2004 Olympic gold medalist gymnast Kyle Shewfelt put in an appearance at the Polarettes Gymnastics Club Sunday morning.

He was at the Polarettes club to conduct a coaching clinic and do a meet and greet and book signing.

The Star spoke with Shewfelt Sunday at the club. He explained why he was in Whitehorse.

“I was invited to come and be a part of the Special Olympics festival or the gala last night. I have a deep connection to Special Olympics. I’ve been co-chairing the champions network for quite some time. And I’ve been a supporter of the organization since 2004. So I’ve met (Special O Chief Executive Officer) Serge (Michaud) at several events. And it just so happened that he invited me to come up this year and the timing worked. And then I find myself here at the gymnastics club because word travels fast in Whitehorse. Kimberley reached out and I said ‘yes, let’s make it work.’”

Polarettes executive director Kimberley Jones explained how he ended up at the club.

“I heard on the radio that Special Olympics Yukon was bringing up Kyle and I used to be from Calgary myself, so I’m familiar with Kyle’s work and success and who he is as a person, his positive energy and I thought ‘he can’t come to Whitehorse and not at least pop his head into the gymnastics club.’ So I reached out and asked him if he was willing to come by.

“He did a coaching clinic with our coaches this morning, which was really inspirational. And has a chance to stop by and meet a few athletes.”

Shewfelt said the clinic was “great. We reinforced the value of putting athletes first and having an athlete-centred environment that’s parent and coach supported. That’s something we’re really trying to push for and be the change that gymnastics needs. And so having those conversations with the next generation of great coaches is really important. And to just remind them – at the Olympics, my coach was such an amazing supporter, but also reminded me to trust myself, and the work. So you think in those big moments, what does a coach tell you? When the biggest pressure in the world is on your shoulders? A coach can go one of two ways. They can make the pressure more and make you get really scared in that moment, or they can help build you up and help you believe in your ability to deliver in that moment to remind you that you’ve done it before.

“So that’s what I see my path now in gymnastics is helping the next generation of coach be really athlete-centred and ensure that the athletes are feeling when they leave the sport that they’ve been empowered to move forward in their lives in positive ways.”

Shewfelt is encouraged by the change he’s seeing in the culture of the sport, but said it’s not going to happen overnight.

“I’m really happy that we’re now having conversations about the change that needs to occur in sport and I’m seeing the change happening on the ground. I think high-level, it’s gonna take some time. It’s a generational thing. You can’t just instantly change it. Because there are a lot of coaches that were raised in a system and a culture and an environment that was very, like, the 90s were different. They were. And it was about young 14-year-old gymnasts being these acrobatic stars at the Olympic Games.

“The sport has shifted, it’s changed. The average age is much higher now. It’s become more of a strength and power sport. And I think I want to help be a part of the change and I love the fact that we do talk about how to make gymnastic environments positive for athletes.

“And from a coaching perspective, empowering your athletes to be decision makers and have autonomy and to be able to guide and learn through their experience in sport and not using your coaching powers over the athletes to make them little robots.”

Shewfelt’s book, Make it Happen was published in 2020 before the pandemic.

“One of my goals was to actually get to each province and territory to a gym club, to share some stories and to start bringing that positive message of athlete-centred environments that are parent and coach supported.

“So then the pandemic hit – I don’t know if you heard about it. So everything got delayed, and then we officially launched in June of 2021, just before the Olympics there. The book is full of messages.Kids always ask, ‘what does it take to get to the Olympics?’ Well, I tried to encapsulate all of that. This is like, my time capsule.”

Hailey Spears was there with her daughter Lanaya Jennings to meet Shewfelt.

“She is an athlete with the gym who is definitely reaching towards one day being in the Olympics. She just wanted to meet Kyle today. She’s had a ton of Olympic questions as she gets more and more into it, so I think it’s a perfect opportunity for her to meet an athlete who’s done it himself.”

Jones explained what it means to her to have Shewfelt at the Polarettes club.

“I think it’s an honour in a lot of ways to have such a positive influence, such a successful athlete come into our club. And the message he’s sharing is something that I really wanted to have our coaches hear as a whole because gymnastics has been going through a lot and I think that having positive role models in our sport, particularly positive male role models, with a lot of what’s happened in our sport, is super-important.”

Jones said it was an opportunity to share a message that’s “completely in line with the values that we have as a gymnastics club.

“I think that it’s just been a really positive experience. Our coaches are energized. I can already see today they’re bringing even more fun into our programming today. And that’s exactly what our clinic was all about. And that’s the message we’re trying to share.”

When asked how male participation in the sport could increase, Shewfelt replied, “I think there’s this evolution happening in gymnastics where there’s ninja, and parkour and all these things that are gymnastics, they’re just not as refined or artistic. So it’s gymnastics with bent legs and flexed feet. That’s what I like to say, but it’s still Gymnastics. Gymnastics, at a foundational level is movement, it’s agility, it’s balance, it’s strength. It’s coordination, it’s learning how your body can move all the different ways that it can move and it’s learning how to be like this autonomous being and an awareness of what your body is capable of and how to how to move it, how to go upside down, how to be comfortable in the space that surrounds you. So I think every little boy should do gymnastics.

“Gymnastics is a hard sport. If you don’t really love it, and you don’t want to commit your time to it, it’s hard to accelerate it because it is a sport that does require a certain amount of time. You can’t go once a week for an hour and progress to a high elite level. You do have to put in 20, 24 hours a week of training that’s really repetitive.

“But I do feel that gymnastics is a sport that can help anyone at the foundational fundamental level, and I always look around and I’m looking around here today and I’m seeing these kids. And they might not be Olympic gymnasts, but maybe there’ll be a cross country skier, or maybe there’ll be a snowboarder, or maybe there’ll be a diver. This is going to give them the foundation and the base to have confidence in the way that their body moves to move into other sports.

“I see that as a role in gymnastics. There’s a small percentage of kids that do want to do it at the competitive level. But there’s a large base of kids that do it at the recreational foundational level. It gives them a strong foundation to move forward in an active life and to trust themselves.

“And I see it all the time. Kids that did gymnastics, they become better soccer players, better rock climbers, better swimmers. They have this agility and this knowledge of how their body works; they can transition into any other sport so easily.”

As for what Shewfelt thinks of the Yukon, “I love it,” he exclaimed. “I’ve been to N.W.T. before. But this is my first time to the Yukon and I’ve only heard great things and I’ve experienced wonderful hospitality.”