The 1988 Winter Olympic Games established Calgary as a world renowned location for winter sports training, a reputation that remains firmly intact more than a quarter of a century later.
WinSport Canada, the Winter Sport Institute at Canada Olympic Park, provides an opportunity for promising young athletes to hone their skills and 23-year-old halfpipe skier Cassie Sharpe has taken full advantage of what has been made available to her.
Sharpe began training with WinSport Canada four years ago with a focus on slopestyle skiing before the halfpipe was added to her regiment. In 2013, she found competitive success in both disciplines.
“In a three month span, I was on the podium nine times in a row,” recalls Sharpe. “At that point, I started thinking, okay, maybe I could do this as a career, like become a professional skier”
“After that season I got a phone call to be on the national team and that's really when I it was like ‘Okay, you can do this.”
Her first season on the national team included a number of podium finishes and a world title, her first, at Tigne, France.
Now, Sharpe has her sights set on the 2018 Olympic games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
WinSport board member Cheryl Bernard, a former curling Olympic medallist, says it’s rewarding to see athletes who trained at the institute achieve success at the highest level.
“That's what this facility, the WinSport facility, is about.” explains Bernard. “To see that in action, where somebody discovers sport like she did, then Winsport helps develop it and she excels to get on a national team, it's what you want to see as a board member.”
Sharpe says it’s wonderful to have a world class training facility at home.
“It changes everything,” said Sharpe. “Instead of having to go to Colorado or Park City to train, we can just come here to train."
"(It's) so close to home.”
For taking full advantage of what's available to her in the city where she was born to become a world class athlete, Cassie Sharpe is this week’s Inspiring Albertan.
With files from CTV's Darrel Janz
