Clubs from all across Canada and the U.S. travel here in October, filling beds and restaurants at a time when summer tourism is over and the nearby alpine ski resorts are waiting for snow.
During the season, roughly 300 kids come from Calgary each Saturday to train with their clubs. As these kids are not driving age, they bring with them parents and siblings who buy trail passes, coffee, and lunches.
In poor snow years like this one, racers from western North America will travel to Canmore for quality on-snow training blocks, once again filling beds and restaurants.
Major events contribute significantly to the local economy. The early-pandemic cancellation of the 2020 World Cup Finals was a significant blow to businesses. The 2016 Ski Tour Canada had four race days in Canmore, generating seven million dollars in revenue for Canmore businesses and another one million dollars for the region. Canada as a whole benefitted, primarily through sales tax of roughly $400,000.
“We use the standard Canadian model from the Sports Tourism Alliance to measure the economic impact,” Meier said. “We estimate that in advance and then we have a team of volunteers that goes out and interviews spectators and looks at our spending as a World Cup organizer and puts that into their model and we get a report back in April that tells us what the total economic impact of our event was based on (numbers) for Canmore, for Alberta, and then for Canada.”
The 2020 World Cup stop was expected to generate similar financial returns. With four race days and two training days for this week’s World Cup stop, the financial benefit is expected to be larger than 2016. Some of the teams were training in Canmore a week in advance, unlike in 2016 when they traveled from the first half of the Tour in Québec (see Pål Golberg’s ski here from Saturday morning, for example).
There will also be a biathlon World Cup Final in March, with similar size and impact.
Recreation
The primary reason for Canmore Nordic Centre is its place in the Alberta Provincial Park system, providing recreation for Albertans. While anyone reading this website will think of nordic skiing as the defining feature of this venue, there is also biathlon, mountain biking, fat biking, snowshoeing, and hiking. This facility obviously provides skiing for the 15,000 residents of Canmore, but is close enough to Calgary to be a reasonable day trip for 1.6 million people.
Community Building
The Nordic Centre is one of the defining features of the area. Families ski there, children progress through programs there, and a lot of athletes train there.
Volunteering is an important part of every community. Major events, like a World Cup, bring in new volunteers. An odd thing about volunteering is that while it gives people a sense of belonging and a feeling that they are contributing, it also inspires people to do more for their community.
“We have 325 volunteers, and for many of them it’s their first World Cup,” Meier said. “So that’s pretty cool, pretty exciting. And we’ve also tried to encourage generational turnover so that we have new people, younger people.”
This World Cup has attracted volunteers from multiple provinces and territories, people who are spending money and vacation time to contribute to the sport. When these people return to their homes, most will return inspired to bring new ideas and energy to their own club.
“We actually have two volunteers from Germany,” Meier noted. “They independently traveled to Vancouver, met up in Vancouver, decided to rent a car and drive through British Columbia, and then ended up in Canmore volunteering for the World Cup.”
“[Connecting the communities] is definitely one of our top goals. By bringing the world’s best skiers here and by inviting the youth of Alberta and Canada to come here we’re hoping the two will hook up and will inspire the other,” said Meier.
The hosts are also partnering with local schools.
“[A] grade will adopt a country, will draw posters and learn something about the country,” Meier explained. “They are partnered with a business on main street and those posters go up in the shop windows of the businesses and they go up in the wax room of the nation that they’ve adopted. So another way of taking the local kids and connecting them to our event again, for inspirational purposes if you will.“
On Saturday, there is the Coop Mini World Cup.
“We have 270 kids aged 8 to 14 from across Alberta participating in the Mini World Cup in Canmore on February 10th,” noted Meier. “They’re coming from all over the province. Nordic Alberta has done a terrific job in promoting it and bringing it and we had to cap it at 270 because that’s the number of bibs we ordered.”
Growing the Sport
The sport wouldn’t be a sport without volunteers hosting races. Racers aren’t racers without events to enter.
For athletes, races can seem to just magically appear on the calendar. For organizers of small Tier 2 and Tier 3 events, the commitment has to be made before the April meetings of the preceding spring. Without snowmaking in place, Canmore would not be allocated any events before January.
The Alberta Cup 1 and 2 events in December bring about 500 (mostly younger) athletes. Biathlon holds trials in early November. The Para team was hosting early-season races to infill the schedule after the Para World Cup schedule shifted to starting in January this year. A number of other countries sent their Para teams to train and compete in November.
The major events are also inspirational. Olympic gold medallist Chandra Crawford became a biathlete after watching Myriam Bédard compete in Canmore. (She later shifted sports to cross-country skiing.)
Tier 1 events, like Nationals and Continental Cups (Noram, SuperTour, Nordiq Cup), need to be set in motion well before the final schedule is agreed upon in April. World Cups need to have their bid document complete three years in advance, join the provisional schedule two years in advance, and get approved a year in advance.
When Meier says the planning starts three years in advance, that would be the planning that starts after FIS approves the bid document.
Elite Development
42 Canadians will get World Cup starts this season. Forty-two. 42.
Nordiq Canada’s High Performance Director Chris Jeffries emailed Nordic Insights a quick summary of what hosting means to Canadians. The rest of this subsection (everything from here to the heading “What does this mean for the athletes?”) is a direct quote from Jeffries’s email:
48 athletes will get to wear the Canadian race suit this winter in “Olympic” international events:
- 4 Youth Olympic Games
- 10 World Juniors
- 10 U23 Worlds
- 42 World Cup
By the number 42 shown above, [hosting is] pretty important. More than anything:
- it is important to our community.
- Reinforce the philosophy of “Team Canada”
- 23 clubs represented among the 48 athletes wearing the maple leaf
- Includes 15 additional Daily Training Environments between Training Centers, Divisional Programs, NCAA, Nordiq Canada programming
- Experience for 30 accredited staff
- Integrated support team to be integrated into our team environment
- Value returned to sponsors, partners, families and friends
- 450 total contract staff and volunteers to host the Alberta World Cup
- The access to Canadians to embrace the world cup as an experience and something that is real and attainable.
- My kids as an example this afternoon were at a friends house making posters to cheer on athletes next week
- The VIP zone at the Alberta World Cup is a real success and an opportunity for our alumni and ambassadors to connect with partners and sponsors
- We are hosting a “Parent Champagne Toast” event in Canmore to thank athlete’s number one sponsors
- We have had over 60 ticket requests per day from athletes for the WC in Minneapolis, not including those that already purchased tickets
What does this mean for the athletes?
Canada’s most experienced World Cup skiers, Tony Cyr and Katherine Stewart-Jones, have talked about what they have learned this season. For skiers who are getting their first starts, the learning curve is steeper.
Those lessons learned will go home to the 23 clubs and 15 training groups that Jeffries mentioned above. Every skier who has trained with those 42 will now have a reference and a clearer vision of what they need to achieve to move to the next level.
Amelia Wells, a skier based with the local club, Alberta World Cup Academy, shared some thoughts on her first World Cup experience in Period 1 of this season.
“I didn’t know what to expect going into the trip,” wrote Wells to Nordic Insights.
“I had an amazing time at Period 1 of the World Cup and the Canadian team provided a very welcoming and supportive environment. I learned so much every day from teammates, coaches, wax technicians, and staff. I competed in a total of nine World Cup races over four weeks, which is the most I have ever raced. I am very grateful for the opportunity that I have had as a young athlete. Racing at such a high level showed me areas I need to work on when I’m back in Canada. The trip provided me with a firsthand experience of how the best skiers in the world ski, shaping a clear vision of where I aspire to be in the future.”
Host nation starts, generously defined
In a slightly bizarre bit of FIS logic that has hugely helped North American athletes develop into top World Cup skiers, Canada and the USA are treated as discrete continents by FIS, each hosting its own Continental Cup (i.e., the Nordiq Cup in Canada and the SuperTour in the U.S.). Each continent has a COC leader start allocation for every World Cup race.
As an added bonus, and notwithstanding the above, the U.S. team gets to claim the “host nation” allocation in Canada (i.e., several more starters than it would otherwise get), and the Canadian team gets the same allocation in the U.S. This is the first time that Canada has been able to use this gift to developing nations, as Minnesota will be the first U.S. World Cup stop since 2001.
Future Tourism
The TV coverage of Canmore’s spectacular setting is one big tourism ad.
Even before coverage starts later this week, European ski fans were treated to overhearing Jessie Diggins, while waiting to get on the podium in Goms, tell the other athletes about how amazing Canmore is. Given that Diggins is from Minnesota, the host of the next World Cup after Canmore and a major nordic destination even before the rise of the sparkle chipmunk, this is much more convincing than a nice video from the tourism board.
The tourism that results from this exposure is harder to track. While a few Europeans will come for the World Cup itself, more will put Canmore on their vacation bucket list. It is hard to know how many of those German climbers collecting peaks, Swedish cyclists riding from Canmore to Jasper, and Estonian hikers watched the 2016 Ski Tour Canada and got inspired.
