Heading into this week's national biathlon championships, Sarah Beaudry is going to have tough time topping her bronze medal win at the world junior/youth biathlon championships.
Third in the world certainly has a nice ring to it for the 19 year old from Prince George.
Beaudry is one of the few Canadians to have won a world junior medal as a first-year junior. She came close later in the week in the 12.5 km individual race, finishing sixth, one place ahead of her training partner Julia Ransom and ended the week on Friday by shooting clean in the 3 X 6 km relay, helping Canada to a ninth-place result.
Beaudry skied the race of her life two Sundays ago in Presque Isle, Maine in the world junior women's 10-kilometre pursuit, reaching the medal podium despite starting the race in 29th spot, two minutes 37 seconds after the first skier left the start gate.
Strong crosswinds on the range didn't seem to bother her and Beaudry missed just one of her 20 shots. Her success on the range and strong skiing in the pursuit helped her forget a disastrous result in the sprint the previous day.
By her first prone shooting round Beaudry had moved up to 22nd spot, was 10th by her first standing round and then missed one target and had to ski one penalty loop. That dropped her to 14th by the time she started her second prone shooting but she shot clean and was fourth heading back to the range to start her last standing shooting bout.
"That was probably the most nervous I've ever been shooting because there were quite a few people in the crowd who were Canadians," said Beaudry, from her hotel room in Charlo, N.B., where the national championships open with the sprint events on Wednesday. "I hit them all and I saw the Russian girl [who was ahead of Beaudry] going into the penalty loop but I knew Julia Ransom was right behind me. It was so much like practice but so intense. I had just enough to stay ahead of her and keep my position in the end."
Beaudry was a shoo-in to represent B.C. at the 2015 Canada Winter Games next year but there's a strong likelihood she'll have to miss the Games because it's on at the same time as the world junior championships in Belarus.
"I'm leaning towards world juniors because that's who I need to race and that's where I'm going to get better," said Beaudry. "I've been looking forward to CWG as soon as I knew they were going to be there. It's so disappointing they will happen at the same time."
One other Prince George biathlete in the same quandary is Emily Dickson of Prince George, 16, the top Canadian in several world youth category races in Maine. Dickson was 16th in the sprint, 20th in the pursuit, 30th in the individual start 10 km and was 10th in the team relay. Canada's youth men's team -- Aidan Millar, Jules Burnotte and Alex Dupuis -- won relay silver on Friday, an unprecedented Canadian result.
Beaudry and Dickson are among a group of Prince George biathletes now in Charlo. Caledonia Nordic Ski Club biathlete coach Allie Dickson (Emily's sister) is one of three B.C. team coaches at the event. Fifteen-year-olds Claire Lapointe (senior girls) and Bobby Kreitz (senior boys) are also entered as are 19-year-old Arthur Roots (junior men) and 23-year-old Matt Neumann (senior men).
While they have yet to race in Charlo, the athletes gathered there are bound by one common theme. They all had to pay to get there. Even at the world junior/youth championships, the eight-male, eight-female Canadian teams had to fund their own trips to Maine. It cost Beaudry nearly $3,000.
"We were having lunch with the German girls one day and we told them we have to pay for our tours and when they found out Julia had to pay to race World Cup they couldn't understand," said Beaudry. "They don't have to pay to be there."
While Biathlon Canada has some athlete funding available, it all goes to the senior teams competing at the World Cup and Olympic levels, and even for them, there isn't enough to go around. Olympian Megan Heinicke of Prince George was in Pokljuka, Slovenia for World Cup events on the weekend and plans to race at the final two World Cups in Finland and Norway the next two weekends but she will be paying her own bills. The Canadian team has just one coach, two wax technicians and no massage therapists.
Despite those challenges, Zina Kocher of Red Deer and Rosanna Crawford of Canmore finished 14th and 15th in the pursuit in Pokljuka, the first time two Canadian women to have ever cracked the top-15 together in any World Cup race. (Heinicke was 45th in the pursuit and 43rd in the sprint).
Beaudry, who lives in Canmore, has hometown sponsorship from Westcana Electric, Shooters Group, GeoNorth Engineering, Stride & Glide Sports, and Le Cercle des Canadiens Franais de Prince George but still has to work at several jobs to get by.
"We always hope there will be more money for us but even if you're doing well on the World Cup, they only look at Olympics and world championships," said Beaudry. "We had our best Olympics for so long in biathlon but at the same time they always look for medals and it's hard to compete against sports like moguls, where they had four of the six medals. We'll find out at the end of the season."
