The rising stars of biathlon will get their chance to strut their racing strides and test their accuracy on the shooting range this weekend when the B.C. Cup series comes to Otway Nordic Centre.
A field of 88 biathletes from nine clubs is expected for two days of racing Saturday and Sunday and despite sunny, way-above-average temperatures and rain showers the past few days, snow conditions are expected to be near-perfect for racing.
"If it freezes, it's going to be fast and hard," said Pierre Beaudry, the race chief of competition. "It's supposed to get cold enough to freeze and we'll be fine. This is the biggest (B.C. Cup biathlon) race we've ever had."
B.C. Cup results will determine the provincial team for the national championships in Valcartier, Que., March 14-20.
Environment Canada forecasts a high of 1 C today and a 40 per cent chance of snow. Cloudy skies and a high of 0 C are expected Saturday and Sunday's high is forecast to reach -2 C with a30 per cent chance of snow. Overnight lows range from -2 C to -6 C.
"It's almost identical to the conditions for Canada Winter Games last year when it got warm and would freeze at night and we were fine for Canada Winter Games," said Beaudry. "The fast course will be good for the good skiers but not so good for the little guys and guys who aren't racing that hard. Some of the corners are hard to do when you're going straight down and our locals will know that. We just don't want anybody to get hurt or break equipment."
Saturday's PWC sprint starts at 11 a.m. after allowing an hour for competitors to to zero in their rifle sights. The Home Hardware individual race on Sunday starts at 10 a.m.
Otway was the site of the 2015 Canada Winter Games competitions in the third week of February and local athletes from the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club -- Emily Dickson, Claire Lapointe, Arthur Roots and Bobby Kreitz used the opportunity to rise to the occasion while representing their home province at the highest level.
Kreitz is among a group of Caledonia club members entered in the B.C. Cup No. 2 races this weekend. Also flying the club colours will be Logan Sherba, Mark Hartley, Colton MacDougall, Hayden Neill, Ariadne Douglas. UNBC student Jarod Algra, who competed for B.C. at the CWG, will represent West Coast Nordics of Vancouver. Banser is on the list of the female entries this weekend.
Dickson was a multi-medalist at the Games, winning gold in the pursuit, silver in the sprint and teamed up with Lapointe, Tekara Banser and Jennah Smailes, both of Kelowna, to capture gold in the women's relay. Roots came agonizingly close to the podium, finishing fourth in the sprint and fifth in the pursuit.
Dickson is now in Cheile Gradistei, Romania competing at the world youth/junior championships, the third straight year she's been picked for the national team. On Wednesday, in warm and foggy conditions, the 18-year-old native of Burns Lake placed 39th out of 91 in the youth women's 10-kilometre individual races. Dickson had one miss in each of her four shooting rounds. She is entered in today's six km sprint, a qualifier for Saturday's 60-skier youth women's pursuit.
"They're having problems with the course because of really warm weather -- it's like plus-12 and they've changed the course two or three times," said Beaudry.
Meanwhile, on the World Cup biathlon stage, two of the city's most successful biathletes -- Megan Tandy and Sarah Beaudry -- are making preparations to compete in World Cup events next week in Canmore. The first race for the women is a sprint on Friday, Feb. 5, followed by mass start and mixed relay races. Only the top 25 World Cup points leaders and the top five finishers from the sprint will qualify for the mass start event.
Tandy, 27, who posted four top-15 World Cup finishes last season, including an 11th-place result in a sprint race is Sweden, has been struggling to regain that form this season. Her best result in 2015-16 came on Dec. 6 when she placed 25th in the pursuit in Oestersund, Sweden.
Beaudry, Pierre's 21-year-old daughter, is in her second season racing at the World Cup level. She placed 54th in the pursuit in Ruhpolding, Germany, Jan. 15, after a 55th-place result the previous day in the sprint. That earned her a spot on the Canadian World Cup team for the third trimester of the season and a place on the team Canada will send to the world biathlon championships in Oslo, Norway, March 2-13.
Julia Ransom of Kelowna, who finished a career-best 19th in a World Cup pursuit last weekend in Antholz, Italy, and Rosanna Crawford of Canmore have also been picked for the world championships. Theywill travel with Sarah Beaudry to a national team training camp in Oslo right after the Canmore races.
Tandy, Emma Lunder of Canmore, Zina Kocher of Red Deer and Audrey Vaillancourt of Quebec City are in a dogfight for the fourth spot on the Canadian team, which will be determined based on their results at World Cup No. 8 in Presque Isle, Maine, Feb. 10-14.
Otway will be the site of the 2017 Canadian/North American biathlon championships and this weekend's races will serve as a test event for race officials and volunteers. Compared to the CWG, Pierre Beaudry says it takes much planning and organization to stage a B.C. Cup or national championship event, which is divided into several different age categories and requires nine different courses.
"This is way more complicated," he said. "For Canada Winter Games we had just one age category, junior men and junior women, so we had just two classes to run. This weekend we'll have a dozen or more and on our new site we've never run all our courses simultaneously. The courses range from a half-kilometre to four kilometres."
