Skiing with Nancy Greene at Sun Peaks
When it comes to Canadian ski stars they don’t come any bigger than Nancy Greene.
FIRST there was Dancing with the Stars. Then Skating with the Stars.
But if skiing is more your cup of tea, then why not head to Sun Peaks Resort in Canada where everyone gets to schuss with the biggest star of all?
In 1968 at the Grenoble Winter Olympics, Nancy Greene won gold Giant Slalom and silver Slalom medals. During her career, she won 17 Canadian titles and notched 13 World Cup victories, which is still a Canadian record. In 1999 she was named Canada’s female athlete of the century. To give you an idea of just how prestigious an award that is, ice hockey legend Wayne Gretsky was named male athlete of the century.
These days Nancy Greene, with her husband, Al Raine, the former Canadian ski team coach, runs Cahilty Lodge at the bottom of the slopes in this British Columbia village. Greene is more than just a lodge owner — she is part of the heart and soul of this village. Spend a day with her and you get the feeling that everyone knows her.
Ski with a legend
Twice a day Greene, in her 70s, heads for a meeting point where people wait to ski with a legend.
If they want she whisks them down a double black run, just to show that she still can. Others opt for something a tad easier and according to her, that’s OK too.
The week before I met her, she was with another Olympic legend, Australian Dawn Fraser. Nancy and our champion swimmer have become friends through the Olympic movement and Fraser was in Canada with her family on holiday.
“I was showing Dawn how to ski. She’d never done it before. And she was showing me how to swim,” Greene, who is the Sun Peaks director of skiing, said.
She opened the doors of Cahilty Lodge in December 1995 when the ski business was struggling.
Today Sun Peaks is the second-largest ski area in British Columbia (behind Whistler) and even with the record numbers of skiers, the lift lines were still short and there was plenty of room on the mountains. Sun Peaks is actually three mountains — Tod, Sundance and Morrisey.
It all started with Tod
Tod mountain is where it all started in the 1960s.
It is also where you will find the best skiers strutting their stuff down the double black diamond runs. Light snow, 559cm of powder annually, makes the skiing easy and last season more than 2000 hours of sunshine made it comfortable as well. The average daily temperature for February is 6.1C.
All the accommodation on the mountain is ski-in, ski-out. I stayed at the Delta Sun Peaks Resort which is located in the heart of the village, named Best Mountain Village by the Snow Country magazine and Britain’s Daily Telegraph rated it as one of the top 10 family resorts in the world.
The Delta is charming with blazing fireplaces, lots of natural timbers, stonework and friendly staff. The 220 rooms are extremely comfortable.
In the lead-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the European skiing superpower Austria will base its team at Sun Peaks, taking advantage of the recently built Nancy Greene International Race Centre.
The terrain, with rolls and steep fall lines, safety netting and electronic timing allows athletes and coaches to prepare for a variety of disciplines.