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Maya MacIsaac-Jones and Matt Saurette are off to the Youth Olympics in Austria. |
Not that many notice, since her sport of cross-country skiing doesn’t captivate the nation’s attention like hockey does. But MacIsaac-Jones doesn’t mind toiling in obscurity.
“It’s kind of nice not having to deal with the added pressure of the whole country paying attention,” says the 16-year-old cross-country skiing phenom. “There’s a bit less pressure than I think there would be for the athletes in hockey.”
MacIsaac-Jones spends up to 25 hours a week training in the summer and could glide and skate herself into a higher profile in the near future. The Athabasca native, along with 17-year-old Matthew Saurette of Edmonton, will both take important steps toward their Olympic dreams later this month at the first Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria.
Canada can send just two cross-country skiers to the Jan. 13-22 games. MacIsaac-Jones and Saurette, chosen as two of the strongest junior athletes in the nation, will join 1,059 athletes from more than 60 countries aiming for gold.
Yet their public exposure and the hype around the games is muted compared with the attention heaped on the junior hockey team, whose loss to Russia in the quarter-finals last week convulsed the nation.
Les Parsons, who coaches Saurette at the Edmonton Nordic Ski Club, would like to see that change.
“Some of these guys on the junior (hockey) team, they’re the same age as Matt, and they’re going to be signing contracts in the next year or two for millions of dollars,” he says. “Matt will be lucky if he can get a pair of free sunglasses.”
Parsons said, “There’s a huge imbalance in our society in general when it comes to sport. And I love hockey. I love the fact that we have the Oilers in town. I’m a hockey fan, I think it’s a great game. But how can we justify paying people that are just a year or two older than Matt millions of dollars?”
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