By Stampeders.com Staff

It’s not by accident that George Hopkins is the best and longest-serving equipment manager in Canadian football.

When Hopkins, who started working with the Stamps as a youngster in the early 1970s, met skeleton athlete Madison Charney at a Calgary Boys and Girls Club event, he not only saw an opportunity, he immediately acted upon it.

“Just over the course of the conversation, it came up that she had no sponsor logos so we started talking about the helmet,” Hopkins recalled. “I just thought that (the Stampeders’) colour scheme blended very well with what she was wearing.”

Hopkins immediately envisioned the design of the Stamps’ cutting-edge Outlaw helmets — red-black gradient, silver horse logo, array of speed lines — and pictured it on Charney hurtling head-first down the skeleton course.

The very next day, Hopkins reached out to Hydro Graphics Inc., the company responsible for painting the Stamps’ alternate helmets.

“I asked them if they had ever done one,” Hopkins said. “I had to explain to them what skeleton was, to start off with. They said it wouldn’t be a problem at all.”

The real challenge was getting in contact with Charney again. This was achieved when Hopkins enlisted his wife Cathy to make contact with the skeleton athlete through Facebook.

“Madi brought a helmet in, we sent it in to HGI, they turned it around and they sent it back to us,” said Hopkins. “It turned out really well.”

It was a match made in heaven because Charney, the defending Canadian women’s champion, is an honest-to-goodness, born-and-bred Stamps fan.

“Day 1 fan,” Charney told the Calgary Herald. “Runs in the family. My mom was a Calgary Stampeders cheerleader back in the day. Both my parents are born-and-raised southern Albertans, so the Stampeders have been in our lives since, well, ever since I can remember.

“It’s in my blood.”

Charney remembers the giddy excitement she and Hopkins felt when her customized helmet arrived from the designers.

“We both opened it up and (it was) better than I could’ve imagined,” she said. “Just like Christmas morning. I think he’s just as excited as I am about this.

“It’ll be exciting to show this off on the circuit. Isn’t it awesome? I know it’ll bring me good luck.

“I’m so proud to wear this.’’

Appropriately, the skeleton season begins with the North American Cup next month in Calgary, which means Charney will be flying the home team’s colours. The World Cup schedule gets under way in Germany in late November.

As luck would have it, the final day of the first World Cup event lands on the same day as the 103rd Grey Cup. With any luck, both of the competitors with horses on their helmets — in different sports and on different continents — will be celebrating a victory that day.