Skate Canada supports Calgary’s bid for 2026 Olympic Winter Games
There is nothing that brings this country closer together than hosting an Olympic Winter Games on home soil.
In Canada, we’ve been fortunate enough to experience that incomparable sense of national pride and patriotism twice in the past 30 years. The enduring memories from Calgary 1988 and Vancouver 2010 have left a lasting footprint on the collective heart of our nation.
As a proud Canadian winter National Sports Organization, Skate Canada fully supports Calgary’s bid to host the 2026 Olympic Winter Games and is urging Calgarians to let their voices be heard by backing the bid in the November 13 plebiscite.
“It is truly a special privilege to host an Olympic Winter Games at home,” says Debra Armstrong, Chief Executive Officer of Skate Canada.
“As Canadians witnessed during the Calgary Games in 1988 and the Vancouver Games in 2010, a home Olympics offers the rare opportunity to unite the country and embrace the Olympic movement while inspiring young athletes to chase their own Olympic dreams. A successful Calgary 2026 bid will leave an everlasting legacy not only in Alberta, but right across Canada, for generations to come.”
A successful Calgary 2026 bid, which is expected to inject more than $4 billion into the local economy, will once again put Calgary on the world stage while sustaining the city’s reputation as one of the world’s premier winter sport cities.
Sport has the power to bring people together, and a home Olympics takes that unity to another level. Eight years ago, the collective pulse of a nation elevated as we watched Alex Bilodeau claim Canada’s first Olympic gold medal on home soil. We were captivated by the strength and grace of Joannie Rochette, who epitomized the strength of the human spirit by overcoming personal tragedy to win an Olympic bronze medal in one of the most emotional performances you will see in sport. We cheered as Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won their first ice dance gold medal and, in an unprecedented display of patriotic pride, the nation reverberated from coast to coast to coast with Sidney Crosby’s golden goal.
In Calgary, figure skaters won three of Canada’s five medals. The Battle of the Brians mesmerized a nation as Brian Orser captured silver, Elizabeth Manley became Canada’s sweetheart with her stirring silver-medal performance and Tracy Wilson and Rob McCall stood on the Olympic podium with a bronze medal.
A home Games offers the rare chance to bring us all together as one, while showing the world who we are, and what we believe in.
Canada has celebrated the privilege of hosting two Olympics in the past three decades. Those moments, and those memories, are etched in our hearts forever.
Eight years from now in Calgary, we may get to experience that feeling again.
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