Ambassadors

Beckie Scott, born and raised in Vermillion, Alberta, Canada, started skiing at age 5 and progressed through the Jackrabbit program to be a cross country ski racer, joining the National Team in 1994. Beckie retired in 2006 as Canada’s most decorated cross-country ski racer in the history of the sport. A three-time Olympian, Beckie won gold in Salt Lake City in 2002, becoming the first Canadian (and first North American woman) to win an Olympic medal in cross-country skiing. She followed that up with Olympic silver in 2006, and a record 17 World Cup podium finishes. In the final year of her career, she finished second in the Overall World Cup Standings.
On retirement, Beckie was elected to the International Olympic Committee’s Athlete Commission for an eight-year term. A widely respected leader in anti-doping, Beckie served as Chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Athlete Committee from 2013-2019. Beckie is recognized globally for her advocacy and work on behalf of athletes’ rights and clean, fair, doping-free sport.
Beckie is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and an inducted member of the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame and the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame. She is a member of the Alberta Order of Excellence, holds Honorary Doctorate of Laws degrees from the Universities of Alberta and British Columbia and frequently works for CBC Sports as a broadcast analyst.
Beckie is the founder and CEO of Spirit North (www.spiritnorthxc.ca ), an organization committed to improving the lives of Indigenous children and youth through the transformative power of sport and play. Spirit North is recognized as one of Canada’s leading sport-for-social-development organizations.

Steve began his World Cup jumping career in December 1979 at age 13 with a 10th place finish at Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy on the Large Hill, followed 3 days later with a 66th place finish on the K-115 hill at Schattenbergschanze in Oberstdorf, Germany. The following year, on 28 February, 1980, he won the FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships in Örnsköldsvik Sweden.

In 1979, Collins won the national Tom Longboat Award that recognizes Indigenous athletes for their outstanding contributions to sport in Canada. In 1980, Steve set the World Record for the longest jump on a 90-meter hill with 128.5 meters at Big Thunder in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Along with team-mate Horst Bulau, Canada became a genuine contender on the World Cup circuit in the sport that had been dominated by Europeans. He left the World Cup circuit in 1988, but returned to his home hill in Thunder Bay competing on the K-90 and K-115 hills in 1990 and had his final World Cup appearance on February 1991.

Steve was a teenage sports prodigy and is the pride of Fort William First Nation in Thunder Bay. Today he maintains the Fort William hockey arena, and is a mentor to the youth who play there.

Horst Bulau singlehandedly raised the profile of Ski Jumping in Canada. A four-time Olympian, 18-year-old Bulau arrived at his first Olympic Winter Games at Lake Placid 1980 as the 1979 World Junior Champion. He competed at Sarajevo 1984, Calgary 1988 and Albertville 1992, producing three top-10 finishes. The highlight of his Olympic career was finishing seventh at Calgary 1988, a result which remains the best finish by a Canadian Ski Jumper at the Olympics.

Bulau was famous in Europe long before his achievements were fully appreciated in Canada. His outstanding career spanned from 1978-92, during which time he competed in 129 World Cup events producing 13 World Cup wins with 26 podium finishes. He was consistently world-ranked second or third during most of his career. In overall World Cup standings, Bulau finished second once (1983) and twice he was third (1981, 1982). The 1982-83 World Cup season was dominated by Bulau and the Flying Finn Matti Nykanen and together they won 17 of 25 events on the circuit, battling for the overall title where Nykanen beat Bulau by 10 points. His World Junior Championship victory in 1979 was the first Nordic title by a Canadian. After Calgary 1988, Bulau retired and briefly coached. He returned to Ski Jumping to compete at Albertville 1992, but did not have enough time to really master the new “V” Style, and after the Games in France, he retired at the age of 30.

Bulau is one of four children raised near Ottawa, after his father, came to Canada with his mother from Germany. He began skiing at two and was competing in alpine events at five years of age. Bulau spent winter weekends near Ottawa, training and competing in both alpine skiing and ski jumping and entered his first national ski jumping competition in 1975 in Thunder Bay, which he easily won.

The Sports Federation of Canada named him Athlete of the Month three times (March 1981, January 1982, March 1983). Bulau was inducted into the Canadian Olympic (1993), Canadian Ski (1994), Ottawa Sports (1998), and Canada’s Sports (2014) Halls of Fame.

A father of three, Bulau has a passion for fine automobiles and loves all makes and models, and following his retirement from sport, he has worked in the automotive industry where he currently is Sales Executive for McLaren Toronto.

Devon Kershaw was at the forefront of the recent success for Canada’s “Nordic Knights”. In March 2006, he won a World Cup bronze medal, making him the first Canadian male cross-country skier to reach a podium on the elite international circuit since Pierre Harvey in 1988. In 2011 Kershaw made another breakthrough when he teamed with Harvey’s son Alex to win gold in the team sprint at the FIS World Championships, making them the first Canadian men to ever reach the world championship podium in cross-country skiing.

Competing in his second Olympic Games at Vancouver 2010, Kershaw contributed to the best-ever Olympic results by a team of Canadian male cross-country skiers. Kershaw had a pair of near-podium results. He teamed with Harvey for a fourth-place finish in the team sprint. On the last day of the Games, in the gruelling 50km mass start, Kershaw finished a heartbreaking fifth, missing out on bronze by 0.6 seconds.

After Vancouver 2010, Kershaw continued to put his name in the history books while proving to be one of the world‘s most consistent all-around skiers. In 2010-11 he finished eighth in the overall World Cup standings and recorded his first career World Cup victory. The next season was even better with two World Cup victories enroute to a second-place finish in the overall World Cup standings, the best-ever performance by a Canadian man.

Since making his World Championship debut in 2003, Kershaw has seen the Canadian men go from being the world’s most anonymous team (a designation which both stung and motivated him) to one that has consistently contendied for medals. In January 2017, he helped make more history as a member of the 4×7.5km relay team that won World Cup bronze in Ulricehamn, Sweden. It was Canada’s first ever World Cup podium in a distance relay. He made his fourth and final Olympic appearance at PyeongChang 2018.

Born and raised in Sudbury, Ontario, Devon was active in alpine and cross country skiing as well as hockey into his teens when he focused on the Nordic discipline full time. Retired in 2018 at age 36, Devon is married to Kristin Størmer Steira, a two-time Olympic medallist for Norway. With their young daughter they live near Oslo, Norway.