Long-Term Athlete Development

About Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD)

The Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model was created by Dr. Istvan Balyi and Richard Way working with the Canadian Sport Centres. The LTAD is a 7-stage framework that sport organizations can use to integrate all of their programs and promote both life long well being and athletic excellence. Concurrently, these sport organizations can also align their own programs with those of other sport or activity delivery organizations within the community, province and country. The goal is to promote collaborative efforts in helping participants of cross country skiing and other sports maintain healthy lifestyles while also providing the opportunity to reach their potential. The flagship document for LTAD is called “Canadian Sport for Life”.

The LTAD model is athlete centered, coach driven and administration, sport science and sponsor supported.

For more information please read 'CROSS COUNTRY SKIING - A Sport for Life' (a 1 mb PDF), a sport-specific LTAD model that is consistent with the generic Sport Canada version but customized to our sport and the structure of our sport system.