Sault's Carter Simpson wins big at Special Olympics event

Alpine skier and Team Ontario member Carter Simpson is coming home with one of each — a gold, silver and bronze medal — all earned last week at the 2024 Special Olympics Canada Winter Games in Calgary. 

With his family and friends cheering him on at Canada Olympic Park, a legacy facility from the 1988 Winter Olympic Games, the 30-year-old opened the competition with a bronze medal in the Giant Slalom Wednesday afternoon. 

He followed that up the next day with a gold medal performance in the Super G race on Thursday and completed his trifecta on Friday with the silver medal in the the Slalom. 

Carter now lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake after moving there from the Sault with his family in 2021. His mother, AnnLiz Simpson, tells our sister site The Local that Carter had never even done a Super G race before competing Thursday. 

“When we lived in Sault Ste. Marie he trained at Searchmont, and they could set up a Super G," AnnLiz explains. "But very few resorts can set up a course because you need to be able to get speed and you need to have a certain vertical. Where he trains out of Milton, they haven’t even done gates this year because there’s been no snow.”

To help him prepare for Calgary, AnnLiz and her husband Mike Sweeny had been taking Carter across the U.S. border to Holiday Valley in Ellicottville, New York, every Thursday to get him skiing on a steeper pitch. 

“We thought because of that he might have a bit of a feel for it, but we still weren’t sure how he would handle it,” she says. “He surprised all of us. He looked absolutely amazing. His brothers (Palmer and Chandler), former racers themselves, were in shock.”

Another reason Carter’s performance in Calgary was so amazing was that none of the skiers even had a chance to take any practice runs before the start of the competition. 

“It was -31 with the windchill Tuesday,” remembers AnnLiz. “They cancelled every outdoor event that day. They took them to the hill and let them get the lay of the land and make sure their skis were there. But that’s it.”

She says her son seemed undaunted by the fact that he would be skiing the next day on the same slopes used in the 1988 Winter Olympics, or that officials lit the same cauldron from that historic event at the opening ceremonies and were to keep it lit for the rest of the week. 

What instead caught Carter’s attention that day was the sight of the famous Jamaican bobsled at the bottom of the ski hill. 

“He took pictures of it and sent them to all of the family,” says AnnLiz. “He has watched Cool Runnings (the John Candy film about the Jamaican bobsled team) so many times. That’s what really got him so excited.”

Carter and his Team Ontario teammate Angel Blainey, a fellow skier who won bronze medals in both Giant Slalom and Slalom last week, even got to sit in the bobsled. 

The Special Olympics Canada Winter Games wrapped up on Saturday, when the family drove a bit further west to Panorama, British Columbia. There, Carter and the rest of them will all, of course, be skiing. 

And Carter will surely lay out his gold, silver and bronze medals for everyone to admire while there.