Ross Rebagliati may have spent the bulk of his life snowboarding, but the Olympic gold medalist has spent just as much time looking for money-making opportunities.

Rebagliati, who made history in 1998 by winning the first Olympic gold medal for snowboarding, has put his name and face to Kelowna Mountain Resort as Director of Snowboard and Ski Operations.

And as part of his lifelong real estate passion, he's also invested in the resort's real estate properties. The real estate business is as much his pursuit as professional snowboarding. He even married a realtor, Alexandra, who's due to have their first baby next year. Together, they are an entrepreneurial power duo. And like any professional athlete, Rebagliati regards the current recession with optimism. He sees opportunity in the challenge.

“In snowboarding, you don't come out of it with scholarships or dental,” explains Rebagliati, who adds that, at 37, he's “washed up” as a professional athlete. “But this is the best position I've been in, with regard to my future.”

But he was thinking ahead, even in the salad days of his snowboarding career. Rebagliati has long had an interest in business and investment, all the way back to the days when he'd watch his dad work hard as a geologist and he decided he didn't want to go the conventional route to make a living.

His made his first real estate purchase after winning a small amount of racing prize money, which he used as a down payment. He was 20 years old, and the Whistler home he bought cost $200,000.

“My friends were into big trucks and stereos, and that kind of thing,” recalls Rebagliati. “ I could have gone through that money in a couple of months, and instead I decided to do [buy property].” He later sold the property for $385,000 and that little profit made “a light bulb go off” in his head.

He realized that real estate could be more lucrative than the $50,000 a year he was making as a professional snowboarder. And so he began the long climb on the property ladder.

“The next down payment was five times more, but I had five times more equity in it. That place went up, so I leveraged it, borrowed equity, bought a condo. So I was rolling right along into the Olympics with all that. I went into Nagano and I was successful there. I had plans to buy another piece of property if I won — it was quite a bit of money,” he says.

As most every Canadian will recall, Rebagliati almost lost his Olympic gold medal when he tested positive for marijuana (even though it's not a performance-enhancing drug). An arbitration panel decided to let him keep the medal, but the controversy made international news.

“If I didn't get to keep my medal in the Olympics [my life] would have been different,” Rebagliati says of the outcome.

As it turned out, he had prize money to put toward a $1 million property on the lake. But Rebagliati says it wasn't snowboarding that got him that house.

“It was 10 years of investing that led me to that point.”

Instead of competing in the 2010 Winter Olympics, Rebagliati will be teaching at the Rebagliati Alpine Snowboard Training Academy as part of the deal. Overseeing a snowboard academy has long been his dream.

One of his mentors is veteran ski medalist Nancy Green, who bought her own hotel and another one in Kamloops, B.C.

“She is a bit of a mentor to me,” says Rebagliati. “I'm not ready to commit myself the way she has towards conventional business stuff, but I see what she's done and what potential is, and what it isn't.  There are misconceptions. Like, you if you have a name, does that make it easier to sell real estate? I don't think so.”
With the economic downturn, Rebagliati is one of many investors currently considering their options.

“I'm definitely not selling my properties off right now,” says Rebagliati. “Now is the time to sit on your properties, gather your assets, and keep your eyes open for amazing bargains.”

In B.C., Rebagliati is seeing properties that have been reduced by 30 per cent compared to where they were at last spring. He is considering snapping some of those sweet deals up. If the market should go down another 10 per cent (as the experts predict) next year, and again the year after that, you're still ahead by 10 per cent, says Rebagliati.

“You are only going to see these amazing deals while people are still panicking,” he says. “Once the market starts to stabilize, you won't see that kind of discount.”

 

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