Canada's Jon Montgomery celebrates winning a gold medal in the men's skeleton competition at the Whistler Sliding Centre at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games in Whistler, B.C., Friday, Feb. 19, 2010.Boris Minkevich/The Canadian Press
Change, but not too much, is what some of Canada's 2010 Olympic medalists hope for after the Games in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C.
While turnover of coaches, support staff and administration is expected after an Olympics, the athletes feel it's important for Canada to retain expertise and skills which were built to unprecedented levels in sport heading into the Games in February.
"It's incredibly important we maintain our home-grown talent and keep it here in Canada," skeleton champion Jon Montgomery said Tuesday. "There's so much stuff we've done as a country that we would like to maintain as a Canadian competitive advantage."
Montgomery, speed skaters Kristina Groves, Denny Morrison, Charles Hamelin and Olympic snowboard champ Maelle Ricker were among the athletes attending a KidSport event Tuesday in Calgary.
They won medals at this year's Winter Olympics thanks in part to people trained to help them in the areas of sport science and special coaches who helped them zero in on specific aspects of their sport such as bobsleigh starts.
Own The Podium spent $117-million over five years heading into the 2010 Olympics to build up that expertise. It was a wish of Roger Jackson when he left his post as CEO that Canada not lose those people, especially to the sport systems of other countries.
John Furlong, former head of the Vancouver organizing committee and now chairman of OTP's advisory board, echoed that recently in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"Quite often in the past some of our stars, our star coaches and our star sport entrepreneurs have ended up in other countries and I think part of what we hope will come out of this is that the very best Canadians will think about staying at home," Furlong said.
"If anything we would be reversing that and finding expertise that we can bring into the country to help us succeed."
One example is triathlon coach Joel Filliol hired away by the British Triathlon after coaching Canadian Simon Whitfield to a silver medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Russia hosts the next Winter Olympics in 2014. That country was disappointed in its take of 15 medals, but the Russians haven't yet raided Canada's coaching and sport scientists ranks.
"The Russians are really conservative and really want to do it by themselves with their own coaches," said Hamelin, a double gold medalist. "It's good for us because we're keeping the coaches and staff that we need."
Speed skaters won 10 medals in Vancouver. Speed Skating Canada has changed dramatically since the Games with long-time CEO Jean Dupre departing for the same position with the Canadian Olympic Committee. Coach Marcel Lacroix, who helped Christine Nesbitt win gold, resigned.
The contract of high-performance director Brian Rahill was not renewed and neither was the contract of coach Ingrid Paul.
Former national-team member Sean Ireland was hired last month as the long-track team's program co-ordinator. He fills a position that sat vacant for a year after Finn Halvorsen resigned.
Nesbitt has been working with coach Xiuli Wang, who is also the long-time coach of Groves.
"We've lost expertise for sure, but I've been through so many changes over the years that no matter what, it always seems to work," Groves said. "The top three or four positions were empty for basically the last three or four months. I think some of the skaters got frustrated because they didn't have a coach.
"For me, I knew Xiuli was going stick around so it didn't really affect me."
Groves, winner of a silver and bronze in Vancouver, says it is important to keep people who know what worked and didn't work heading into the 2010 Games, so mistakes are not repeated.
"Some things that money was spent on was not effective at all. There were things that money was spent on that was extremely effective," she said. "It's not so much, are we losing people, but it's focusing on the things that actually worked."
Hamelin says sport federations need to strike a balance between bringing in new people with new ideas, but keeping institutional knowledge from the last four years.
"If you don't make changes or try anything different you might not get better," he explained. "We have to make changes, but we have to keep people who want to change things.
"If you change the whole thing every four years you lose long-term evaluation of the team. If you keep a couple of people in important spots, the evolution of the team will go up."
Snowboarding has remained basically untouched with the exception of half-pipe coach Tom Hutchinson hired away by the Belarus's snowboard team. Ricker, the Olympic champion in snowboard cross, says the coaches and support staff who were with her when she won gold are still in the picture.
"Any information you can retain is important," Ricker said. "It's just a matter of weeding through it and really setting priorities on what you want to focus on."
Skeleton has taken steps to retain continuity. After he won a gold medal in 2006 and then retired, Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton brought Duff Gibson on as a developmental coach. His position was paid for by OTP and the Calgarian was named head coach of the national skeleton team earlier this month.
The position was traditionally filled by coaches from other countries because Canada couldn't produce a qualified candidate until Gibson.
"Having someone like Duff to work not only with myself, but also our development athletes will be the difference between maintaining some of that talent and losing it to attrition," Montgomery said.