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There are a lot of choices to consider when carving out your ski area’s niche.

If you work with passion and intention, your resort can become a top spot for winter sport newbies.

 If you focus on training facilities, your resort can become a heralded center for both current and future elite winter sports athletes.

 If you deliver the touches all kinds of clientele need to feel welcome, your resort can become truly inclusive.

 If you both cherish your history and embrace the future, your resort can be a model of progression for long-timers and newcomers alike.

 And, if you focus on sustainable operations, you can help mitigate climate change and run a more efficient ski area. 

 Of course, if you’re WinSport—the ski resort, training center, former Winter Olympic Games venue, and hub of outdoor sports activity located just inside of Calgary—you can, and will, do all of these.

The Ultimate Generalist

In a world where it’s often suggested to pick a lane and stay in it, WinSport shows how a small hill in an urban area can be the ultimate generalist: a spot where every level of snowsports participant not only has a place to call their own but coexists in a supportive way.

And while the “whys” of the setup were somewhat handed to the resort (its history as a key venue in the 1988 Winter Olympic Games brought it notoriety and sense of place; the realization that it’s a well-designed training hill brought athletes and teams; the wild influx of new immigrants to nearby Calgary delivered a further need for inclusion), how it’s being shaped not around but within those subsects is as far from chance as one can get. 

Over the last two years or so, WinSport has been in the process of improving community relations, digging deep to create a dedicated staff, and undergoing a lot of self-analysis. 

Ups and downs. WinSport opened to the public as Paskapoo Ski Hill in 1961. Then various orders of government invested approximately C$200 million to transform it into the Canada Olympic Park ahead of the 1988 Winter Olympic Games. An Olympic endowment fund has supported WinSport’s not-for-profit operations (as well as those of the Olympic Oval at the University of Calgary) for more than 35 years, but its physical assets have been in decline without reinvestment, and the pandemic took a toll on the operation. 

“Financially, we’ve had to navigate decimated revenues and the pressing need for capital reinvestment,” said president and CEO Barry Heck in a 2023 annual report to community stakeholders.

While business generally rebounded post-pandemic, the need to recover revenue and generate capital for investments spurred WinSport to examine its operational efficiency and reposition its brand and programming “to appeal to our community and to ensure we are making a compelling case for funders to support our required capital investments,” said Heck. 

Building the New Era

While the story of WinSport’s reinvigoration includes people, populations, passions, and planning, it centers somewhat on a building—the new Day Lodge, set to debut in 2025. 

To realize the vision for the Day Lodge, the structure originally built to serve as the media center of the 1988 Olympics—a facility that WinSport vice president of sport Jennifer Konopaki admits has been “hanging on by a thread” for years—will be renovated and recieve an addition.

Funded by the Canadian and Alberta governments, the Day Lodge will be carbon net-zero, airy, and open with a Scandinavian touch, with huge windows and seating areas—and most of all, a comfortable place for all types of users.

The building will feature a variety of services and amenities. To cater to WinSport’s many beginners, for example, a high-functioning rental shop has been designed to move guests along with ease and bring them right to the snow. The open, rectangular-shaped space will have clear signage and easy flow from entrance to exit. There will be ample clearance for wheelchairs and strollers, and boot storage is built right under all the seating. 

Unique accommodations. The lodge will also have a multifaith room—potentially the first at a ski area in western Canada—on the main floor, open to anyone for prayer, equipped with a foot washing station and comfortable chairs. 

The second floor will be home to two sensory rooms, which will serve as a space for children and adults to have a quiet space and the ability to regulate. The rooms are specially designed to provide a variety of sensory experiences, including various tools and equipment to stimulate the senses. These types of rooms are commonly used for therapeutic purposes, particularly for individuals with sensory processing disorders, autism, ADHD, and other developmental disabilities. These spaces will be available to breastfeeding moms as well.

The Day Lodge symbolizes a big shift at the ski area following a few shaky years in which things like capital planning were on hold as Calgary bid for the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic games. A negative public plebiscite halted Calgary’s bid, and losing the opportunity to host another games was a huge turning point for the resort, Konopaki says. 

“We realized we cannot put all our eggs into one basket,” she says, referring to the operation’s Olympic pedigree. “But we can put a few eggs into a lot of baskets and pull them out when needed.” 

 Renderings of the new Day Lodge at WinSport, a game-changing renovation set to debut in 2025.

Losing is Winning

When Calgary’s bid for the 2026 games was abandoned in 2018, WinSport leaders were motivated to dig into the long process of studying—and eventually re-setting—WinSport’s brand, which, other than the Olympic connection, had never been fully established. 

An intentional process. During a nine-month process that involved both internal stakeholders and the guidance of an external consulting firm, the resort’s past, present, and desired future were explored. The goal was to home in on what the resort is, what it can be, who it serves, and what it represents—and how it can be successful moving forward. 

 First, all “artifacts,” as Konopaki refers to them, from the last 20 years were consolidated, and four key staff members were given the task to go through it all, find what mattered, what didn’t, and then curate that to give to the consulting agency. They looked at lists, plans, annual reports, event history—everything that had happened at the resort in its last two decades.

Once the agency reviewed, pondered, whittled down, and organized that information into a first draft of a future-looking brand book, the draft was presented to the team and other stakeholders (board members, longtime clientele, and representatives of athletic programs and ethnic groups) for feedback about what those groups felt mattered most, what may be missing, and what they agreed and disagreed with in the plan as part of developing the new brand identity. 

Their goal was to create a new, vibrant brand that would represent where WinSport is going more so than where it has been.

The “Bible”

From all of this came what Konopaki calls the resort’s “Bible.” The bible, a brand book, contained everything from brand color choices to mottos, goals, and plans, all centered on the many communities WinSport aims to serve. 

Managers were able to soak in, tweak, and finalize it for six more months. And the process worked, says Konopaki, because through that process the resort brand “kind of told us what it wants to be,” she says. 

And what that brand represents, in simple terms, is a place of warmth, inclusion, and excitement for both guests and staff and a place where outdoor sports are welcoming, accessible, and available to anyone in any segment of life—which speaks to WinSport’s broad demographics and high volume of participants. (Post-pandemic, WinSport welcomes roughly 1.2 million visitors annually across its ski hill, training facilities, and events center, and has nearly 11,000 winter passholders.)

 Honoring the past. WinSport didn’t abandon its old identity entirely. Throughout the rebranding process, it became clear that it was important to hold onto some of the resort’s storied history, especially as an Olympic venue. “The brand colors tell that story,” says Konopaki.

How? The WinSport team played a role in choosing the new colors, but it wasn’t until the colors were formally presented that they realized the process had led them to choose the same colors represented in the Olympic rings. 

“We didn’t even realize it until later,” says Konopaki. The Olympic legacy is such a core part of WinSport’s identity that, it seems subliminally, it was insisting on staying around.

Examples of WinSport signage before the rebrand (left) and after (right).

A Melting Pot

With Calgary a top destination for immigrants from all over the world, the resort must stay up-to-date and ahead of the needs of a remarkably diverse and unique community, says Konopaki. “It’s not even never-ever anymore,” she says, “It’s never-ever-ever. Never driven a car. Never worn a winter coat. We are welcoming [people who are] truly new to all of this.”

Thus, it’s not unusual, says Konopaki, to walk around the facilities and not hear anyone speaking English. “It looks different and sounds different (than the usual ski hill),” she says. The top three languages other than English spoken at WinSport are, currently, Ukrainian, Portuguese, and Tamil (South Asian). Staffing across the board with people who can help—and partnering with groups in the city who serve those communities—is paramount, she says.

So, too, is acknowledging the need to offer low-skill activities to accommodate a broader visitor base, which can mean making decisions that sadden some long-time loyalists. For instance, WinSport replaced Nordic trails with a tubing park in 2016. While the trails are missed by some, Konopaki says, the tubing park has been a successful addition that anyone can participate in. It’s all about balance.

Shared space. There’s a broad range of types out on the hill, with never-evers on the same small peak as school groups, passholders, elite athletes, and—get this—as many as 20 special events on the hill each season.

WinSport takes that proficiency mix into consideration and has shaped its terrain just right. Moving east to west across the hill, the layout carves out space for newbies, more advanced learners, and then the athletes. It’s all visible in one sweeping glance, and yet, says Konopaki, it works. The beginner area is served by five conveyor lifts, the summit is served by a high-speed quad, and another high-speed quad provides access to the advanced parks and pipe.

On any given day or night, WinSport could be hosting a World Cup freestyle event (top), teaching beginners to snowboard (inset)

“Over the years we have become more intentional in designing flow and progression as our guests advance in their skill,” she says. “We have focused on Terrain-Based Learning, which the guest can then progress to the intermediate park, which leads to the advanced park, all moving east to west.” 

The mountain has a 22-foot competition halfpipe and World Cup slopestyle course, and the competitor training program is robust. From club teams to elite competitors, athletes of all levels can be found honing skills on the slopes. Some of the athletes are students at the National Sport School, a Winsport-based grade 8-12 program designed to balance athletic training with academics that’s one-of-a-kind in Canada—not unlike the ski area itself.

“WinSport is a unicorn (for training),” Konopaki says. “The quick lap time offers a level of efficiency that helps coaches get things done.” 

The juxtaposition of world-class training venues and first-class learning terrain on a 90-acre, 400-vertical-foot ski area is unique. On any given day, WinSport opens with the chattering of children arriving for school programs, newbies then file in for first-time snow experiences, and in mid-afternoon, training commences. By then, every level of skier and rider can be spotted on the hill. On Sunday evenings, CADS Calgary—a volunteer-run adaptive program that has offered ski and snowboard lessons at WinSport since 1974—takes over the hill. 

WinSport averages nearly 200,000 skier visits a season with a large share of those visits from beginners and families—in the average year, WinSport gives more than 50,000 first-time lessons (including summer programming). New participants from all walks of life come to the hill via numerous targeted programs, partnerships, and grants. 

For example, WinSport developed a Newcomers Program in 2017 to introduce newcomers to Canada to winter sports and other recreation opportunities, rolled out an adaptive sport program in 2019, serves 20,000 Calgary-area students each year through school programs, and has partnered with the Indigenous Sport Council of Alberta. Last season, WinSport brought to the hill more than 400 children and families with disabilities, newcomers to Canada, and people from the Indigenous community. 

Feeding pipelines. In all, Konopaki says, WinSport feeds the industry at multiple levels: taking newbies and making them regulars, taking regulars and making them competitors, and taking any of those and making them future industry employees.

None of that can happen without staff—and the values established in WinSport’s brand reinvention apply to staff as much as any other stakeholder group. Via higher pay, flexibility, inclusion, and creating an atmosphere of empowerment where “fail forward” is embraced, Konopaki hopes WinSport is building a workforce that not only supports the hill’s vision but also the industry for a lifetime. 

 Crowds gathered around the Canada Olympic Park (now WinSport) sliding track during the 1988 Winter Olympics.

Little Hill. Big Dreams.

These are just some of the ways this small hill is working toward being a comfortable, accessible, and top-quality hub for a wide range of snowsports enthusiasts.

“WinSport is founded on our unwavering belief, our one firm truth: that everyone deserves the opportunity to succeed in sports, in whatever way they define it,” says Konopaki. “As a not-for-profit we’re not just about providing exceptional venues and unparalleled access; we’re about breaking down barriers, fostering inclusivity, and building a community where anyone, regardless of their background or ability level, can discover and pursue their passion for sport.”

These ideas shine throughout WinSport’s brand plan, where key ideas include: The spirit of sport. No one on the bench. Team players. Winning hearts and minds. Crafting a legacy. And perhaps best of all, one simple focus writ large in the plan: Joy.

Sometimes traveling in more than one lane is just right.