Have you ever watched, Vince Carter, Michael Jordan, or any of the great dunkers and marvelled at their jumping abilities? I sure have, and currently there are several Alpine Ontario athletes that are approaching their vertical power capabilities of these athletes. Several male athletes, Andrew Solomon and Dylan Fischer McCarney have vertical jumps over 35 inches, with Morgan Megarry following closely behind with a 33 inch vertical jump. Not to be outdone, Candace Crawford, after a summer of dryland training has jumped a very impressive 26.3 inches, followed closely by Ella Both (24.5”) and Natalie Knowles (24”) – note a healthy Julia Roth is capable of jumping over 26”. Just for your reference, a typical NBA ...

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What does it take to be great? There are many qualities to consider. But what are the distinguishing qualities that separate a good skier from a great skier? In this article we will list qualities of greatness! 5-Site Integrity Excellent Movement Qualities Explosive and Reactive Great Work Capacity (sort of) Deliberateness 5 Site Integrity – To move correctly requires our whole body to work correctly. We can’t look at one joint, when we are developing an entire system. It takes mobility, control, and stability of 5 key areas during all our movements to develop a) movement efficient, b) power, and to c) prevent injuries. These 5 areas from head to toe are: cranio-cervico, scapula thoracic, lumbopelvis, knee and ankle and foot. Whether ...

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Today was the final day of competition, with men's and women's slalom, plus the provincial dual slalom race in the evening at Calgary Olympic Park. The course was set on the same course as the downhill, and so after 7 days of competition and practice on this hill, the snow was very hard and "grooved". The temperature was also pretty cold today, especially when you stand at the start doing a whole lot of not much like I was. The guys ran first and unfortunately, after looking forward to slalom all week, Dylan went out early in the course, he was joined by Tommy Grand, who was having a very good run early on but couldn't keep ...

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Day 7 was an off day for the guys and GS for the girls. After the length of the boys run, the girls were a little nervous about how physically difficult today might be. Thankfully for them, the course was shortened, and although still long, a little more managable. Unfortunately, compared to the boys, mother nature wasn't smiling, with the blue skies of yesterday disappearing, and the snow softening considerably. This made for plenty of DNF's and mistakes during the run from all level of skier. As expected the event was dominated by the national team skiers including Britt Janyk and Marie-Michelle Gagnon. The girls did their best but missed the podium today in both the senior ...

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Today was Super combined for the boys and Super G for the girls. Once again the weather was perfect and the conditions excellent for racing. The girls were up first in the Super G, and did pretty well, the course was similar to yesterday so we were hoping for some good results. Everyone did pretty well, but the best of the day was Brenley Nella who finished 3rd in the junior women's and 9th overall behind Olympian Emily Brydon. In the guys, everyone was a bit nervous with the Super G section of the combined event, given that all 6 of them failed to finish yesterday. But, the boys stepped up and 4/6 made it down ...

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Today was an interesting day, beautiful weather, new events, but unfortunately not the best of results. The boys had the Super G and the girls the super combined. The girls were expected to do reasonably well today, with good rankings in this event leading in. It was expected to be a tough day for the boys, this event isn't the best for any of the boys, and national team member Erik Guay was recently crowned World Cup Champion in this event. Things went to form for the boys, with all 6 of the team failing to finish, but on the girls side, Devon Clarke had a great result, finishing 4th in the junior women's and 7th overall, well ...

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First day of competition after the last day of downhill training was cancelled yesterday. WOW! All the athlete's did well, a few little errors that cost some people some time, but some amazing results as well. A HUGE congratulations to Kelby Halbert who finshed first in the junior men's and second overall in the senior men's. Let me put this into perspective for you, first place went to the Canadian cowboy himself, Manuel Osbourne-Paradis. Places 3rd, 4th and 5th went to skiers on the Canadian men's national team, including Erik Guay in 3rd who was recently crowned overall World Cup champion in the Super G event! On the women's side, two outstanding results were achieved. Emily Goad placed 5th overall in the women's downhill ...

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Day 1 began early today with a 645am departure for the hill. This is so the team can do their course inspection (see picture below), warm up runs and make sure everything is in order for the actual run. Today is only a practice run for the downhill event, but as with any training session it's important to train as you play. For a sport like alpine skiing, as I'm learning, training is important to work out the best way to ski the course and gather information based on your run, but also those of your competitors. Speaking of competitors, this being the senior national championships, that means competitors for this competition include members of ...

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Alpine Ontario has been a great partner of FITS for the past few years, and we have been working together to improve the athleticism of Ontario's developing skiers to help make them Canada's best. Now I have  been given the opportunity to assist them on the sports medicine side by travelling with the men's and women's teams to Nakiska Alta near Calgary in Alberta. After an early flight out of Toronto, and waiting for the rest of the team to arrive a couple of hours after us, we made the hour long drive from Calgary to Canmore, which is about 20 minutes drive from Nakiska. We checked in to our accomodation and went to the shops to stock ...

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  Two articles ago (click here) we wrote about testing great athletes and the black box effect. In this article let’s explore what we know about the best skiers in the world – the AUSTRIANS. Current research Scientific data on the physiological profile of world class skiers, (World Cup) is sparse.  Based on the published work by Neumayr et al, 2003 we have some information about the Austrian Ski team, the most successful country in the World Cup.  In this study, 20 female and 28 male members of the Austrian WC Ski Team were tested pre- and post-seasonally from 1997 to 2000. Note this group that was investigated won approximately half (48 %; n = 106) of all ...

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