{"id":26251,"date":"2020-03-26T20:08:05","date_gmt":"2020-03-27T00:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26251"},"modified":"2020-03-26T20:08:11","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T00:08:11","slug":"alpine-skier-takes-provincial-cancellation-in-stride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/alpine-skier-takes-provincial-cancellation-in-stride\/","title":{"rendered":"Alpine skier takes Provincial cancellation in stride"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Kinjal Dagli Shah<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many athletes looking forward to the new season,\n14-year-old skier Callum Stewart Smith is disappointed with the news of race\ncancellations amid the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Callum, an Aurora resident, is part of the Craigleith Ski\nClub and was set to compete in the Provincials, following it up with the Can Am\nrace in Maine and the Whistler Cup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Alpine skier admits he is frustrated but is also\ntaking it in his stride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe team and I have been working really hard to get\nwhere we are. We can\u2019t control what happened but we can control how we react to\nthe situation. We can take the bad news and use that to our advantage to strive\nto come back stronger next year,\u201d said Smith, who attends Wellington Public\nSchool. \u201cTo prepare for next season we will just keep on doing dryland and\neating healthy, keeping our eyes on the prize and getting physically and\nmentally stronger for next year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith first learned to ski when he was four years old, starting\nwith recreational skiing with his dad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI did ski lessons at Blue Mountain and my dad found out\nthat they had a race program, so I started racing when I was six in the under-8\ndivision,\u201d recalled Smith. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His journey hasn\u2019t always been smooth, and he worked hard\nto be where he is. \u201cWhen I started skiing in the U8 division, I wasn’t that great.\nThe U10 season came around and it was still just fun and games with my friends.\nIt was during the U12 when all my friends went on the A team, chosen by the\ncoaches depending on your skiing ability, focus to the sport and sportsmanship.\nMy ability to ski and focus wasn\u2019t that strong but I wanted to ski on the A\nteam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith then turned to his dad for support, who advised him\nto improve his skiing by eating healthier and getting more training. Smith also\nstarted to watch the best skiers in his division to learn to focus better. The\nhard work paid off, and he was not only selected to the A team in his second\nyear of the U12 season but also placed in the first top 10 of his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI went to Whistler in the summer for a ski camp and when\nI was there, there were athletes from Quebec who would hit me in the back of\nthe leg with their poles, and by the end of the camp the back of my leg was\npurple, but that didn’t stop me from skiing,\u201d recalled Smith, who faced a\nsimilar backlash when he joined the Ontario Cup team and realised it was way\nharder than expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would go up the chair lift with my teammates and tell\nthem that I would someday win a gold or go to the Olympics and the World Cup\nbut they often pointed out that I wasn’t good enough. They beat me down\nverbally and I was so discouraged.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith decided to use the criticism to motivate himself\nand it marked the real beginning of his ski career. \u201cI went to Whistler, Mount Hood,\nSwitzerland, Colorado, Banff before joining Craiglieth Ski Club. I used the\nnegative comments to push myself harder. During the Mealey Cup and the super G\ntraining runs, I beat the 14-18-year-olds in all the training and racing runs, and\nqualified for the provincials.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith follows a rigorous routine to maintain his place as\na skier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI come home from school every day and do a workout and I\ntrain on snow Thursday through Sunday. I ski from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm and have a\n45-minute lunch. Every day after skiing, I either run from one hill to the next\nor go for a run near my house. I also watch my diet and eat protein, carbs and\nveggies with every meal.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The teenager, who also plays football, basketball and\ncross country, points out that the best part of skiing is having fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great feeling when you\u2019re over on your edge and\nhave a lot of angulation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith\u2019s ultimate goals are to compete in the World Cup and\nOlympics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to be the best and win a couple golds for Canada.\nI have to keep working hard and just think of my process; the outcome will come\naround.\u201d <\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe can\u2019t control what happened, but we can control how we react to the situation\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5,24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/2020-03-26-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Pp","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 21:18:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}