{"id":569544,"date":"2026-03-29T23:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T23:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/569544\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T23:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T23:00:10","slug":"kingsbury-retires-and-underfunded-canada-has-no-successor-behind-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/569544\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingsbury retires and underfunded Canada has no successor behind him"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Mikael Kingsbury was celebrated by his skiing peers and his family in his final race on Saturday in Saint-Sauveur, Que.Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, Mika\u00ebl Kingsbury pulled a Pope Benedict \u2013 giving up the throne before he had to. <\/p>\n

An unusually supple 33-year-old, Kingsbury was coming off a silver and a bronze in moguls at the Milan Cortina Winter Games<\/a> when he announced his retirement<\/a>. No freestyle skier can retire undefeated, but Kingsbury will come as close as it gets.<\/p>\n

Aside from Wayne Gretzky, he may be the only Canadian athlete of which it can be said that they were undeniably the best to ever do what they did.<\/p>\n

Kingsbury\u2019s brilliance was threefold \u2013 having the balance of a cat tossed in the air, going first on the old Winter Olympic schedule and being more poised than any twentysomething should reasonably be.<\/p>\n

When Kingsbury spoke, he did so in the voice of the Canada we imagine ourselves to be \u2013 self-effacing, gentle, but with a hard edge. He was the sort of person who could handle finishing second, but had not once in his life considered it happening until it did. <\/p>\n

How moguls skier Mika\u00ebl Kingsbury mastered his signature trick<\/a><\/p>\n

As he leaves, Canada loses a great athlete, sure. More importantly, it loses a great international ambassador. For an hour or so during the last few Winter Olympic Games, while the whole world watched, Kingsbury was this country. He was speaking on your behalf, as well as mine. Forget about easily replaced. I would go so far as to say that he can\u2019t be replaced. Not any more. <\/p>\n

When Kingsbury arrived on the scene around 2011, there was already a king in place, Alexandre Bilodeau. He was similarly ruthless and charming. Bilodeau was coming off a gold medal at Vancouver. Two other Canadians finished in the top five in those Games (Kingsbury wasn\u2019t one of them). <\/p>\n

Bilodeau and Kingsbury overlapped at Sochi 2014 \u2013 they won gold and silver, respectively. Then it was Kingsbury\u2019s turn to run the shop by himself.<\/p>\n

Obviously, you\u2019re not going to dominate every Olympic event in this way, but it is the template for every program. Find something you are good at. Perform at it. Use that profile to attract the best young prospects. Keep the whole thing spinning with money, support and high expectations, which attracts new blood. Turn the soil with regularity. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Alex Bilodeau, gold medalist, right, passed the mogul-skiing torch on to silver medalist Mika\u00ebl Kingsbury at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014.Jonathan Hayward\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Having set this operation in motion, you cannot afford to let it come to a stop. But that\u2019s what Canada\u2019s doing right now. <\/p>\n

We spent all this money and effort to get things going ahead the Vancouver Games. Why? It wasn\u2019t ambition. It was fear of embarrassment. We remembered how they laughed at us after Montreal 1976, and weren\u2019t going to let that happen twice.<\/p>\n

There was no guarantee that any of this would turn out, but it did. Spectacularly so. Bilodeau was just one of many stars produced during that time, the benefit of which was passed on to successors like Kingsbury. This tide has floated every boat in the Canadian athletic fleet, from the Olympics on out. <\/p>\n

Were you to time travel back to the turn of the millennium, it would amuse the average Canadian to hear that this country is now good at things like basketball and soccer. Not just Canadian good. Actually good. <\/p>\n

You think that happened by accident? It was money and attention that did that. <\/p>\n

Mika\u00ebl Kingsbury ends Canada’s gold medal drought and finishes his Olympic career on a high<\/a><\/p>\n

Freed of the fear of embarrassment in a home Games, and terrified that people will yell at them for spending tax dollars on anything that isn\u2019t Arctic defence, Canada has been gradually getting out of the sports business. We continue to fund it, but not at the levels required to keep the program robust.<\/p>\n

This is what that looks like \u2013 a giant like Mika\u00ebl Kingsbury retiring, with no obvious young replacement steaming up right behind him. <\/p>\n

I have no doubt that Canada will continue to be competitive in the men\u2019s moguls. But will it rule the discipline? Will young people with knees like shock absorbers and a high tolerance for physical peril be drawn to its prestige? No, which means a slow fade back to the middle. That process is already beginning to cascade in every winter sport that isn\u2019t hockey. <\/p>\n

The problem here isn\u2019t money. There is no more popular government spending initiative than sports, since it is something that interests and involves the vast majority of Canadians. Most of us understand on some fundamental level that while sports is a want rather than a need, it\u2019s a pretty big want. Nobody\u2019s ever had a great dinner conversation about procurement. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Kingsbury, centre, was applauded by his teammates and competitors after finishing his final race and winning the men’s dual moguls competition at the Canadian freestyle ski championships in Saint-Sauveur, Que., on Saturday.Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

The problem is that things have been trending in this positive way for too long. A critical mass of us have forgotten what things used to be like, back when Canada was international slang for \u2018fourth place\u2019. <\/p>\n

So here we go, headed back to the future. <\/p>\n

My guess? It\u2019ll take at least two terrible Olympics before Canadians start to get embarrassed again. Some American will make a joke about what a bunch of losers we are, and all of a sudden sports will become a new (i.e. old) priority. I was hoping either American hockey team would do us the favour in Milan, but they resisted the urge. A real missed opportunity. <\/p>\n

Eventually, a Canadian city will get a Games, probably Toronto. That could be 15 years or more from now. <\/p>\n

By that time, we\u2019ll be back where we were in the eighties and nineties \u2013 a country that occasionally produces a megastar out of nowhere, but no longer a sports player. More of a hanger on. <\/p>\n

Panel finds abuse at all levels of Canadian sport, recommends overhaul<\/a><\/p>\n

To build things up again will require an enormous infusion of cash. You\u2019re no longer waiting for the gold medalists of tomorrow to come to you. Now you\u2019ve got to go find them. It\u2019ll be building a business from scratch. <\/p>\n

The only thing I can say for certain about any of this is that it will happen. Eventually, we will want to be good again, and do what it takes to get there. Then we\u2019ll end up spending far more than it would have cost to maintain the current system. <\/p>\n

Or we could do what serious countries do, whether its sports or anything else, and commit to trying to be good all of the time, at all of the things. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Mikael Kingsbury was celebrated by his skiing peers and his family in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44,2922,8023],"class_list":{"0":"post-569544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-noastack","12":"tag-topstory"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}