Episode 3 - Butch Boutry
What does it take to be your best? Like really your best? Like world champion / Olympic champion best? Well there's not doubt it all starts with talent sure, but after that what does it take?You can train hard, you can train well and you can clock infinite miles of training, but anyone can do that. Anyone can put in the time required to practice, but does that get you great? Maybe sometimes. Does it get you World Champion great? Unlikely.Talk to any gold medal winner and without a doubt the first person they will thank for their success will be the person that believed in them, the person that had confidence in them, the person that found what was great about them and helped them do a whole lot more of that. The person they trusted, and who trusted them back, the person that helped them get to a place where their ability to win matched up with their belief that they could. Some people call it a coach, many other legends call him Butch Boutry.While you may know him purely by the four decare tenure of his ski shop sign on Washington Street in Rossland, Bouth Boutry is a bit of a big deal in the Canadian ski world. He raced on the national team, was the Western Canadian Champion, and later found his groove as a future hall of fame coach. If you could pinpoint a single patient zero in the epidemic of winning that was the Crazy Canucks for a decade starting in the early 70's that may just be Butch. He was the coach of a young Jungle Jim Hunter (the first Canadian male skier to win a medal at the Olympics),14 time World Cup podium finisher and Olympian Ken Read, overall World Cup champion Steve Podborski and many others.Butch was also a Rosslander who loved his small City and ski hill more than any others and raised his family along with his wife here for most of his life.The quiet man shuffling about his ski shop was the seed for a huge amount of winning and success on ski hills across the globe and Butch Boutry most definitely has Roots in the Koots.We had a few guests join us for this episode. It is amazing how easy it is to get the biggest neames in Canadian skiing history on the phone for a chat when you start throwing Butch's name around. The amount of good will out there for a man who hasnt coached these guys in 50 years was off the charts. I'll be posting some mini-episodes in the near future just on the conversations with Ken, Jim and Steve.