CALGARY — Andrew Baker hopes to reap what he’s helped sow as the next president and chief executive officer of Alpine Canada. He will replace Thérèse Brisson, who, after six years, moved on to become CEO of Skate Canada. Baker held various jobs at the Canadian Olympic Committee for 21 years and was most recently the COC’s chief external affairs officer. He will join Alpine Canada in September. Alpine Canada oversees alpine and Para alpine racing and ski cross. That involves roughly 15,000 registered racers and 5,500 coaches in 200 clubs across the country, according to the organization’s 2025 annual report. Alpine Canada also operates international World Cup races in Canada. A pair of women’s giant slaloms are scheduled for Mont-Tremblant, Que., in December. A World Cup ski cross is slated for March at Craigleith in Ontario. Baker joins Alpine Canada at the start of another Olympic quadrennial toward the 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps. The 43-year-old from Montreal was involved in the COC’s lobbying on behalf of national sport organizations for increased core funding. The federal government announced in April an injection of $755 million into high-performance sport over the next five years, and dropping to $118 million annually after that. Of that, $660 million over five years and $110 million after that goes directly to national sport organizations like Alpine Canada. “It’s a really exciting time for sport in this country,” Baker said. “What attracted me was the history of the sport and just the history of excellence in the sport, but also the current excellence that you see across all three of the disciplines with alpine, ski cross and Para alpine. “I’ve been working with the Canadian Olympic Committee for a number of years and in recent years, we’ve been advocating for the potential that existed in sport if we better funded it and better supported our athletes for their performance, but then for them to inspire the next generation. “This advocacy work, to put it into action and to help, working with a national sport organization, bring that potential to life, that’s something that was just really, really exciting.” Ski cross is under the freestyle ski umbrella internationally, but Alpine Canada administers the sport domestically as a speed discipline. Alpine Canada met its overall world championship and Olympic and Paralympic medal targets set out in its 2021-26 strategic plan. But Canada was shut out of Olympic medals in alpine skiing and ski cross in February’s Milan Cortina Games. Canadians had reached the ski cross podium in every Olympic Games since the sport was introduced in 2010. Canadian Para alpine athletes earned a silver and four bronze in Italy. “Perhaps the results in (Milan Cortina) didn’t reflect the excellence that we were seeing on an ongoing basis, and there’s, I’m sure, debriefs to do on that, but they still continue to produce incredible results across the World Cup seasons and across the Games themselves, maybe just not to the extent that they were hoping for in that plan, but there’s always more work to do,” Baker said. Canada no longer hosts World Cup downhill or super-G races. Thirty years of men’s and women’s downhills in Lake Louise, Alta., ended in 2022 when Alpine Canada deemed it no longer economically viable to operate World Cups in the national park west of Calgary. Whistler or Panorama, B.C., were tabbed as possible replacements. “As I understand it, through this process, that remains an important aspect, a men’s speed race in the West Coast,” Baker said. “The exact details of that, I think, continue to need to be shaped, but they are very much looking for a return of a men’s speed race.” The federal government also earmarked in April another $50 million over the next five years to host international sports events. More recently, the feds announced in July an investment of $3.65 million into alpine training centre upgrades at Panorama and Whistler, as well as ski cross at Alberta’s Nakiska Ski Resort. “There is a great pipeline of athletes heading into French Alps 2030 on that podium pathway that will, I think, have a better chance to get the resources that they need over the next four years with the new announcement of this government funding, both for programming, but then also for the infrastructure that we saw for the national training centres,” Baker said. Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press
