UBC’s female Winter Olympians provide inspiration, medal or not

The first Olympic Winter Games were held in the French Alps in 1924. At the time, the event was called the “Winter Sports Week of the VIII Olympiad,” only existing to be part of the Summer Olympics, which were being held in Paris. But after the competition was held without any major issues, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) considered the event a success and soon after established the Olympic Winter Games. The 1924 edition was retroactively recognized as the first edition of this new competition.

Ever since the establishment of the Winter Games, the competition has grown exponentially — in the number of disciplines and competitors alike. The Canadian Olympic Committee went from having 12 athletes — and only one woman in the group — in the first edition of the Games, to over 200 athletes in the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics, with women outnumbering men for the first time in Canadian history.

It’s not just Canada that has grown its Winter Olympic representation. UBC has as well.

In over 100 years of the Winter Olympics, UBC has sent several prominent alumni to the Games, where they've won medals and made an impact for their countries. Many members of the blue-and-gold community have participated in the Winter Games, with 12 out of the 25 editions featuring athletes from UBC, starting in 1964.

But it took over 80 years for the first female varsity athlete from UBC to compete in the Winter Olympics.

In 2006, the Italian city of Turin hosted the Olympic Winter Games, with the snowboarding events held in the city of Bardonecchia. It was there, in the snowy Italian Alps, that the first female Thunderbird to compete in the Winter Olympics finally made her Olympic debut: snowboarder Alexa Loo.

Getting there wasn’t a smooth ride. Loo’s journey in sports began at a young age with the influence of her parents, who registered her in a wide variety of sports. She took up swimming and skiing, and during her time at UBC, she was part of both the rowing team and the Thunderbirds’ varsity swim team. The sport she’d eventually compete in the Olympics for came later.

She only picked up a snowboard for the first time at the age of 15 because “it looked cool” and started to experiment with it at her family’s ski cabin in Mount Baker. But she didn’t start competing in the sport until after graduation.

Through her family home, she learned about Mt. Baker Banked Slalom, an annual snowboarding competition, which had started in 1985. She wanted to give it a shot. To prepare herself for the race, she called the Blackcomb Snowboard Club, located in Whistler, in order to learn more about training opportunities in snowboard racing. Through the preparation for the event, she became a racer.

But getting into the professional level wasn’t an easy task, especially because of how young the sport was.

“When I started racing competitively as a snowboarder, there were a lot of pieces I had to put together myself,” Loo said. “There was a [training program]. But I had to go and find gym workouts … figure out nutrition [and] mental training on my own.”

Her first appearance at the Winter Olympics came in 2006, after failing to qualify in 1998 and 2002. Coming off her first World Cup podium shortly before the Games, Loo was certain that she was ready. She had competed through two Olympic cycles and had volunteered at the 2004 Paralympic Games in order to get used to moving through an event of this magnitude. But her performance still didn’t go her way.

After ranking eighth in her course on her first run, she was set up well to progress deeper into the competition. Switching courses, she just needed a good second run.

“Basically all I had to do was just keep riding fast and I would make the finals,” the former Olympian said. “I made a mistake and slipped into 20th.”

She didn’t end up making the final. But Loo doesn’t dwell too much on her performance. What she thinks about most is how she reacted to her loss in the mixed media zone. When she was asked about her race by the CBC, she was at a loss for words. Looking back on it now, she realized that she had missed an opening. A chance to have the platform and opportunity to inspire others, to “say something far more profound than ‘I just fell and I have nothing to say.’”

This was something she was determined to fix in the lead-up to her next Olympic appearance in 2010. Her preparation this time wasn’t just about snowboarding. It involved bringing locals on her journey to the Games and reaching out to the community — particularly young kids — to talk about her career and hopefully inspire others.

She placed 12th instead of the 20th place she had gotten at Turin. Despite the unsatisfying result, Loo said that the impact her journey had on people is what matters.

“Nobody actually cared that I went left and right on the snowboard. It matter[ed] that I was able to inspire people to work hard towards their dreams.”

During the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, another former Thunderbird and local athlete was making history on the slopes.

In the 2010 Games, Ashleigh McIvor became the first UBC alumna to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics and the first female ski cross champion at the Olympics, an event that had its debut in Vancouver.

Her history as an athlete started similarly to Loo’s. From a young age, McIvor was encouraged by her parents to take up sports, specifically skiing. One of her earliest memories was skiing between her dad’s legs at just two years old. Her hometown culture also helped shape her passion for sports — in Whistler, skiing wasn’t just a pastime, but a way of life.

As a member of the Whistler Mountain Ski Club, her teenage years were foundational for her love of skiing. Despite being taught to have “extreme self-discipline,” she skipped alpine training many times in order to freeski, preferring to jump off cliffs and race her friends down a mountain over having formal gate training.

While she didn’t take to traditional teaching, it didn’t impact her passion for the sport. During her time at UBC, McIvor organized her schedule so she would have classes from Tuesday to Thursday, allowing her to continue living in Whistler and ski four days a week throughout her university years.

Despite her passion for racing, it took her years to fully commit to the sport — she quit ski racing twice before her Olympic debut.

The first time she quit, it was mostly out of dissatisfaction with alpine skiing.

For McIvor, the moment that stood out most was during her first international alpine race, at the age of 12. The competition was in Italy, far away from home. She didn’t do well.

“There was kind of no hope for achieving a good result there,” she said. “I don't think I was set up for success. It was just all too overwhelming and I was so homesick.”

That setback stuck with her. The belief that she wasn’t up to par with European skiers, like those she had competed against in Italy, was pervasive, even as she got older. So, she dropped alpine skiing.

But she wasn’t done yet.

During her time at UBC, while watching the X Games with her friends, she got the itch again. After some encouragement from her peers, she started to ski competitively again, but this time, in ski cross.

There was one more problem, however. The infrastructure wasn’t there yet. Ski cross hadn’t yet become an Olympic sport, so it was just a Pro Tour, which McIvor had to commit to on top of her responsibilities with university and the job she needed to pay for her schooling. After an injury derailed her career, she quit again.

Then, the Olympics came calling — and with that call came a responsibility. As one of the only Canadian athletes with World Cup experience — she placed second in an event in 2005 before winning the World Cup in 2009 — McIvor felt that it was not only important for her to represent her country, but also the sport.

Being placed on the world stage for the first time, McIvor wanted to show that athletes of ski cross were more than just thrill seekers, a perception she had fought against since her days as an Alpine skier. It was about establishing the sport’s credibility.

First, the UBC alum had to go through a change of mindset. Both her result in Italy and the conceptualization of her as a slacker for skipping alpine training for freeskiing had hung over her in the past. She’d need to push through to perform her best at the Olympics, and she did, with the help of coach Willy Raine. Working with Raine, she was able to reframe her unusual preparation as something that set her apart from most people.

“When I skipped that extra set of squats in the gym and went for a two-hour mountain bike ride, that was actually ultimately better preparation to … perform on race day at the Olympics … in [a] sport that had a lot of crossover [with] downhill mountain biking,,” McIvor said. “I think that the mindset was the final missing piece before the Olympics in 2010.”

So when the competition day came, there was nothing that could stop McIvor from getting the gold medal. As a local, she was familiar with Cypress Mountain and felt comfortable on the course she’d be racing on. Even skiing in stormy weather couldn’t faze her — as a Whistler native, it came to her naturally.

“I honestly felt like the stars aligned and it all just unfolded so beautifully because of all my strategic preparation, for decades in the lead-up,” she said.

With that, she topped the podium, not just winning gold for herself, but also becoming the trailblazer for Canadian ski cross racers, who have continued to make podium appearances in subsequent Olympics.

“It made me feel like all the time, energy and [sacrifice] of my body and my physical wellbeing was worthwhile,” she said. “Between those other [ski cross] athletes and myself, we've inspired a lot of Canadian kids to pursue their passions, follow their dreams. It's a real honour to represent that cause and the Olympic movement itself.”

After McIvor’s victory, it took 16 years for another Thunderbird woman to make an Olympic appearance. But when Vanessa Schaefer was selected to play for Switzerland’s national team, she made her mark in the history of Olympic women’s hockey.

The Swiss-Canadian player became the first active UBC women’s hockey player to compete in the Olympics, and the second UBC woman in any winter sport to earn a medal. Schaefer had previously represented Switzerland at two editions of the International Ice Hockey Federation’s (IIHF) Women’s World Championship, in 2024 and 2025.

But years before she was on podiums with both UBC and Switzerland, she first stepped onto the ice at the age of five, influenced by her older siblings, who played the sport as well.

After she ended high school, she was trying to figure out what her next steps would be. While she knew she wanted to commit to UBC for university hockey, she had also planned to take a gap year. She had grown up in Vancouver, but her father was from Switzerland, which inspired them to start looking into Swiss teams.

Schaefer had always been in touch with her heritage, often visiting her father’s side of the family in Switzerland, and so when she had the chance to do a tryout with teams in the Swiss League, she took it. She would go on to sign with the ZSC Lions and play for the Zurich team for a season.

After some time with the Lions, she was placed on a list of backup players for the Swiss national team. During a series of friendly matches, Schaefer was called up to play for the first time. She stuck, continuing to be called back, all the way up to to the IIHF World Championship in 2024.

It wasn’t something she expected when she first took her gap year. But by the time the World Championship rolled around, she had lived in Switzerland for long enough to be eligible. Only a year out of high school, the spotlight had increased exponentially.

“It's on a way bigger stage and everyone's watching,” she said. “Whereas at UBC or on the ZSC Lions, it was slightly lower scale.”

After her first appearance at the World Championship in 2024, she continued to make appearances at the national level, until she was chosen as part of the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games. While she had been playing internationally for a couple years by that point, this was different.

“I walked into one of the rinks and it was completely empty, but then just seeing the Olympic rings on the ice and all over the rink and just seeing the stadium,” said Schaefer. “It was just such a special moment.”

The difference between the crowds in Italy and Vancouver was stark for the UBC forward.

“There [are] little moments throughout the game where ... you look up and snap out of it for a second and really take in how many people are there watching you,” she said. “Sporadically throughout the game, [there’s] little moments where … you're like, ‘wow.’”

The crowd size wasn’t the only thing that took a step up at the Olympics. Schaefer was also facing an elevated level of play. Switzerland was placed in a tough group, with Canada, the United States, Finland and Czechia, all countries with extremely skilled and fast players. Schaefer needed to prepare herself and elevate her game against these teams.

When it came time for the group stage, playing against Team Canada was a very special experience for the forward. Aside from having a stacked roster with many players she looked up to, she’d be playing against her other home country — and she knew that many people back home would be watching the match.

After making it out of the group stage, it was on to the playoffs. For the quarterfinal match against Finland, the atmosphere was positive. Despite losing 3–1 to the Finnish team during the group phase, the Swiss team rallied together in preparation for the game.

“I think we all just believed in each other. We all knew that we can just give our best, and see what [would] happen there.”

In the end, the teamwork paid off when Switzerland defeated Finland in a tense 1–0 quarterfinal win, despite being outshot 40–14.

After losing to Canada in the semifinal, heading into the bronze medal game, the group knew that keeping calm and level-headed would be the key to going against Sweden.

“Even though there [was] a medal on the line, I think we all just treated it with a lot of calmness and poise because we knew that if we just played our game … we'd do well,” Schaefer explained.

That strategy worked in the Swiss team’s favour, as they quickly came out of a deficit to take the game into overtime, eventually making their way past the Swedish goalie to win 2–1 and take the bronze medal home.

To Schaefer, the most special part of being on the podium was what the medal represented to her and her teammates. Having a physical and tangible object that commemorated the experience made all of the effort that her team had put into reaching that point in the competition worth it.

By getting a medal, the Swiss players had avenged their loss to Finland in the third place match in the 2022 Winter Olympics. Their win in 2026 had ended a 12-year podium drought. This time, they were on top, and they had both the medals and the memories to prove it.

But while Schaefer’s experience revolved around her bonding with her team, for Loo and McIvor, both in individual sports, their Games meant something different.

For the snowboarder, it meant inspiring her community to work hard and follow their dreams, even if they seemed out of reach. For the skier, it meant helping establish a new sport and make the way for an entire new generation of Canadian skiers.

But no matter how they got there, all three women have become trailblazers for UBC’s sports community.