Taking sport to the community

The summer camps, school programmes and sports lessons laid on by WinSport continue to attract large numbers of young Calgarians to mountain sports. Founded in 1956 with the specific aim of bringing the Olympic Winter Games to Calgary, WinSport is a non-profit, community-based organisation which has invested over CAD 230 million back into high-performance and grassroots sport since 1988.

In 2019, a total of 4,643 youngsters took part in its camps and 27,644 in its programmes, and 29,701 people in the ski and snowboard lessons it organises. The young and not so young are also encouraged to be physically active for life through WinSport’s physical literacy programme, while newly arrived immigrants to Canada receive an introduction to snow and ice sports. A hundred of them took part in WinSport’s five-week programme in 2020. 

The Olympic venues that the organisation runs in Calgary are busy with recreational athletes. More than 1.2 million people visit Canada Olympic Park every year to engage in a host of activities, from skiing and mountain biking to mini golf, ziplining and skating. Opened in 2016, the park’s tube park attracted 120,392 rides in 2019, and some 96,603 rides were taken the same year at its newly opened mountain bike skills centre. Meanwhile, in excess of 20,000 people skate at the Calgary Olympic Oval every year.

These venues and activities could not operate without the support of Calgary’s volunteers, over 300 of whom are responsible for running the camps, programmes and lessons organised by WinSport. The organisation’s board of directors is also staffed by volunteers. Calgary has around 20,000 regular volunteers. Their skills and expertise with regard to the preparation and organisation of the city’s sporting and cultural events were enhanced by the central role they played in delivering the Olympic Winter Games in 1988.

WinSport allocates CAD 5 million a year to maintaining and developing Canada Olympic Park. Its annual economic impact on the city of Calgary is CAD 120 million, equivalent to 1,200 full-time jobs. For the first 31 years of its existence, it relied on income from its endowment trust funds to achieve financial balance. This is no longer possible because, as of fiscal year 2019 and as is the case with many endowment funds around the world, earnings have fallen. They are no longer sufficient to balance operational results and provide the funding needed to renovate ageing infrastructure. The organisation is currently working on a strategy to maximise its social impact and financial health for the next 30 years.