Merely weeks ago the Jasper freestyle ski president was under the impression he was going to be part of the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) workforce at the 2010 Vancouver-Whistler Olympics. But a sudden change of plans in the VANOC volunteer process has left the Jasperite to watch the games from home.

Cam Jenkins was planning on heading to the Olympics to build the freestyle ski runs for the Games after he was approached by Alberta Freestyle and Canadian Freestyle organizations. But what he calls a political decision by VANOC to use Vancouver-based volunteers and company CEOs instead of volunteers involved in the sport for years could lead to more of a headache for the event organizers than a helping hand.

“Basically it was a big political thing between the national sport body and VANOC, and VANOC said to Canadian Freestyle, you can have your 12 guys, and they are basically all officials,” Jenkins said. “They’re not worker bees and the guys at the Canadian Freestyle sure aren’t really happy with how its worked out because they are giving up all the spots to corporate.”

In addition to the 12 officials, other volunteers are needed to do much of the manual labour of building the moguls, which is what Jenkins was hoping to be doing.

“(The officials) are freaking out, because they say ‘I’m going to need four of them to do (the work of) one of you.”

Jenkins said the rest of the volunteers will mostly be people who live in Vancouver and company executives who may not know anything about the sport, which he said is still ‘pretty cool.’

“They may not know anything about the sport, which is really cool, I mean, you get to expose a whole bunch of Canadians to a sport that maybe they don’t know anything about. And you know I think that’s really great, It’s all about volunteering, but it will be a little more clustery when it comes to actually putting the show on. But it is what it is,” Jenkins said.

The Canadian Freestyle Ski Association (CFSA) has been working closely with VANOC to ensure as many of the volunteers at the freestyle events are from Canadian Freestyle.

Media relations manager for the CFSA, Kelley Korbin, said she didn’t know specifically about Jenkins’ situation and said she didn’t know of a policy from VANOC using executives as workforce.

Korbin did say the CFSA has been working quite successfully in recruiting people who do have freestyle experience.

“I personally know quite a few people who worked at World Cups in the past and that kind of thing who are working as workforce during the Olympics. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t company executives doing it as well, I don’t know,” Korbin said.

“So I’m not sure what happened in his case, but it is definitely our intention to try and have volunteers who know freestyle and know how to use a shovel.”

Jenkins said it is disappointing he is no longer heading to the Games, but said it’s still pretty cool that Alberta Freestyle and Canadian Freestyle thought enough to ask him to come.

VANOC representatives could not be reached for comment by deadline.