The second event staged through Special Olympics BC’s new high-performance program saw SOBC speed skating athletes and coaches benefit from working with one of Canada’s top speed skating minds, and learning new technology and dryland training techniques that will help them ramp up their skills.

The speed skating high-performance camp hosted last Sunday in Coquitlam brought together coaches and 16 athletes from all of the Locals that offer speed skating programs for the opportunity to work with Jacques Thibault. Two eight-year-old Coquitlam athletes were also able to benefit from the on-ice session.

Jacques is a significant figure in the speed skating world as a former national team coach and Olympian, former Olympic Oval General Manager, and member of the Speed Skating Canada Hall of Fame. He and the Allinger Consulting International team are world-class experts sought out by the Russian Olympic Committee to work with their athletes and programs in advance of the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi.

Jacques brought amazing tips to the table, giving the athletes and coaches great insights for improving everything from equipment to technique. He and the other high-performance experts involved from Allinger Consulting International also gave the coaches and athletes a lot to take home in the way of dryland training techniques and familiarity with technology such as video analysis and sport-related applications that help clearly see and understand the changes that can be made.

The athletes were excited to be given more tools to work with in their dryland training over the summer, as they were provided with a lot they can work on before their next camp in June.

Watch the camp recap video created by Julia Dorofeeva of Allinger Consulting International:

The technology tools being introduced by the Allinger experts have also been getting great responses from the coaches involved with the speed skating and swimming camps held to date. They begin working with video footage of their athletes and using affordable apps that do everything from demonstrate muscle movements to ideal water consumption.

Experiences like the speed skating camp are helping to build a richer experience in a high-performance sport environment for SOBC athletes and coaches, growing together with more tools and techniques to help them be at their best. The tools and techniques taught at the camps can then be shared widely for development.

Coming soon in the high-performance plan:

• the approximately 145 SOBC athletes and coaches coming from around the province to the SOBC Snow Sports Festival in West Kelowna will get to work with the functional testing and video analysis tools;
• the swimming athletes and coaches who participated in the first camp will get to demonstrate their development and show their skills applied in a race environment around the March swim meet in Coquitlam;
• an athletics camp is being planned for May, providing functional assessments and high-performance coaches to work with SOBC coaches.

Stay tuned for more on the development these tools will bring!