Long odds equal sweeter success for Calgary ski jumper Abigail Strate
Abigail Strate wouldn’t change a thing about last weekend, or the entire exhausting journey from obscurity to the top of the podium, for that matter.
The 21-year-old ski jumper from Calgary is fresh off back-to-back victories in Lillehammer, Norway on the Continental Cup circuit, which sits one rung below the World Cup tour. But this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill minor league competition; both Norway and Germany had their ‘A’ teams on hand. In fact, Strate beat the reigning and two-time Olympic silver medalist, Germany’s Katharina Althaus, and quite handily. Strate was 10.8 points clear of third-place Althaus on Saturday and a whopping 32.6 points up on Sunday, when Althaus was fourth overall.
“It definitely feels really good because that’s somebody I know I’ll be competing against on the World Cup and she’s going to be at the top because she’s been there for years and years,” Strate said Tuesday from her training base in Slovenia.
Indeed, the 26-year-old German has 37 World Cup medals to her credit, including eight gold. Strate also beat Norway’s Silje Opseth, who has won 13 World Cup medals, one of them gold.
“So it’s not like ‘OK I won a Continental Cup.’ It was ‘I won a Continental Cup and there were people here who consistently win World Cup medals and I beat them by 30 points.’ That was definitely a bit eye-opening, but I’m trying to keep my cool.”
That said, there is plenty of reason to be excited. Strate left Lillehammer secure in the knowledge this wasn’t the same kind of random result she used to produce on occasion in the past but could never remember clearly enough to replicate.
“I was in a very good head space and in control of what I was doing. I remember it very clearly. I’ve had competitions when I was younger where I would do randomly well and it was almost like a blackout experience, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. All my competition runs that weekend were really solid and I had really good confidence.
“I was on the plane thinking I literally couldn’t have done anything better that weekend. It went literally as good as it could have gone. That is definitely a satisfying feeling. And I’m really glad I performed even better on the second day and won by a lot more than I did on the first day. It really assured what I had done on the first day wasn’t a fluke, it was a true testament to where my training was at and all the work I put in over the summer. I justified that I was there and I was there to win.”
Strate’s summer has included a seventh-place finish at a Grand Prix and two silver medals at FIS Cup events. During summer competitions, the athletes land on plastic sheeting, rather than snow.
It’s a solid body of work for Strate, one that builds on the encouraging results she has posted since being part of Canada’s historic, team event bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics. She was a career-best eighth and ninth at World Cup events last spring and now leads a women’s squad that includes 18-year-old Alexandria Loutitt, who won a bronze medal at the 2022 world junior championships, as well as 23-year-old Natalie Eilers and 22-year-old Nicole Maurer.
Strate’s trips to the top of the podium in Lillehammer come six years after her first Continental Cup weekend in which she finished 43rd and 31st.
“It is pretty remarkable. We as Canadians have always had every single odd stacked against us; the facilities, the resources, the money. Everything has told us all along the way that we shouldn’t be there and we shouldn’t be able to perform at the top level. But seeing the progress, I think it makes every victory or every success feel a lot sweeter when you come from what we’ve come from.
“I wouldn’t change it, honestly. I wouldn’t change anything about my situation because I know that once the wins start coming more consistently, it’s going to feel a lot sweeter than if they’d come without the hardship.”
Strate got into her sport in part because the jumps were right there on the hill in her hometown. But they have been closed for years, forcing the Canadians to set up a training base in Slovenia, one of the sport’s acknowledged hotbeds. Strate has been living on the other side of the world on and off since age 14. Because the Canadian ski jump team lacked the results to qualify for Own The Podium funding, they also had to skimp on equipment and pinch pennies as they travelled.
The medal from Beijing should get the money flowing soon from OTP, though Strate hasn’t seen any of it yet. Regardless, she plans to be a force going forward.
“I’m definitely aiming for top 10 this winter and I’m aiming to get on the podium on the World Cup. I know I have the skills and the potential to do that. It’s just going to be a matter of hopefully maintaining the level of training I’m at now.”
