‘I was not expecting to win a medal’: Abigail Strate on Canada’s surprise bronze in mixed team ski jumping

The first time Abigail Strate even considered that she could win an Olympic medal at the Beijing Winter Games was when she was looking up at the scoreboard after her team had completed their first jumps for mixed team ski jumping.

They were in fourth place — and suddenly what had seemed impossible that morning was within reach.

“I was not expecting to win a medal this Games,” Strate told CTV News Channel on Wednesday. “If someone had told me this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have believed them.”

On Monday, Strate and her teammates Alexandria Loutitt, Matthew Soukup, Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes captured Canada’s first ever medal in ski jumping when they won bronze in the inaugural mixed team event, a surprise that even they didn’t see coming.

“It is a huge win,” Strate told CTV News Channel. “I mean, a bronze is just as good as a gold for us today. There’s never been a medal won for ski jumping in Canada ever, so this is just historic and it’s great and every moment about it is surreal for us still.”

When the team was gearing up for the event, medalling wasn’t on their minds.

“We had gone into the mixed team event just, honestly, hoping to have a fun time,” Strate said.

“We had to postpone our flights because we weren’t expecting to have to go to a medal ceremony.”

The 20 year old said she even posted about the event on social media before it occurred, telling people to come watch them because “we’re going to have fun.”

But after Germany, a favourite to win, was disqualified in the first round due to an equipment violation, Canada found itself in fourth place after the first round of jumps.

“We were hoping to make second round, which was a top eight placing,” Strate said. “Sitting in fourth after first round, I remember we were freaking out. And then we were like, ‘Wait. We all have to do one more jump. Let’s just feel this out for a second.’”

Strate watched as her teammates Loutitt and Soukup performed “great jumps.”

“And I knew that it was my turn to do it,” she said.

After she flew through the air, it was down to their final team member, Boyd-Clowes.

“And he absolutely crushed it,” she said. “Once he left the takeoff, I think all of us kind of realized what was happening and we knew that we were going to get the medal.”

Boyd-Clowes, an Olympic veteran on his fourth Games, secured the highest score on the Canadian team in that final jump, with 128.1.

It was a huge accomplishment for a team with little funding which can’t even train for their sport in Canada due to a lack of proper facilities — something Boyd-Clowes mentioned in a tweet shortly after winning the bronze.

“Build small ski jumps and get a program together in Canada so this can continue,” he tweeted Monday. “Couple bucks maybe towards our sport? Too much to ask?”

But those struggles were nowhere to be seen when they made their history-making jumps. Strate said she felt unusually centred.

“I have dealt with competition anxiety a lot in the past, and I have gotten really, really nervous when performances count, but I personally did not feel stressed at all,” Strate said.

After the two teammates who were in front of her in the queue did their second jumps, Strate said she didn’t stick around to see what place Canada was now in. Instead, she focused on preparing for her own jump.

“I went down and I got all my equipment on, and from then on I was just in my own little world,” she said.

“I wasn’t nervous, I was surprised and impressed with myself.”

Ski jumping has been an Olympic sport since 1924, but it was only opened up to women in 2014. This year is the first year that mixed team ski jumping is an event.

Strate hopes that next Olympics, her family will be watching her compete from the stands instead of at home.

“But I know that my family, first and foremost, has seen everything that I’ve gone through, all the sacrifices I’ve made, all the work that I’ve put into this,” she said.

The team will now be heading back to Slovenia, where their training is based.

“We’ve got the whole rest of our World Cup season left,” she said. “We’re going to Austria, Norway, Germany, Russia, and then we finally get to go home and” — lifting her medal — “bring home our hardware.”