The women who changed Canada’s Nordic skiing story

Featured podcast: Ski Like a Girl — Season 2, Episode 2: Canadian XC Ski Champions: The Inside Story

As the world turns its attention to the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, a new episode from the Ski Like a Girl Podcast reminds us that today’s Olympic moments are built on decades of unseen work.

KSR historian PearlAnn Reichwein revisits Seefeld, Austria, site of the 1976 Olympic Winter Games women’s 4 x 5 km relay, where Canada’s team, led by pioneers Sharon and Shirley Firth, Susan Holloway, and Joan Groothuysen, finished seventh in the world, ahead of several racing powerhouses. Their performance signaled a turning point for Canadian women in cross-country skiing.

But the episode goes beyond the race course, uncovering the women who quietly reshaped the sport from the inside: administrators, volunteer leaders and coaches who pushed for equity in a male-dominated system. Former Cross Country Canada administrator Monica Rosenthal recalls the climate of the time inside the precursor of today’s Nordiq Canada: “It was a very macho place.” Change came through persistence, policy and volunteer leadership.

Affirmative action pushed equity forward. As sport policy leader Trice Cameron explains, “Equity being you finish at the same line, but you don’t necessarily start at the same start line.”

As Olympic history continues to unfold in Milano, Cortina, this story reminds us that progress in sport is not accidental; and that today’s athletes ski on trails forged by those who came before.