Snowboard

The CEO of Canada's snowboard federation, Tom McIllfaterick, showed up at the Olympic team's opening press conference Monday in a tie.

The attire, a contrast from the come-as-you-are image widely embraced in the snowboard industry, was deliberate, he said, and reflects the new level of respect Canada's snowboard team has been commanding in international competition.

Canada Snowboard executives expect the team can produce five medals at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games and believe the team is further distinguished by its strength in parallel giant slalom, halfpipe as well as snowboard cross, McIllfaterick said.

"We're as big as all the [winter sport] superpowers...," he said. "The difference is that we are strong in all three disciplines."

Of the 18 snowboarders selected to represent Canada at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games next week, 17 have stood on a World Cup podium; 16 of them have done it more than once.

In the season preceding the Games, Canadian snowboarders have secured 18 World Cup in two months.

The team's metamorphosis, and the results that have followed from it, come at a time when the sport is progressing more quickly than any other Olympic event.

In the halfpipe discipline, athletes have been clamouring since August to meet a standard of competition established by American snowboarder Shaun White, a 23-year-old phenom who was first to land back-to-back double corks in competition at the first World Cup event of the year in Cardrona, New Zealand.

"I think we are now starting to push the envelope in what our athletes - particularly in an event such as halfpipe - are capable of," McIllfaterick said.

"This is an evolution that other sports have gone through before.

"At some point, with the physiological limits of the human body combined with gravity, you can't really do much more.

"I don't think we're at that limit, but I think we're starting to get very close to it. After these Games, I think we'll see, my sense is, more incremental improvements."

Canada Snowboard executives credit a turnaround in the performance of Canadian snowboarders to an influx in government money which has funded the team's high performance program.

Director Christian Hrab, a competitive snowboarder through 1998, said there are at least two Canadian halfpipe athletes who will perform double corks at the Games.

"I can say that now we're at par with other countries, finally at par. Talk about fighting for legitimacy. Now we have a legitimate high performance program."

"I find this wonderful what we have right now with the double corks and the higher amplitude [in halfpipe] and cleaner style.

"I think this is what we can call the art of sport and the art of snowboarding - to be able to come close to the limits of human fitness and physics," he said.