Shoot For Gold.
If you’re a biathlete on Canada’s senior national team, reaching that ambition will require a certain amount of green – the colour of $20 bills - or perhaps a couple stacks of brown $100s.
Saturday morning at 8 a.m. PT the bidding will begin for Biathlon Canada’s Shoot For Gold team fundraiser. National team biathletes have been busy the past few months collecting a pool of goods and services worth more than $20,000 to provide incentive for people to support the online auction.
“You can bid on a Caledonia (Nordic Ski Club) season’s pass with the bonus of a shooting day with me,” said senior national team member Sarah Beaudry of Prince George. “Stride and Glide (Sports) donated a pair of top-of-the line Swix Triac ski poles. One of the restaurants in Canmore donated a chef-at-home experience and we have a one-week stay at Pender Island.
“Everybody has been collecting items for the auction.”
Emily Dickson of Burns Lake is the other local athlete on Biathlon Canada's senior national team.
Last year’s Shoot For Gold was a combination online auction/live event and it raised about $34,000 for the team, but the pandemic has forced the athletes to scrap the in-person event this time around. All money raised in the athlete-driven initiative will be used to reduce the cost of registration fees for the World Cup and IBU Cup tours this fall/winter in Europe.
“Last year when our funding got cut even more, the budget said it would be $15,000 per athlete for the World Cup season and we decided to hold a fundraiser and it was a great success, so we figured we would try again this year,” said Beaudry, who figures it ended up costing each athlete $4,000 to race last season.
“Each athlete on the team got just over $3,000 out of our tour fees, which was a significant amount of money, and Biathlon Canada did some fundraising too. With all the fundraising it was a lot cheaper than anticipated and so we’re hoping this year can also be successful.”
The online auction, to be posted at www.charityauctionstoday.com/auctions/Shoot-for-Gold-2020-15802, will be live for one week, ending at 6 p.m. PT on Saturday Nov. 14.
