Gibson named Canadian skeleton coach

The head coach of Canada's skeleton team is now a Canadian.

Duff Gibson, winner of Olympic gold in 2006, has stepped into shoes traditionally filled by foreign coaches.

The 43-year-old Calgarian retired after winning his Olympic title. He's coached Canada's developmental team since 2008.

Gibson replaces Willi Schneider of Germany, who was at the helm of the Canadian team during the 2010 Winter Olympics in February. Jon Montgomery's gold was the skeleton team's one trip to the podium in Whistler, B.C.

"What attracted me to it was, what an exciting time it is for skeleton, or sport in general for Canada," Gibson said Monday. "A lot of people would say, 'You just finished an exciting time,' and that's true. But it's different. There's a real changing of the guard.

"Any great competitor loves a great challenge. We had a huge advantage in Whistler because it was our track. Now, things are a little bit different, so it's a greater challenge."

All-Canadian coaching

Gibson's former teammate Kelly Forbes will be the team's strength and starts coach. Keith Loach, who retired from the national team after the 2010 season, takes Gibson's place as a developmental coach.

"Going to an all-Canadian cast, if you will, was on the forefront for a long time," said Nathan Cicoria, high-performance director of Bobsleigh Skeleton Canada.

"It was just a matter of timing. You get a European coach coming in to coach Canadians, the technical ability might be there, but a lot of time you're missing that cultural aspect, the communication. We've struggled with that over the last few years."

Gibson's first official duty as head coach is a training camp in Calgary on Friday and Saturday.

While Schneider lived in Germany and often coached the Canadians from a distance when they weren't at competitions, Gibson will be a more constant presence in the racers' lives.

"I'm really excited about it because one thing we learned from these Games is how important our Canadian culture is," slider Mellisa Hollingsworth said. "I think it will only help us as athletes when we have a leader that we can really relate to, with the knowledge that somebody like Duff has.

"He's already been out to some of our dry-land training sessions and has been proactive in building the connections and relationships needed to be in that position."

Coach development needs work

Alex Baumann, head of the Own The Podium program designed to help Canadians win Olympic medals, has often said Canada needs to improve in the development of its coaches.

Gibson's appointment may signal that Canada finally has the expertise, in some sports at least, to produce world-class coaches here.

Own The Podium funding that started five years out from the 2010 Olympics helped pay Gibson's salary when he was a development coach of the team, Cicoria said.

"Not just in our sport, but I think in many winter sports, there's always a foreign coach in the mix, so maybe the public thought we weren't capable of producing these coaches, but that's not the case," Hollingsworth said. "There's never been the money here to afford what you've grown.

"You have somebody like a Duff Gibson, gold medallist, and he has the experience as being a coach from his other job, that's priceless. I think it's really exciting we're able to keep our home-grown Canadian athletes as coaches."

One of Gibson's priorities is team-building. Skeleton is an individual sport and Canada has depth in it.

That creates tension as some athletes jealously guard their spots on the national team and don't like sharing information with teammates.

"Ultimately what happens, if too many people think that way, you lose the collective intelligence of the whole team," Gibson said.

"It's cliche, but team is an acronym for 'together everyone achieves more,' and I found [this] in my own career to be true. We're going to do our best to convince everybody it's in their best interest to work as a team."

He points to Canada's result in men's skeleton at the 2006 Olympics, where he was first, Jeff Pain took silver and Paul Boehm was fourth. It's the closest Canada has come to sweeping an Olympic podium.

Learned to be team player

Pain said after winning his silver medal that he hadn't always been a team player, but once he became one, it made the difference in his performance.

"I don't want to be the guy who talks about 'Back in my day' all the time," Gibson said. "I've been on the men's team and we've done it wrong and we've done it right. When we did it right, we finished first, second and fourth at the Olympics."

Canada's skeleton team won a medal of every colour in 2006 with Hollingsworth's bronze in the women's race. Gibson wants Canada to return to that level for the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia.

"There's potential to move onward and upward in terms of how we do things," he said. "A lot of it has to do with attitude and philosophy. I'm hoping that Kelly, Nathan and I collectively can bring that to the table and get the athletes to buy in."

Gibson is married with two sons aged three and five. He's also a Calgary firefighter and says he'll be able to continue that job because the fire department has given him the flexibility to work more shifts in the summer and fewer in the winter.