April 5, 2008 (Callaghan Valley, B.C.) – It wasn’t enough to come a strong second the day before in a race that is 28.8 km longer than her specialty. On Monday morning, March 24, the day after Chandra Crawford took the silver in the 30km classic event at the Canadian XC Ski Championships in Callaghan Valley, B.C., the Olympic gold medalist had great sheets of coloured construction paper in her hand and the usual gorgeous smile on her face. There were 110 girls to sign up for the Fast and Female shin-dig that Crawford had organized and she wasn’t wasting any time.

She was joined by the extended Canadian women’s national team as well as good friend and fellow sprint competitor Kikkan Randall from the U.S. – all of whom made the switch from elite athlete to ski instructor for the day. Dasha Gaiazova donned hot pink shorts over her racing suit while Sara Renner dabbed silver paint on her cheeks and one hundred and ten girls started to do the same. Randall drew daisies on the construction paper and started signing up girls. This was going to be fun.

The program was kick-started in November 2005 at Silver Star. BC. Crawford’s teammate Perianne Jones describes it as “Something we brainstormed about in the summer as we realized how few women were competing in our sport. We put up an ad on the Cross Country Canada website. The event was low key. We skied with the girls for a couple of hours.” The Fast and Female website shows dozens of smiling girls surrounding members of the women’s national team. The seeds had been successfully planted, but there is much work to be done.

The national team realized that females were nearly non-existent in certain race categories leading up to the senior women’s team. In 2005 there were no women training at the Thunder Bay National Training Centre, and a maximum of two at the Mount Ste. Anne Centre. Go to a regional race and try to find the senior women. They are nearly non-existent. In 2005 nine men went to the World Championships, and four women.

It’s a world-wide phenomena: girls love to participate in sport until pressure from an unrelenting media tells them that really desirable girls don’t sweat, don’t have muscles and certainly don’t beat boys. For instance, the Monday edition of The Globe and Mail following Crawford’s fabulous gold medal win at the 2008 Alberta World Cup in Canmore in January didn’t even list her results in the tiny print of the Scoreboard page. The NHL All-Star game dominated the section – a game even hockey devotees said was boring. Even a World Cup and Olympic gold medalist was seemingly invisible to main stream sports media.

Changing cultural norms is a big job but whom better than Crawford and company? She has an endless energy and contagious spirit – who wouldn’t want to ski forever once they’ve experienced Fast and Female? Waves of girls from age nine to nineteen flooded Whistler Olympic Park in their hot pink toques. Music rocked the park. Instructors in sharp blue jackets led girls onto the trails for some skill-sharpening manueovres. Jumps were set up, downhill courses were constructed, slalom runs, double pole railway lines – this wasn’t a hard-core training day, but a day to experience just how much fun skiing well, and skiing with friends can be.

Sekwan Trottier of La Ronge, Saskatchewan attended the second Fast and Female in Canmore in February 2007, and it was Beckie Scott and Crawford who made sure Trottier, who is Cree and lives 400 km north of Saskatoon, had the opportunity to attend. “I met Beckie Scott while she was in Humboldt,” said Trottier between her races at the 2008 Canadian Nordic Ski championships this March. “She told my dad and I about Fast and Female so I looked it up. I had to write a 200-word essay about what Fast and Female means to me. Chandra got in touch with me after I sent it in and told me they could pay for me to come. I loved it.” The program was actually able to subsidize the travel and accommodation expenses of twelve girls to that training camp as sponsors such as Fischer skis, Excel poles, and Lululemon teamed up with a number of local Canmore sponsors and national team sponsors such as Haywood Securities. Real equality for girls doesn’t come without a price tag.

At this point in the conversation Crawford walks by and recognizes Trottier. It’s like they are best friends. They’ve been email pen-pals since the camp and Trottier is as serious as ever about her skiing. What happens way down deep in the soul of a fifteen-year-old girl when she realizes that an Olympic gold medalist really cares about who she is and how she is doing?

Crawford says Fast and Female is about two things: Share the love, and dominate the world. Both phrases sound cliché, but when you watch how women on the national team have devoted themselves to this program, how absolutely committed they are to the girls of the next generation, you know that these words ring true, without a shadow of sentimentality or hollowness.

The program is also about generosity. The March 24 Fast and Female day came at the end of the last long week of a long season. Racers were back and forth to Europe as well as all over North America. It’s a grinding pace, and a lifestyle that may appear glamourous, but in reality can swallow an athlete up in fatigue and over exposure. The impulse, after a season like that, is to head for home, not show up for an all day get-together with a bunch of young girls—and it went on all day long.

After the on-snow sessions came the task of laying out 110 yoga mats in a room meant for fifty. When the yoga ended, there was food and dance – the perfect way to end a perfect day.

“We are unapologetically out there to win,” says Crawford about the belief system she hopes is instilled in girls. “And we’re excited to inspire a new generation of skiers, who will be the instructors of this program someday.”

Visit the Fast and Female.website for news on their May 2008 tour.