If you are not going to have the Challenges as real regional events, why not just forget about it and re-structure Junior Nationals so skaters go direct from Sectionals? It is absurd that skaters from the west should always have to fly in to central Canada if you always hold joint challenges there. Yes we know that Canada revolves around Montreal and Toronto, but from the point of view of skater development it is good to have events spread around the country so non-competitors can see high level skating more often than every 15 years or so (if you only rotate nationals). As for the comments about N+L weather it's worth pointing out that Toronto airport is on average closed more days of the year than St. John's - so perhaps we shouldn't hold competitions there either. It's a winter sport and weather will occasionally intervene.
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- Thread starter Rosaleen
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If you are not going to have the Challenges as real regional events, why not just forget about it and re-structure Junior Nationals so skaters go direct from Sectionals? It is absurd that skaters from the west should always have to fly in to central Canada if you always hold joint challenges there. Yes we know that Canada revolves around Montreal and Toronto, but from the point of view of skater development it is good to have events spread around the country so non-competitors can see high level skating more often than every 15 years or so (if you only rotate nationals). As for the comments about N+L weather it's worth pointing out that Toronto airport is on average closed more days of the year than St. John's - so perhaps we shouldn't hold competitions there either. It's a winter sport and weather will occasionally intervene.
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- Dec 4, 2005
I love St. John's and in the days of Eastern Provincial Airlines - nothing could keep the planes out of Nfld.....but now with only Air Canada flying most all flights into and out of ----that's a huge problem.
I have no problem with Challenge being held in Calgary or Vancouver -- both have enough airlines and flights going into their cities that could support the number of seats required. And, the flights can be found for a reasonable cost because there are options.
Every Challenge I had been to - at least in the past 5 years - has been affected by weather. Fredericton was snow, Point Claire (Montreal) was freezing rain and ice; Mississauga both years suffered snow, fog and ice at some point - and Moncton beared the brunt of a major system that shut down Vancouver and worked its magic across the country.
Planes circled around Moncton because they couldn't clear the runway -- no traffic in or out. Toronto was at least de-icing planes slowly and they were getting in and out.
The larger the airport, the better equipped they are to handle weather (although the more likely to lose luggage lol).
I guess it could be worse --- we could be going back to the days of Baie Comeau by bus in a blizzard.......
Actually WestJet fly in to St. John's as well; and of course if Challenge is held elsewhere the skaters from the other provinces have the same choices of airlines to get out, as going in the other end. I don't know if Skate Canada have done a serious analysis of weather trends and patterns in selecting venues. Taking newfoundland as an example, we generally get very little snow before Christmas- probably an ideal venue for the Challenges, but if you put Junior Nats here in Jan/ Feb you are much more likely to have weather problems. Weather can be dealt with by common sense in booking flights in winter as well. When Junior Nats were held in St. John's I was involved as a volunteer- and teams that booked to get in a day ahead had no problem- hence we had the odd situation of having BC and Alberta here but no Quebec team for a day. However there was creative adjustment of schedules, everyone got practice time, and no-one missed the event due to weather. It wasn't a whole lot of fun from an organizational point of view though!
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