February 15, 2011 (Barrie, ON) – In my last report I referenced the great book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell regarding what it takes to create champions. Most people have the mistaken idea that talent is the only thing that makes a champion. What Gladwell has shown in his book, based on the work of Ericcson is that while all champions have a minimum level of talent, what really makes champions is a lot of practice – he uses the number of 10,000 hours.

But this is not just any kind of practice, after all there are lots of very poor drivers out there who have driven for more than 10,000 hours. It needs to be focused practice, under the supervision of a talented coach.

The other condition that needs to be in place to create champions is the opportunity to practice at a proper location, with good coaching and in a group of like-minded people. Gladwell uses many examples from music, sports and business to show that given the opportunity seemingly ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

Matthew Syed in his book “Bounce” gives a personal example of this. He grew up in a small English town that was unremarkable in most ways. However, from one block of this small town came four members of the British Table Tennis team including himself. He would eventually represent England at two Olympics.

For him the main reason was that he and his friends had the opportunity to play table tennis at a local center that was open 24 hours a day, with a fanatic coach who was also a teacher at the local high school who gave them an opportunity to play at school and be coached. Syed then had the opportunity to work with a high level foreign coach who just happened to move to the area. This coach, over a few years, took him from being a good local player to an elite international level.

This is why the Southern Ontario Training Center (SOTC) has been formed – to give xc skiers who have graduated from high school the opportunity to work with a top level coach and a team of other like- minded skiers. To help with quality time in achieving those 10,000 hours that it will take to reach their full potential.

Of course, there are other great training centers in the country right now. These training centers work with skiers who have the highest CPL points and who are interested in skiing full time and will either defer post-secondary education or not go at all. However, most of the skiers who leave high school have less than 2,500 total hours of training – well short of the amount needed. So, in reality, we are choosing these skiers to be in these training centers almost by talent alone because they do not have the 10,000 hours of focused practice. Many of these skiers have also had more opportunity to race and train at a high level in a great location than other similarly talented skiers. It is not the water that produces so many good skiers from Canmore, it’s the opportunity to train and race with the best in Canada.

At the SOTC the goal is to provide motivated and committed skiers, who have not reached the necessary CPL points to be in one of the NST centers, the opportunity to continue to train full time with other committed and motivated skiers with great coaching at great facilities. The SOTC will also provide this opportunity for skiers who wish to continue at university full time or closer to home, while at the same time balancing a full time training and racing load. The SOTC can also be an option for the skier who has graduated from university and would like to try to reach the top of the xc skiing ladder. Because they have been in school they would not have the points to make it to a training center and they may also be deemed as being too old.

One of the other positive side effects of having a center for training in Southern Ontario is that it will keep some of the faster Ontario skiers in the area. This will allow the younger skiers who ski in local races the opportunity to see and be around fast athletes. It will also raise the CPL point values of these races which will help younger skiers attain the point values that are available in other areas. There’s a real inequity in CPL points available in Ontario Cup races right now vs. points in other areas like Alberta or Quebec and this has hurt Ontario skiers when it comes to seeding at national level events.

The more skiers that are provided with the opportunity train in a training center atmosphere the better it will be for Canadian skiing in the long run. The more skiers there are trying to make it, the better for everyone. Let’s not limit our talent pool to just the small amount that are in the NST training centers now. There is too great a drop in the numbers of skiers still competing after high school right now. For some the jump is too big. I’m confident in saying that some of the skiers who dropped out would likely be on the National Team today if they’d been given the opportunity,

I hope that the SOTC becomes just one of many centers that can fill the gap that currently exists in the system. There are plenty of great skiers across the country who are just waiting for the opportunity.