Featured Image: Martin Rufener standing on the ski hill. Photo courtesy of Martin Rufener.

After six years away from full-time ski racing, Martin is returning to Alpine Canada Alpin to lead the Canadian women’s national team into the 2026-27 World Championship season.

The move brings Martin back to an organization he knows well. He previously spent seven years with Alpine Canada from 2013 to 2020 before stepping away from the sport and eventually beginning a very different professional chapter as a helicopter pilot in British Columbia.

Now, ski racing has pulled him back.

“I was always still very involved, even with my job as a helicopter pilot,” Martin told Ski Racing Media while traveling to join the Canadian team for its training camp in Ushuaia, Argentina. “In the wintertime, when I was doing heli-skiing, I would still be up at three o’clock in the morning seeing who was in the second run and watching the races.”

After years in the alpine racing world, he found that the connection to the sport never really disappeared.

From Helicopter Pilot Back to Ski Coach

For the past three years, Martin has worked as a helicopter pilot for Eclipse, Ascent and Silverking Helicopters in British Columbia. His work took him well beyond the mountains and ski slopes, including wildfire firefighting, air ambulance operations, heli-skiing, support for drilling and mining camps and long-line aerial work.

Most recently, he had been working for Silverking in mining camps in northern Canada.

But when Alpine Canada began searching for a head coach for its women’s program, an opportunity emerged to return.

“Alpine Canada was looking for a head coach on the women’s side, and they approached me,” he said.

The timing did not allow Martin to join the team immediately for its first preparation camp of the year. However, with the Canadians beginning an important four-week training block in Ushuaia, he decided the time was right.

“I said yes. I jump in, I take this role, and I’m leading this women’s team through the World Championship year,” he said.

Martin was traveling through Zurich and São Paulo on his way to Argentina when he spoke with Ski Racing Media. The Ushuaia camp will give him his first extended opportunity to work directly with the athletes and staff.

“You really figure things out in a camp like this,” he said. “Ushuaia is a place I know for many, many years. It’s a great place to train, and I’m really looking forward to getting that going.”

A Familiar Return to Canada

Canada is also familiar territory for Martin beyond his previous years with Alpine Canada.

In announcing his return, he described Canada as a “second home” and said he was excited to once again work on the coaching side of the sport.

His immediate responsibility will be leading the women’s national team through a major championship season, with the 2027 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Crans-Montana serving as one of the winter’s biggest targets.

But Martin’s interest in returning goes beyond World Cup results and the coming championship season.

One of the projects that helped convince him to take the position is the opportunity to strengthen the Canadian women’s development system, including rebuilding a women’s speed program.

“It’s not only the high-performance side and winning races, but also looking into the future to set up a women’s speed program again in Canada,” he said. “It looks like we are able to put that in place.”

Looking Beyond the Current National Team

Martin sees considerable talent within Canadian ski racing, but he also believes more needs to be done to create a clear pathway for athletes trying to reach the national team.

“I think there are great athletes around. We need more,” he said. “The pipeline has to be better organized, and the athlete pathway in general has to be more specified and put in place.”

For Martin, that means looking beyond individual teams and age groups and creating greater alignment throughout the Canadian system.

He wants young athletes to be able to see a defined route from development programs to the highest levels of international racing.

“We need to work together as one huge national-side program so that we are really showing them you can start in a top program and make it all the way to the top,” he said.

That longer-term opportunity ultimately helped make his decision.

“That’s another thing I’m really interested to support, to help and to start with,” Martin said. “That’s why I said, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’”

Back in the Ski Racing World

Martin’s return comes at an important point for the Canadian women’s program.

There are immediate World Cup and World Championship goals ahead, but his appointment also gives Alpine Canada an experienced coach who is already thinking about what comes next: developing athletes, strengthening the pipeline and bringing women’s speed racing back into the national program.

For someone who never completely stopped following the sport—even while flying helicopters across British Columbia and northern Canada—the opportunity was difficult to pass up.

Now, after six years away, Martin is headed back to the snow and back to Alpine Canada.

“I’m really excited to be a part of that,” he said. “That’s why I said yes. I’m into that.”