Tiana Gairns picked the perfect time to blossom as one of the country's top young ski cross racers.
The 17-year-old Prince George Alpine Ski Club veteran, a member of the NextGen national C ski cross team, has been picked by Alpine Canada for a new program to help develop its most promising athletes. Gairns is moving to Calgary in September to take part in the Centralized Training and Education Program, among a group of nine men and six women picked for the program, which will provide high-performance training opportunities, while allowing the athletes to attend post-secondary schools.
"It's going to mean I'll have a lot more time training ski cross specifically," said Gairns, who will graduate this month from Kelly Road secondary school. "Now I'll get to do more starts and I'll get to be around my teammates a lot more. Before, I was training with the Prince George Alpine Ski Club and that was all alpine and we would go to ski cross camps. Now, it's a combination of both with the whole ski cross team.
"You definitely need a strong alpine background and they want us to keep on training alpine. If we want to do alpine races they don't discourage that."
Ski cross is a thrilling sport, with four skiers jostling for positions on a steep narrow course with gates and jumps. It made its Olympic debut in 2010 in Vancouver/Whistler and Canadians were already on top of the world. They swept the medals at the X-Games that year and Ashleigh McIvor of Vancouver won women's Olympic gold. Chris Del Bosco of Montreal was the 2011 men's world champion and at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Marielle Thompson of Whistler and Kelsey Serwa of Kelowna brought home gold and silver respectively.
This past season, McIvor and Serwa came back from injuries to help Canada win the Nations Cup World Cup team points title. Del Bosco finished third in the individual standings, while Thompson, Serwa, Kevin Drury of Toronto and Louis-Pier Hlie of Quebec all finished in the top 10.
Gairns dominated the slopes of Tabor Mountain, her home hill, in January when she won a pair of NorAm races, on her way to finishing second overall in the North American Cup season standings
Gairns also made the NorAm medal podium in Sugarloaf, Maine, where she posted two firsts and a third-place result. In February, she was picked as a forerunner to accompany the World Cup ski cross team at a test event on the 2018 Olympic course in South Korea, where she watched Prince George snowboardcrosser Meryeta O'Dine race to a fourth-place finish, her best-ever World Cup result. Gairns says it's encouraging to see her PacificSport classmates, O'Dine and Evan Bichon of Prince George, climbing the international ranks. Snowboardcross is essentially the same as ski cross but instead of skis they race on snowboards.
"It's nice to have other people (you know) going through the same things you are - getting to share your excitement with them when you succeed and getting to talk about the things they struggle through, too," Gairns said.
Gairns wrapped up her season in Smithers with fourth- and sixth-place NorAm results in races against World Cup athletes and placed fourth in the senior national championship.
"That was really encouraging - they're not only the best in the country but they're the best in the world," said Gairns. "It's really cool getting to see that you're actually not that far away.
"We just have a passion for ski cross, the people who go into it just go full-out. They train hard, we have awesome coaches, and our programs are getting better and better."
Canada's international success in ski cross funnels more Sport Canada funding into the sport and that gave rise to the Centralized Training and Education Program, geared towards athletes considered three to six years away from making the Olympic team. Gairns will be training on snow next season for more than 100 days, 32 of which will be dedicated to ski cross competitions.
"Near Calgary, the ski hills are open almost every day, while in Prince George, sometimes it's only Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so I'll get a lot more snow time," said Gairns. "I definitely got lucky."
As a carded athlete, she will receive funding from Sport Canada's Athlete Assistance Program.
"We believe we can create a better athlete through this Centralized Program and target all aspects of an athlete's development, including strength and conditioning, mental strength, sport-specific skills of ski cross such as starts and jumping, alpine technical skills, all while developing the academic and athletic character of the athlete," said Willy Raine, Alpine Canada's ski cross athletic director, in a national team release. "Based on our knowledge of the Canada ski cross World Cup team, which is currently ranked No. 1 in the world, we have identified gaps in younger athletes and believe this program directly targets the next generation of ski cross successes while offering the athletes an opportunity to pursue post-secondary education."
Gairns, who took her core Grade 12 courses at PacificSport Northern B.C.'s sport school while she was racing, has a 90 per cent average. She plans to study nursing but said it was too late to enroll in any nursing programs in Calgary. She will take a few elective courses by correspondence through Thompson Rivers University.
