Local lugers Tristan Walker and Justin Snith serve as perfect examples of how age is just a number. At 18 years old, the two will compete together in the Vancouver Olympics before thousands of Canadian fans. Regardless of what happens on the world’s biggest athletic stage, Feb. 17 will be a day the two will never forget

Tristan Walker and Justin Snith were fearless daredevils growing up.

There was simply no tree too high, no jump too steep and, needless to say, there were a number of scrapes, bruises and broken bones along t he way.

So it’s no surprise to their parents that the two 18-year-olds will now compete in the Olympics in luge, where athletes fly down an ice track at speeds in excess of 140 kilometres.

“(Tristan) enjoyed being off the ground more than on the ground,” recalls his father Bruce Walker. “He used the garage door as a ride, he would stand on the back of it and someone would push the button.”

Snith’s father, Steven, has similar memories of his son.

“He was a pain in the ass,” Steven joked. “No, he was a pretty good kid. He was always doing something, playing sports, trying something new.”

Tristan, a native of Bearspaw, took his first run down a luge track when he was nine and Justin, who lives in Calgary but has family ties to Springbank and Cochrane, followed close behind at age 10.

Both were technically too young for such a high-risk sport at the time, but they both quickly fell in love with it and enrolled in introductory camps at Canada Olympic Park.

The basic fundamentals of luge are simple enough, athletes lay on their backs and rocket down a track using their calf muscles and shoulders to steer. The athlete who reaches the bottom of the track in the fastest time is declared the winner; high-level competitions are usually decided by just thousandths of a second.

Coaches were quick to recognize the potential in both Tristan and Justin and the two were selected for Canada’s junior luge program as singles sliders.

After some success as individual competitors, the young sliders were paired up in 2008 and instantly became good friends both on and off the track. Their competitive chemistry came almost instantly, Justin recalls.

“We are good friends. We do have that bond, but it also has a lot to do with the fact that we think similarly on the sled,” Justin said. “We’ll drive similar lines, we’ll try similar things. I think that really helps too.”

When competing, Tristan is on top and charged with steering the sled on the right line while Justin is tasked with rolling out of each turn smoothly to maintain the highest speed possible.

With only 20 runs under their belt as a doubles team, Tristan and Justin surprised everyone by placing second at the Canadian Championships in early 2009 in Whistler. It was at this point that the two athletes, who weren’t even old enough to vote at the time, realized a trip to the 2010 Olympics might be possible.

“We were sitting there after in the place we were staying in Whistler going ‘We’re second in Canada and there’s two doubles teams that go to the Olympics, we have a shot at this,’” Tristan recalls.

After a strong rookie season on the junior World Cup circuit that saw them win bronze at the World Championships in Nagano, Japan, Canadian coaches decided to test Tristan and Justin on the senior circuit for a few races.

It was determined that the young duo would need three top-20 finishes on the World Cup to qualify for the Vancouver Games.
“The original plan was to take us to the first three races on the senior circuit and then send us to junior for the second half of the season,” Tristan recalls. “No one expected us to qualify.”

Making the situation even tougher for the young sliders was the fact that on the senior circuit only the top-10 ranked sleds gain automatic entry into World Cup races. The other competitors, like Tristan and Justin, are forced to partake in qualifying runs at each event through the Nations Cup circuit.

Tristan and Justin returned to familiar ground for their debut on the senior circuit last November, placing second in qualifying and 13th overall in the World Cup at the season-opening event at Canada Olympic Park. They followed that up with a 17th-place showing in Innsbruck-Igls, Austria, and another 13th-place performance in Altenberg, Germany — where they also finished ahead of Canada’s top luge doubles team, brothers Chris and Mike Moffat, for the first time.

The duo’s unlikely quest was completed; they had qualified for the 2010 Games.

Justin, who will be Canada’s youngest luge competitor at the Games, describes the time since learning he would be competing on the world’s biggest athletic stage as a “huge whirlwind.”

“Tristan and I are just flying by the seat of our pants,” he said. “We’re just trying to enjoy the ride, hang on and see what happens. Honestly it hasn’t fully hit me yet.”

The two took some time off from the World Cup circuit in early December to train on the official Olympic track. Tristan said a realistic goal for the Olympics is a top-10 finish, something they have not accomplished to date on the World Cup circuit.

“Really my goal is to have two solid, clean runs,” Walker said, adding that if the two finished in the top 10 it would be “unreal, absolutely unreal.”

Wolfgang Staudinger, head coach of the Canadian national luge team, said a top-10 finish would be amazing for his young protégés.

“They’re extremely dedicated, they do everything for the sport,” said Staudinger, who himself earned a bronze medal in luge doubles at the 1988 Calgary Games for West Germany. “They did an awesome job during the summer getting ready for the season and they do lots of technical work. Having said that, they have a lot to improve on and now that they have raced with the big boys they know what they need to improve on and have a long road ahead of them of course.”

One clear example of this dedication came when Tristan was diagnosed with the H1N1 virus last June.

Although he was very ill, the young athlete refused to take any medication for fear of being drug tested.

“He always has to be careful, whether it’s medication or risk of injury,” Bruce said.

“He joked to me that cutting the lawn was too much of a risk because he might cut his foot or something,” Bruce added, laughing. “I told him not cutting the lawn would have a higher risk of injury.”

If all goes well and the two sliders are able to stay healthy, Staudinger said he is very excited to see what they can accomplish going forward. The veteran coach noted that luge, which made its Olympic debut at the 1964 Games in Innsbruck, Austria, has been dominated by a handful of countries over the years; however he believes Canada’s fortunes in the sport are slowly changing now that the country has two training facilities — Calgary and Whistler.

Of the 108 Olympic medals awarded in men’s and women’s individual luge, as well as doubles, all but four have gone to athletes from Germany, Austria, the Soviet Union or its successor nations and Italy.

Currently, three of the top four positions in the World Cup doubles overall standings are occupied by German pairs. Tristan and Justin sit 21st in the overall rankings, however, they skipped two events to focus on training.

Tristan said luge receives a great deal more exposure in Europe than in Canada and athletes are groomed from a very young age.
“Their ski hills actually have toboggan runs on them, so they take toboggans down the hill,” he said.

“The same way we have ski lessons in school it’s mandatory for them to try every winter sport.”

Bruce added that the most impressive part of his son’s accomplishment might be that some of the top competitors on the World Cup circuit have been sliding since before Justin and Tristan were born.

“Some of the guys they are competing against are true legends of the sport,” said Bruce, who admitted to spending many late nights watching the online feed of his son’s World Cup times while he is off competing in Europe. “I don’t know if it’s really dawned on (Tristan) what an accomplishment this is.”

And although luge has given him more than he could have ever dreamed, Tristan conceded that his sport can be very dangerous at times, something he and Justin found out the hard way earlier this season when they crashed at a World Cup stop in Winterberg, Germany.

“People always talk about football as being a game of inches, this is a game of centimetres,” Tristan explained.

To avoid injury and perform well at the Games, both Tristan and Justin agreed that consistency is key. Each doubles team will take two runs down the Whistler track Feb. 17 and the sleds will be ranked according to their combined time.

You just have to take it like any other run,” Justin said. “We have had training runs there, we know we can slide well, we know we can pull a fast start there, which has been a problem for us.”

The two Canadian sliders will also have another advantage over their international competitors at the Games, as Bruce estimates 60-70 of Tristan and Justin’s closest friends and family will be on hand to witness their Olympic debut.

“When he goes by we’ll probably only see him for about 14 seconds of the run,” Bruce said. “But there’s so many people going out there. It will be fun.”

Family and friends aside, Justin said the community support in general has been overwhelming. One recent example of this came when he and Tristan were met with overwhelming cheers from thousands of fans at the Springbank Olympic torch relay celebration in January.

“It’s constantly building,” Justin said. “I have been blown away these past couple of weeks ever since the Olympic announcement with how many well wishes I have gotten. It’s been truly surprising.”

Steven, who met his wife Andrea while the two were attending Springbank High School, said his son’s dedication to his sport of choice has been remarkable and that he deserves all the accolades he will receive in Whistler and beyond.

“I am sort of taken aback by how good of shape he’s gotten into and how much he’s really taken to it — he really enjoys it and the people he is with,” Steven said.

And while there will be millions of people watching from all over the world, Tristan said that he intends to be completely focused on the task at hand when he lines up at the top of the track in Whistler.

“You don’t even think,” he said. “You have done so many imagery runs of the track you know exactly where you are at all times.
“As soon as the visor goes down, you know everything that needs to happen in the next minute.”

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Technology evolves at lightning speed and in a world where presently you can talk via webcam to a friend halfway around the world or draw millions of viewers to a video shot on a cellphone no bigger than your palm, it is often impossible to predict where we will go next. As renowned communications scholar Marshall McLuhan once put it, “Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media than by the content of the communication.”

Darren Krause, editor of Metro Calgary, has attracted more than 350 followers to his Twitter account, which he uses to generate story ideas, interact with readers and find sources.

Twitter photo

For local media outlets like Metro Calgary, the key to successfully integrating social media into a business model is simply reacting and building upon the latest trend, according to editor Darren Krause. For example, his publication is heavily involved in Calgary’s Twitter community — where estimated figures put the number of users locally in the tens of thousands — using the tool for everything from generating story ideas and finding sources to interacting with concerned readers. But that’s simply the preferred approach for today, and Krause is well aware the Metro’s social media strategy could change in a heartbeat.

“We have yet to discover what the next best social media tool will be — so it’s difficult to say what the relationship with it will be from a media perspective going forward,” Krause said. “What I can say with some amount of certainty is that traditional media’s relationship with social media will continue to expand and new avenues to collaborate with and engage readers will definitely be uncovered.”

And while Metro Calgary’s Twitter account (@metrocalgary) has more then 850 followers, Krause has taken the tool one step farther and created his own account (@Darren_Krause) that allows him to both conduct business and also show a bit of his personality. He says the greater a publication’s exposure, the more likely they are to succeed in the social media realm.

Content overload

“Social media in itself is an exercise in repetition and oversaturation,” Krause said. “For example you see the same thing ‘retweeted’ (a term used when one Twitter user reposts content published by another in hopes of generating further response) on Twitter dozens of times even though most people have seen at least one of the tweets already.”

And the fight to gain exposure on Twitter and other online forums is not just coming from larger scale publications like Metro. Local bloggers like Michael Morrison, creator of Mike’s Bloggity Blog, can be found interacting on various social media sites every hour of every day in hopes of attracting newcomers and communicating with established followers.

“I don’t think people anticipate how much time it takes to do this,” said Morrison, who started the Canadian entertainment blog in 2006 and has spent an average of three hours working on it each day since on top of his regular full-time job. “The key is to constantly have fresh content up for returning visitors and that takes a lot of time every day.”

Morrison has also begun his own trials with new social media practices, including conducting a “Twitterview” with Canadian artist Jann Arden earlier this year and using Facebook to garner votes for national media awards. For all of his efforts, the New Brunswick native’s site has earned the title of Canada’s No. 1 entertainment blog twice at the Canadian Blog Awards and now averages roughly 15,000 page views each month.

“It’s been increasing every month,” Morrison said of his web traffic. “I always said, because it’s so time consuming, that if I ever noticed it fall off even slightly that I would finish it off but over the past three years that hasn’t happened once.

Mike Morrison, creator of Mike’s Bloggity Blog, does not hide from public view, appearing on television routinely and writing for National Post blog The Ampersand.

“Initially it was just a way for me to keep writing and stay in touch with my friends and family. I never intended it be so successful.”

Turning hype into dollars

Morrison admits that his blog has yet to bring in any significant revenue but says plans are underway to capitalize on the commitment of his dedicated readers.

“I am still learning all of the technical aspects of a blog. I have felt for the last six months that I probably could be making money out of this. I just have no idea how to start,” Morrison said, noting that the site is currently undergoing a professional redesign in hopes of drawing interest from advertisers.

If upstart bloggers in town like Morrison are able to start cashing in on their perceived success it would likely come at the expense of larger publications like Metro, the Calgary Sun and the Calgary Herald; however, Herald columnist Robert Remington doesn’t seem too worried.

“Unlike many casual bloggers, we are schooled in legal issues related to copyright infringement, youth law, libel, defamation, contempt of court, etcetera,” said Remington, who has been with the Herald since 2003. “And unlike many bloggers who cowardly hide behind a cloak of anonymity, we put our names out there so people know who we are.”

Credibility debate

The issue raised by Remington concerns the credibility of blogs, and Morrison admits that he constantly fights to maintain the reputation of his work.

“I don’t think necessarily if I broke a story that people would believe it right away the same way they would with the Herald or the Sun,” Morrison said, noting that he often has to provide a written letter of intent and references before being granted accreditation to cover events. “I think as more of the older reporters get out of the business that blogs will continue to grow and gain more credibility.”

As well, Morrison does not hide behind his words. in fact, he does quite the opposite. His blog writing has garnered attention from publications like the National Post, which now enlists him to write an online entertainment blog called The Ampersand, and Entertainment Weekly. Morrison also appears as a regular on Breakfast Television, a morning show put on by Calgary’s CityTV, where he weighs in on the latest news concerning Canada’s entertainment industry. He has never faced a lawsuit for something printed on Mike’s Bloggity Blog and believes the fairness and accuracy of his work will continue opening doors in the future.

“I think my blog, based on the feedback that I have gotten, is more what people are thinking but don’t necessarily say,” Morrison said. “I think I have the luxury of being able to write whatever I want without an editor or anything like that.”

Remington, meanwhile, remains skeptical that the blogging community can have any significant impact on traditional media outlets, noting that the Herald is constantly evolving with technology and now provides readers with dozens of blogs of its own, covering everything from tips for new parents to the latest happenings in the world of curling. The columnist himself also updates his own blog, robertremington.wordpress.com from time to time.

“As for traditional journalism being replaced by social media, I have this to say: some guy at home in his bathrobe isn’t going to spend $15,000 on a lawyer for the right to attend a refugee deportation hearing or to get access to exhibits in a young offender trial,” Remington said. “Traditional media organizations do that on a matter of journalistic principle. If there comes day when they can’t afford to do that because the economic model is broken — and it’s happening now — it’s the public that will ultimately suffer.

“It’s the dedicated full-time journalists that are doing the heavy lifting, like knocking on the doors of suspect gang members and tracking down accused Ponzi scheme scammers in Central America. That’s something society isn’t getting from the vast majority of bloggers and tweeters.”

Adding to Remington’s feelings on the matter, Metro’s Krause finds the notion of any downfall in his industry as a result of social media amusing, saying if the media does fail, “It will be the fault of the media companies themselves — not because of the advent of the Internet and social media.”

Instead, Krause reiterated that publications like his must strive to keep up with the latest online trends and react accordingly, something he believes is not necessarily being done well at this point.

“Most media companies have yet to realize and embrace the uniqueness of each platform — be it print or online — and how both can be used to complement and enhance one another rather than be carbon copies of each other,” Krause said. “Will Twitter and Facebook fade out? Perhaps, but they will no doubt be replaced by something else. Individual social media platforms may ebb and flow but social media is here to stay. It will continue to evolve and innovate as technology and creativity integrate.

“The beauty of social media and the Internet is ability for individuals and organizations like ours to create, collaborate and innovate — and engage our readers in the process.”
Part 1:Social media’s ‘evolution’

Part 2: The race for Calgary online supremacy

Related stories:

1. Engaging the Masses: Social media’s ‘evolution’
2. Engaging the Masses: The race for Calgary online supremacy