Sport

1999-2002

Summer of 1999 I attended a sport camp at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary. This program is responsible for tons of athletes careers, great way of finding sports that are not in the public eye. When I turned 8 started this journey, jumping thousands of times on the little jumps. Not for any other reason then the rush of speed. Never seeing ski jumping at the top level before I did not have any idols, or real goals for the sport. I just loved to jump, plain, and simple. Thanks to the coaches direction and dedication, I improved very quickly. I jumped from the small ski jumps to the large Olympic size jumps. Becoming the youngest person to jump the k120 in park city ever at 9 years old.

2003-2005

When I turned 11, a group formed in the club called "Team 2010". Made up of the top young athletes: Sam Harris, Jason Croome, Wes Savill, Yuya Tanaka, Barrett Martineau, John Sevick, Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes and Myself. We started a dry land training, testing, getting new equipment, and traveling alot more.  Still mostly isolated from the world of ski jumping we had a couple VHS tapes at the training center. Every lunch we would sit around and watch these tapes over and over. watching in amazement we all picked our favorite jumpers, with no Canadians on the world cup tour we had to pick foreign idols we would never get to meet or get advice from. Consistently getting weighed and measured for a couple years we started to realize that weight was a huge thing, although we were never told (kinda hard to tell a 13 year old to lose weight).

Jindro Mayer

Jindro was the coach of this "Team 2010". His dedication, and love for the sport rubbed off on us quickly. He was able to perfectly balance fun with work. "There is time for play, now is time for work" He worked our asses off, then would let us be kids. Athough he let us get away with some shit that we shouldn't have, I have, too this date, never heard one bad thing anyone has to say about him.  December 30th 2004 he was killed in a head on collision driving his kids to a Calgary Hitman game.  We had training that day, and he drove me home afterwards.

2005-2010

Summer of 2005 I started to take off. I qualified for Torino 2006 at the age of 14, although I was not named to the Olympic team simply because of my age. I was getting amazing results and gaining an new respect for the sport. Very quickly I realized my weight was an issue, I starting to grow rapidly. I started to feel the pressure coming from all directions and it crushed me. 2008 my jumping started to fall apart, the constant struggle with weight and results put me in a kind of coma. I can barely remember the last two years I jumped. As most people know, mixing doing what you love with work often does not turn out so well.

2010 Olympics

I was lucky enough to make the team for 2010. Getting to walk around and being around all those amazing athletes was something words cannot describe. Before the games I had decided this would be my last competition, I was able to let go of expectations and my past results. I managed to have some of the best jumps since 2006. I was very happy with the results and retired with not even a thought of staying for more.

2013-

The last year I have rekindled my love for the sport, I was lucky enough to travel with the national team as an assistant coach. I got to watch the sport from another angle and I learned a lot technically but most important I learned about the lifestyle of a ski jumper. The sport is very unique and I realized I should look at this as a privileged and not a burden. I was born with a talent that I ignored the last couple years of my career, and now I am ready to life it to the fullest