Calgary’s Atsuko Tanaka was 10 when she decided she’d had enough of watching her brother compete in ski jump on the weekends and it was her turn to soar through the air. Three years later, she took the gold at a Continental Cup event in Park City, Utah. That moment on the podium remains her favourite ski jumping memory, but she soon came crashing back to earth when well-wishers commented that it was such a shame she couldn’t shoot for the Olympics because women’s ski jump wasn’t an Olympic event. Tanaka had no idea at the time. But now, in Sochi, Tanaka and her fellow competitors will finally take their place at the top of the mountain alongside the men, when women’s ski jump makes its Olympic debut.
In Vancouver, Tanaka was a forerunner who tested the men’s course — an irony not lost on her. Shortly after the 2010 games, she travelled to Japan to get to know her family’s culture better. She could only enroll in school there if she changed her nationality, so she spent two years competing for Japan before deciding Canada was where she was most at home and the Maple Leaf is what she wants to compete for. Now, the 21-year-old proudly wears the nickname “Japanada.”
Tanaka has already landed on the podium once this year, finishing third at a Grand Prix event in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in September, and she has six other top-10 results in Grand Prix and World Cup and test events in 2013.
Tanaka’s ski jumping heroes are Simon Ammann, a Swiss who scooped up a pair of golds in Salt Lake City in 2002 and again in Vancouver, and Johan Remen Evensen, the Norwegian man who holds the world record for longest jump, with a Superman-like 246.5 metres.
Female ski jumpers have finally won their long-overdue invitation to the Olympic party. A few years from now, young skiers coming up through the ranks might well be listing Tanaka as their own high-flying hero.