A historic achievement in Beijing
MRU student Matthew Soukup and teammates win Canada's first-ever Olympic medal in ski jumping
— Mount Royal University | Posted: March 17, 2022
Team Canada ski jumper Matthew Soukup competes at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games.
Mount Royal University student Matthew Soukup and his teammates became the first Canadians ever to win an Olympic ski jumping medal at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
Alongside fellow jumpers Alexandria Loutitt, Abigail Strate and Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes, the quartet made a huge impression on the global stage when they won the bronze medal in the mixed team event.
The 2022 Olympics marked the first time the mixed team event has been included in the Games.
Soukup says winning the bronze in Beijing was something that way surpassed his expectations, and that “sometimes it’s still hard to believe it happened.”
The bronze medal was “one of the great underdog stories of the Olympics,” he adds.
A Calgary native, Soukup first became involved with ski jumping when he was about nine years old and took part in a WinSport Canada Olympic Park (COP) program introducing young Calgarians to different athletic disciplines.
“I was one of those kids that was searching for a thrill, always trying to throw myself off something,” he says. “It was a good fit for me and I made some good friends right away, so I decided to stay with it.”
In addition to finding the podium in the team event, Soukup competed individually in the normal and large hill events, coming in 45th and 49th respectively.
“Competing for Canada means a lot to me,” he says. “It’s very much a shared experience with anyone that’s ever supported me or has been involved in our community.”
Now 24 years old, Soukup started to make a name for himself at the international level in 2016, when he recorded a top-10 finish in a FIS Cup event. Unfortunately, he suffered a high-ankle sprain shortly thereafter, which took a full eight months to fully heal.
“I would say it was a setback and maybe it set my progress back a year or two, but I continued working,” he says.
Another obstacle Soukup and his teammates had to overcome on their way to the podium was the closing of the Olympic ski jumping facilities at COP in 2018. This forced Team Canada to move their training to Kranj, Slovenia for nine months of the year.
“That’s been the biggest hurdle that I’ve come across in my entire career,” Soukup says. “But we get really good training over in Europe, so what was the biggest hurdle might also be the reason for success.”
Moving to Slovenia for the majority of the year has also made finishing his MRU degree quite difficult for Soukup. The Bachelor of Business Administration student can only take classes in the spring semester. He has been pursuing graduation for six years while also training as an elite athlete.
“I try to take as many courses as I can,” he says. “My ski jumping schedule runs from September until the end of March, so it’s a slow process.”
While moving between school and competing, Soukup says that the most challenging part is changing his mindset between the two.
“It’s quite the switch,” he said of his deviating responsibilities. “The hardest part is the shifting along with the feeling of it taking so long. I’ve been in school for six years and I’m only about two-thirds of the way done, so it feels delayed.”
When he started at Mount Royal, Soukup wanted to be an accountant, but is now considering changing to general management.
While pursuing two futures at the same time, Soukup is grateful for the options he will have going forward, both from his degree at Mount Royal and wherever his ski jumping career takes him.
“When I’m done with both, they’ll be nice to have in the back pocket,” he says.
As he finishes his degree, Soukup is considering another four-year run in his ski jumping career, potentially culminating in a trip to the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
“This Olympic experience and the medal has brought so many opportunities and opened so many doors, so I’m just going to see what happens,” he says, noting that hopefully after Canada’s ski jumping success in Beijing the sport will gain more attention and funding. After Calgary’s facilities closed in 2018, Soukup says the program hasn’t received the recognition it deserves.
“The program at the moment is pretty dire. There’s a whole season of competition and training, but people only watch the Olympics,” he says. “So after we got the medal, there was more attention than I could imagine on our little sport. So, if it’s not the medal that makes the difference, then I’m not sure what will.”