New Sponsor

A great news for myself as well as my team!!!

SPORTCHEK has become my new personal sponsor as well as an outerwear sponsor for Ski Jumping Canada. 

This is a fantastic addition to my journey to the Olympics and I am so thankful for everyone from Sportchek as well as the FGL Sports staff. 

Seeing that Sportchek became the new Canadian Olympic Team sponsor this year it seemed the chances were slim, but wow! I was so happy and excited when I first heard the news. 

Last week I met up with a FGL Sport manager at Crowfoot Sportchek (also the store I work at) and went on an Adidas gear shopping spree, and today my team was able to experience the same shopping spree! 

There were a lot of smiles and I am so proud to be representing both Canada and Sportchek!!! 

THANK YOU SPORTCHEK :)

Ski Jumping Canada jersey

Our club came up with a cool idea to sell Ski Jumping Canada logoed hockey jerseys to raise some money for our club.

You can choose between a Ski Jump Canada jersey or a Nordic Combined Canada jersey. 

And you can get either a national team athletes name, your name, or any name on the back of the jersey.

The price for the jersey is $165 each and 100% of all the earnings go towards the club. It's a great chance to help out our club as a whole.
Just click on this link:
http://www.altiusnordicskiclub.org/resourses/payment-page/

If you would like to help me individually than please click here:
http://atsukotanaka.blogspot.ca/p/joi.html?m=1

Mondelēz Canada new COC partner launch

Mondelēz Canada, makers of world-famous brands like Cadbury, Dentyne, Oreo and Ritz, has partnered with the Canadian Olympic Comittee (COC). 

To help spread the word Mondelēz Canada reached out to a few Canadian athletes to help launch this news virtually. 

Fortunately, I was one of those athletes and recieved a nice gift of goodies. 

The coolest thing ever was the personalized Dairy Milk chocolate bar that had my name right on the packaging as well as a "good luck" message! 

I am honored to be apart of this launch and so stoked on the goodies! #prideandjoy 

back on snow!

so that time of the year has rolled in to start jumping on snow! Drove all the way down to Park City, Utah with my team to do a short training camp before we head out to Norway for our World Cup opener early December. 

So far we have had 3 days of jumping and all I can say is I MISSED THIS. 

We only have a couple more days here, unfortunately the weather is warm so the jumps are the only place with snow but thanks to the hard work the Park City crew put in we are having great training here. 

CBC National News

Last night on the CBC National News, Peter Armstrong ran a story about the facilities at WinSport Canada and how it is building Olympic athletes and how the facilities are being used to train athletes.
Luckily I was able to be apart of his story.

One of the facilities at WinSport are the big ski jump towers. They are hard to miss! and Peter and his crew stopped by to do an interview.
If you missed it and want to take a look at the story here is the link!

----->  http://www.cbc.ca/sports-content/video/#id=2414663968  <-----

Looking back on the Summer season

Finally the summer season has come to an end.

A lot has happened for me, a few ups and downs, but overall it was a great summer. Started off strong, training in the gym went smoothly.
Training camps in Park City, and Hinterzarten, Germany went well and I was feeling confident for the Summer Grand Prix competitions.

Both Germany and France, Team Canada placed 4th in the mixed team competition which consists of 2 male jumpers and 2 female. Both times we were so close to getting onto the podium but there were no regrets because we all did our best out there, all we know is that we will get on that podium next year!

Russia and Kazakhstan was a good trip for me. In the second competition day in Russia I got my new personal best result after finishing in 5th place.
Than moving over to Kazakhstan, also in the second competition there I landed another personal best, this time ending up on the podium with a 3rd place finish!
It was a great day for me, the previous day I got very sick and was not feeling strong or ready but I am glad I pulled things together for the second day of competition.
My last podium in an international competition was back in 2008 where I won the competition in Baiersbronn, Germany. So really its been a long time coming and it feels awesome to be back on the podium.
Also after the Summer season I am now ranked 4th in the World Ranking, which I am super excited about! :D
I've worked hard to get to where I am now, and its pretty good timing as well considering the Olympics are so close. My goal now is to keep up this performance, become more consistent with every jump I take, and perform my best on the Olympic stage.

Nizhny Tagil, Russia

Friday and Saturday we had competitions on the normal hill in Nizhny Tagil, Russia. I was jumping fairly well in the official training but couldn't seem to do the same in the first day of competition where I placed 10th. 

I reset and refocused for the second day of competition. 

The second competition compared to the first day was a little different with wind conditions, my first round jump ended up a little late but was able to adjust myself pretty well entering the air and caught some head wind near the end which helped me fly further leaving me in 7th place after the first round was complete.

Second round than came along, got held on the bar for a while, and when the light turned green my coach didn't flag me till the last few seconds which I knew in my head that wind conditions were not ideal. But I jumped my best, and held on till the very VERY end, which probably wasn't the brightest of ideas because I failed to land in a telemark position. Oops! 

But I did end up having the least amount of headwind out of almost all competitors which gave me extra points added to my total score and in the end had my best GrandPrix result at 5th place! 

I am very happy with my result but there is still more room for improvement so I will be training harder and hopefully improving more in future competition results!

Lastly, thank you everyone so much! I have received many kind words and I am so grateful to have such amazing supporters. I love you guys so much and I hope I can keep making everyone as well as myself proud!