The snow came a bit too late for Prince George to take its place as host of the 2017 National and North American biathlon championships but that didn’t stop a bunch of Caledonia Nordic Ski Club athletes from making themselves feel right at home on the trails at Canmore Nordic Centre.
They gave the Prince George club prominence atop the leaderboards in the five-day event.
Sunday’s relay results included medal finishes for three Caledonia club members. Logan Sherba and Bobby Kreitz combined with Benita Peiffer of Whistler to win the youth mixed relay, finishing the a 3 X 6-kilometre event in 56 minutes 57.7 seconds.
In the junior 3 X 6km relay, Emily Dickson, Angus Tweedie of Smithers and UNBC student Jarod Algra helped B.C. to a silver-medal finish. They finished 46.5 seconds behind the gold medalists from Alberta (Pearce Hanna, Darya Sepandj and Chad Berling) who finished in 57:34.8. Colton MacDougall and his BC 2 teammates Kieran Marchand of Rossland and Danica Ariano of Vernon were seventh.
In the men’s/women’s relay, Arthur Roots and Matt Neumann teamed up with 17-year-old Kaede Sawano of Squamish to finish fourth, 6:36.7 off the winning pace set by Alberta (Kurtis Wenzel, Zina Kocher, Tyson Smith), who won in 56:08.2. Neumann had the third-quickest time, finishing in 17:38.
Neumann, 27, who has been competing for the national team in Europe on the IBU Cup circuit, won Wednesday’s men’s sprint and led for three of the four laps in the pursuit on Saturday. But he ran into trouble on the shooting range. He missed two targets in his second prone, four in his first standing bout, and ended with two more misses while standing which dropped him to fourth place. He finished 1:34.04 behind gold medalist Alex Dupuis of Ontario, who clocked 37:34.04.
On Thursday, Neumann captured silver in the individual race, finishing 40.2 seconds behind Wenzel.
Roots started the pursuit seventh, 30 seconds after Neumann left the start gate, and hit four of five targets in his two prone and first shooting bouts, then hit two in his final standing bout to place sixth, 2:58 behind Dupuis.
Dickson hit 16 of 20 targets to win gold in the junior women’s pursuit. The 19-year-old 2015 Canada Winter Games champion from Burns Lake won silver in the sprint race Wednesday. Algra was fourth in the junior men’s pursuit, 4:31.15 behind the gold medalist, Hanna. MacDougall finished 10th, 9:52 behind Hanna.
Kreitz, the silver medalist in the individual race Thursday, had the second fastest ski time of the day in the youth boys pursuit. Starting ninth, he shot 10-for-10 in his prone bouts then went 4-for-5 in each of his two standing bouts to finish forth, 1:38 behind winner Adam Runnals of Calgary. Starting 12th, Sherba hit all five targets on his first prone bout, knocked down four in his second prone and first standing, then went 2-for-5 in his final standing bout to finish eighth, 3:13 off the pace. Sherba was sixth in the individual race,
In the 7.5km senior boys pursuit, Cole Bender started fourth with a 15-second handicap, then shot very consistently hitting 4-for-5 in all four bouts to earn the bronze medal, 1:58 behind winner Rory Gilliland of Alberta.
Canmore was asked to host the event a few weeks ago when a lack of snow at Otway Nordic Centre cast the event into uncertainty. As fate would have it, recent snowfalls the past week have left the trail conditions in Prince George as good as they’ve been all season.
