Where it all began – CSCM celebrates 20 years
We’re 20 years old!
Founded in 1997 as part of the ’99 Pan Am Games Legacy, the Canadian Sport Centre Manitoba is celebrating our 20th birthday this week.
Today is our 20th birthday!??
CSCM was founded 20 years ago as a legacy of the ’99 Pan Am Games. pic.twitter.com/I1HuYWrmSO— CSCManitoba (@cscmanitoba) March 27, 2017
At CSCM, we are excited to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our incorporation.
This year, we will celebrate the spirit of the Pan Am Games as we are reminded to re-live the memories and the legacy that Winnipeg 1967 and Winnipeg 1999 left in our community.
Where it all began
1999 Pan Am Games
Eighteen years ago, Winnipeg hosted its largest ever event: the 1999 Pan Am Games. 18,000 volunteers made the Games one to remember, as they hosted 5,000 athletes and coordinated 300 events in 35 sports.
They were a rejuvenation for the city and provided Winnipeg with a skilled cohort of volunteers with which to bid on and host more major events; sporting and otherwise.
Pan Am Legacy Fund
The Pan Am Games Legacy Fund began with the goal of helping the high performance sport community in Manitoba flourish in the many years following the ’99 Games. This year, the Legacy Fund is set to return its three millionth dollar to Manitoba’s high performance sport community.
While the majority of cities are indebted after a Games event, the Pan Am Games continues to fund and profit high performance sport in Manitoba, some 18 years after its closing ceremonies.
Every year, CSCM’s budget benefits from a contribution of between 15 and 20 per cent coming from the Pan Am Legacy Fund. The Centre’s ability to service Manitoba’s elite athletes is one of the long-term benefits the ’99 Games left to the City of Winnipeg, and specifically to high performance sport in the province.
The Canadian Sport Centre Manitoba was founded two years before the Games, on March 27, 1997.
The birth of high performance
Creating a high performance sport community is no overnight task. Sport in our province has started to see the fruits of the Games Committee’s vision, but it’s taken two decades to get where we are.
In 2014, seven Manitoban athletes returned home with Olympic gold medals from Sochi in 2014. Of the 22 medals won at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, two were yielded by Manitoban athletes. The 2018 PyeongChang Games could feature as many as 15 or 20 Manitobans on Canadian teams.
For a province that holds under four percent of Canada’s population, Manitoba has been punching above its weight, placing many upper echelon athletes on the international podium.
Thanks in part to the Pan Am Games Legacy Fund, CSCM has become the home of high performance elite athletes in Manitoba.
Today
As sport science evolves, the boundaries of high performance sport are constantly pushed, broken, and built higher and higher again. As the demands on high performance athletes continue to grow, Manitoba’s athletes, experts, and coaches grow to meet them.
CSCM experts serve as the lead Integrated Service Teams (IST’s) for our province’s most phenomenal athletes and work hard to challenge, inspire, and enable each athlete to be their best; within and outside their sport.
While other cities don’t face the same accessibility and resource challenges as Winnipeg does, a small athlete population enables the Centre to cater to the exact needs of each and every one of our athletes. No face goes unrecognized, no achievement (or injury) is overlooked – which is a very special thing in the world of high performance sport.
CSCM is now able to invest in Manitoba’s budding sport hubs. We provide service to Manitoba Diving, Wesmen Wrestling, and the Manitoba Triathlon Centre. In 2016, we began our first multi-sport training group in order to extend our IST services to Manitoba’s next generation of Olympians.
While some programs and resources are harder to come by in Manitoba, our experts act as innovators, mentors, and leaders in their disciplines (on a provincial and national scale), as well as service providers.
Twenty years after our incorporation, the Canadian Sport Centre Manitoba is incredibly proud to provide world-class service and support to Manitoba’s past, present, and future Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
Celebrate with us on September 21!
