It's a 12-hour drive from Fort St. James to Calgary but for short track speed skater Jamie MacDonald it's taken years to get there.
She officially arrived Tuesday when it was announced she's made the national development team, whose Western Canadian base is at the Olympic Oval in Calgary. Not only has she made the team but for the first time in her life she's drawing monthly paycheques as a carded athlete.
"It's a lot of hard work," said the 19-year-old MacDonald, from her home in Calgary.
"[Kids in northern B.C.] need to feel like it is within their grasp to do that kind of thing, it just depends how much work you put into it."
MacDonald knew she was in for a heavy workload when she moved to Calgary at age 16 to train with the Olympic Oval program. It was a necessary change of scenery if she wanted to make the national team. In Fort St. James and Prince George, she was the only national-calibre skater in her age group. In Calgary, home of the national long track speed skating team, she's among dozens around the same age with equal ability training at the Olympic Oval.
"It's an awesome facility," said MacDonald. "You go out there and you see the national long track team skating and training and I have the privilege of training with a couple of girls who are already on the national team [Sochi Olympians Jessica Gregg and Gabrielle Waddell].
"They were definitely my role models. It was pretty amazing to see their dedication and their work ethic. Gabby is one of the hardest-working people I know."
MacDonald is among a group of 12 Canadian women eligible for selection in the four-stop fall World Cup season and she's gearing up for a meet in September which will determine that team. If she doesn't qualify in the fall she could still make it to the fifth and sixth World Cup events and the world championships in Moscow, depending on how well she does at the national short track championships in January.
In December she finished eighth overall at the first national team qualifying meet in Drummondville, Que., which paved the way to her first national team posting and her first international meet. As a full-time archaeology student at the University of Calgary she was selected for the Canadian team at the Winter Universiade in late December in Trentino, Italy.
MacDonald missed qualifying for the quarterfinal round by a mere six-hundredths of a second in the 1,000-metre event and went on to help Canada's women's 3,000m relay team win the B-final.
At the junior national championships in Montreal in January, MacDonald was fourth in the 500m and 1,500m events and placed eighth in the 1,000m. She fought off the effects of a tailbone injury to place 10th overall in the national team selection meet No. 2 in Richmond in March.
MacDonald and her 15-months-older sister Caitlynn had already started speed skating when they moved with their family from Stewart to Fort St. James in 2000. Falcons head coach Keith Gordon took them to races all over the province and they trained regularly with the Prince George Blizzard Speed Skating Club. Jamie joined the Olympic Oval high-performance program three years ago and has continued to climb the national depth chart.
"It was definitely an easier transition having Keith as a coach, just because of the difficult programs he had us do," said MacDonald. "Every second weekend [for two or three years] we would go to Prince George to train before I moved to Calgary."
Caitlynn is a long track specialist who also trains at the Olympic Oval and their father Russ also races. Unlike her older sister, Jamie has always preferred short track.
"When we started getting fast I started getting very nervous about the possibility of injuries," said Caitlynn, an online student at Athabasca University. "She likes the thrill of short track and sometimes I do miss it, but I like long track more."
There's at least one other perk for Jamie being on the national team and she'll soon be wearing it.
"She's really excited about getting a Canada suit because it kind of shows she's here, representing our country," said Caitlynn. "She didn't get one for [Universiade]. She had to borrow a Canada suit for that and she was very sad to give that back to its rightful owner."
Gordon didn't start working with Jamie until she was eight or nine but it was obvious soon after she joined the club she had above-average ability. Once she moved to the Olympic-sized rink in Calgary there was room for her to kick it into high gear, unlike the smaller rinks where she used to practice, which can be intimidating as skaters get faster.
"She had a combination of really good basic skating skills when she started, she was a very early developer as far as developing technique," said Gordon. "As she got older she went to development camps where there was a higher level of instruction and she was able understand what they were saying and was interested in trying to get her technique better. It's a very technical sport and it requires extreme fitness.
"Jamie was just always fast and always wanted to get faster and whatever coaches could learn about helping her she seemed to always translate that into better skating. If you make it your business to learn about what skaters need and get good coaching and encourage the athletes to think big and perform well, being from an isolated area doesn't have to hold you back."
