December 15, 2014 – If it takes a village to raise a child, then what does it take to get that child to the podium in 2018? In order to help developing athletes get the experience they need to move up in the Nordic ski world, Cross Country Canada has put forward a new fundraising platform called the Canadian Excellence Fund.

The athlete-driven fund coincides with the organization’s efforts to send more skiers to compete in Europe this season and counts on the Canadian ski community to put their money where their cheers are.

“We don’t have the money to take more athletes so it’s costing them more money. So it’s a way of deferring some of those costs so we can get more athletes on the international stage and to develop more athletes to our World Cup team ultimately,” said Thomas Holland, director of high performance.

While CCC received $1,550,000 in Own The Podium funding this season, that money largely goes to support the World Cup and Para World Cup teams.

Participating development athletes have to pay a substantial portion of trip fees, which can amount to more than $10,000, in addition to their normal training centre or club team fees and other training/living expenses.

“We really pushed this year to have more opportunities, but then the situation now is that the opportunities are there, which is great, but not everyone can afford to pay for them,” said co-national team athlete representative Alysson Marshall, who spearheaded the project.

All donations will go directly toward lowering trip fees for select athletes in 2015 and support development athletes at the Tour de Ski, World Ski Championships, January-March World Cups and European B-Tour trips.

As a skier, Marshall said it was “a bit discouraging” to see the costs coming out of developing athlete’s pockets.

“It’s coming from my personal experience, but also I just don’t want it to turn in to a system where it’s user pay and athletes coming up will look at those of us who are 25 and 26 and we’re still paying those huge fees,” she said, afraid that it may turn away new talent.

CCC has already sent four development athletes overseas this season: Jesse Cockney, Graeme Killick, Emily Nishikawa and Perrianne Jones (see related story). Another 10-12 will travel to Europe in the new year – Marshall included.

“There’s just so many more people within a given time period – for the top two minutes there will be way more people internationally than there are here. It really forces you to fight for those seconds and takes you out of your comfort zone. It is a European sport so we kind of need to get over there to learn how to compete with them,” she said of her past experiences racing overseas.

The online campaign went up last week and will end Dec. 31, 2014. Any donations received after the deadline will be used for the 2015-2016 season.

Donations of over $25 will receive a charitable donation tax receipt and – pulling a page from other crowd-funding models – donors who give over $250 will receive a handwritten thank you from an athlete who has benefited from the fund.

For more information or to donate visit: Cross Country Canada.

Read the full article on thecragandcanyon.ca here.