Olympic success highlights glaring absence of ski jump facilities in Canada

It was a massive Olympic success for Canada. 

History was made on Feb. 8 when the country's national team clinched its first ever podium-place finish in Olympic ski jumping. 

The four-person team won a bronze medal in the debut of the mixed event. 

But while the future for the sport might seem bright in Beijing, back at home there's little to encourage young athletes to pick up their skis.

Nigel Lauchlan, the head coach at Altius Nordic Ski Club, chuckled as he looked up and down the grassy hill in Calgary that he and a team of volunteer parents and athletes turned into a practice jump. 

"It looks like any future Olympians in ski jumping will have to learn on our strange volunteer-made jump," he said.

Lauchlan started ski jumping when he was 12. 

By age 15 he was competing internationally, and several years later he joined the national team at age 21. 

"It would have been impossible without the Calgary facilities. There's no way I would have started," Lauchlan said. 

The facilities that Lauchlan learned through no longer exist. 

Built for the 1988 Winter Olympics, the jumps Lauchlan flew from for years provided the only place in Canada where ski jumpers could develop their skills. 

Lauchlan says those hills provided smaller and larger jumps, allowing athletes to move up to the next challenge at appropriate intervals. 

In 2018, the facility at Winsport was closed. 

Now, Lauchlan and his volunteers are making the most of what they have with plastic sheets staked into a hill. 

"This plastic netting that we have here, we got from our old jump at the Winsport site," said Lauchlan. 

Lauchlan says that any young ski jumpers with podiums in their dreams will have a tough time transitioning through the sport up to the Olympic