Ski Jumping Is Buzzing Over Canada Beekeeping Olympian Abigail Strate

When she’s not training, the 2022 Olympic bronze medalist spends her days collecting honey. At the Milan Cortina Games, she’ll have a different golden reward in mind.

Abigail Strate will be looking to add to her Olympic bronze medal at the Milan Cortina Games. | Tom Weller/Getty Images

As Abigail Strate grips the start bar atop the Olympic ski jump at the Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium, preparing to launch down the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic in-run, only she knows where the bee is.

At a World Cup or Grand Prix event, ski jumping’s top competitive circuits, the 24-year-old looks down and sees the black-and-yellow striped bug sticker on her right ski, a calming and comedic presence, even if it started as a reminder of which ski goes on which foot. 

With the Olympics’ strict uniform guidelines, she’s had to move it. 

“I was upset,” Strate says of her plans for the bee at Milan Cortina 2026. “I put him on a piece of equipment that’s hidden from the cameras. I still get my bee, I still get to see him, he’s still there, just not for the world to see.”

Strate is at her second Games under immense pressure. After helping Canada to a bronze medal in the mixed team event at Beijing 2022, the country’s first ski jumping medal, she has exploded as one of the world’s best. Ahead of the Games, she has a World Cup win and 12 podiums.

She’s also at these Olympics without longtime friend and teammate Alexandria Loutitt, who boasts two World Cup wins and a world championship title, and would have been a gold medal contender had she not sustained a season-ending injury in September. 

“It was a huge shock when she got injured, and it took a lot of adjustment for me. I didn't really even realize how much of an effect it would have,” Strate says, noting an upheaval in nearly every competition day routine. “Now I’m up there solo, while everybody else has at least one teammate up there. So it’s definitely a different story for me. There’s a lot more pressure on me.”

“When it comes down to it, I need to stay with each jump I’m doing and stay present, and that’s the big goal.”

Strate (second from right) helped Canada earn its first ski jumping medal in 2022. | Maja Hitij/Getty Images

That big goal has now shifted to the women’s large hill event, set to be competed at the Olympic Games for the first time in its history, after she finished 11th in the Normal Hill on the opening day of the Games, an event she had hoped to win. 

“I am crushed,” she posted to her vibrant X account following the opening event. “I feel like I let everyone down, especially myself. But I’m only human, I’m sure it’ll pass.”

During most of Strate’s events since that breakout 2022 bronze, which includes a FIS Summer Grand Prix win on the jumps that will host the 2026 Olympics, she has had the bee sticker. It’s earned her the nickname “The Bee,” merging her sporting targets with her other passion—beekeeping. 

Backyard Beekeeping 

A native of Calgary, Strate beams as the topic shifts from jumps to hives. As a teenager, she and her dad took a beekeeping class and have since kept two hives in the family’s backyard. 

It’s not easy. 

For most of the year, Strate lives in Planica, Slovenia, a training base for the rest of the Canadian program. The relocation from Calgary to Central Europe has allowed her to be near a renowned ski jumping site, given Canada’s lack of operable, international-standard ski jumps in either the Olympic legacies of Calgary 1988 or Vancouver 2010. 

Back in Alberta, a province with the largest beekeeping industry in Canada, which represents approximately 40% of the country’s honey bees, the buzzing insects can struggle to survive. With the variable climate, roughly half of the hives don’t make it through the winter, a challenge for the Strate family’s two hives. 

“We’ve had some bad luck with our hives, but I’m still super passionate about bees, and of course, I still have them on my equipment. I love them,” Strate says. “You don’t really know what to expect because there are all these and so many variables, so you’re kind of always learning.”

The Canadian Ski Jumping Hive

When those lessons are learned and the variables are controlled, beekeeping can offer honey, a sweet, golden reward for the countless hours put in.

And the unexpected conditions of her hobby and ski jumping aren’t as separate as they might seem, with Strate chasing a different type of golden reward at the Milan Cortina Games. In ski jumping, she has to manage the minuscule details of her approach, wind conditions and other factors in her jumps, as well as the new pressure of being a Canadian medal hopeful at the Olympics. 

In beekeeping, it’s the climate, adapting to seasons, the worker bees’ relations and creating the best conditions for each bee to work most efficiently. 

“You have to be very precise in executing all the techniques,” Canada’s women’s ski jumping coach, Janko Zwitter, told the CBC in 2024. “You have to be on the one side really straightforward, [and] on the other side really romantic because you fly through the air.”

Earlier in her career, Strate says she saw the Canadian ski jumping program as a hive, but now she sees an evolved team without a leading queen bee. Instead, the coaches support with hopes of elevating Canadian ski jumping through its biggest moments on the Olympic stage.   

While Strate likely would have ended up in Slovenia regardless of the situation in Canada, the Whistler and Calgary Olympic ski jumps falling out of use played a key role. 

As such, she made her way to Slovenia, living the first few years with Loutitt. The two recently moved apart, but remain as tight as ever. 

“We still really lean on each other,” Strate says. “I honestly don’t really know many people there, other than those on my team, so it’s a real comfort to have them there, knowing they grew up in the same place as me.” 

While Louttit won’t be competing at the Games, she will be on-site in a media role. She now lives with her partner, Daniel Tschofenig, who is a gold medal favorite for Austria in the men’s events and a widely recognizable athlete in his country. 

Strate had to move to Slovenia to train for ski jumping due to Canada’s lack of training infrastructure. | Tobias SCHWARZ/AFP/Getty Images

With her absence on the jumps, there’s even more pressure on Strate.

Ahead of Beijing 2022, Ski Jumping Canada did not receive a quadrennial funding recommendation from Own The Podium, Canada’s Olympic funding program, which identifies Olympic medal potential. Despite improvements in its standing within the Canadian landscape, it still struggles with tight budgets due to the federal government’s decision not to include a sports funding increase in the 2025 federal budget. 

Once the Olympics and the rest of the World Cup season come to an end, Strate doesn’t just have her Alberta bees on her mind. Rather, she wants to integrate into a rich Slovenian bee culture and the Carniolan honeybee, an indigenous Slovenian subspecies, while assessing the potential of another Olympic cycle. 

“I want to get a little bit more involved in beekeeping in Slovenia, maybe I could find a link to that and go become a beekeeper there for a bit. ... The beehive culture is huge; they’re all over the place.”