After two years of forced pandemic exile, the Prince George Iceman is back on the city sports scene, but warm weather has eliminated the skating segment for Sunday’s race.
The 36th annual midwinter multisport endurance race has and 347 registered competitors, including 34 soloists, 59 adult teams and 13 junior teams, but not all of them will participate now that the skate has been cancelled due to poor ice conditions at the Exhibition Park ice oval.
“We just pulled the skating part, the crew took the snow off this morning and there’s just too much shale ice and we aren’t having the temperatures required to put water overtop to fix that, so we’re kind of stuck,” said Prince George Ice Oval Society President Kathy Lewis.
“Shale ice has pockets of air in it, so a skate blades goes through it and it’s dangerous.”
The only other time the skate portion was cancelled was in 2015. The oval has been closed the past week after thawing left a void underneath the ice. When it got cold again, heavy equipment used to clean and flood the ice went through that void and cracked the ice surface.
“It’s frustrating for our oval crew because we haven’t had it open for quite some time now and it’s disappointing for all those who were going to be skating in the Iceman,” said Lewis.
“It just really send a message that if we’re going to have skating in Prince George I think we’re going to have to move hard towards a refrigerated oval.”
Shar Balough and Cam McNamara, the 2020 Iceman solo champions, are back to try to defend their titles. Balogh captured the Icewoman crown in 2:02:55, while McNamara was the first solo male to cross the finish, stopping the clock in 1:51:50.
The race starts at 10 a.m. Sunday with an eight kilometre cross-country ski race at Otway, then transitions to a running race on a 10 km route along Otway Road and Foothills Boulevard to Exhibition Park. Now that the five km skate has been eliminated, runners will continue another five km through the Pinewood subdivision to the Prince George Aquatic Centre for the final segment, an 800 metre swim.
Junior competitors aged 10-15 compete on teams and complete a shorter course that starts with a four-km ski. The 10 km run is divided in half between two runners, followed by the other five km run and a 400 m swim.
This is a fun race for spectators to watch but they have to keep in mind the race venues will be congested. Race organizers advise people wanting to watch the ski racing to take the free shuttle bus that runs from the Aquatic Centre to Otway Nordic Centre. Busses start running 8:20 a.m. and run every 20 minutes until 12:15 p.m.
Runners will be on the roads and motorists should be aware of that and drive accordingly, following instructions of volunteers on the course.
If you want to watch the swim race, enter through the main entrance of the Aquatic Centre to the east-side bleachers.
Doors open for the post-race awards banquet at 1:30 p.m. at the Prince George Civic and Convention Centre and the meal will be served starting at 2:20 p.m.
The weather might be a bit of an issue with rain and above-average temperatures forecast for the weekend. Periods of snow are predicted for Saturday with a high of 3 C and a low of 0 C. That switches to periods of rain on Sunday and a high of 8 C.
The Iceman dates back to 1988, when it was first organized by Peter Cederlof, Frank Blues and Dave Drysdale. Calgary hosted the Winter Olympics that year and other Canadian cities were encouraged to create their own unique winter sports events.
Originally called the Tabor to Town Iceman Relay, the original race started at Tabor Lake ski trails and the ski venue was switched to Otway soon after to involve more participants.
For more information about the race, go to the Iceman website https://www.pgiceman.ca/
For more information about the race, go to the Iceman website.
