It lacked the intensity of the Canada Games, but nevertheless, home on the range suited Rob Martin just fine.
The 17-year-old provincial biathlon team member from Prince George banged off a pair of wins over the weekend at the B.C. Cup biathlon championship on his home course at Otway Nordic Centre.
Less than 24 hours after Martin won 12.5-kilometre youth men's individual race, he was first over the line in Sunday's 7.5km sprint. The races gave Martin one more weekend of competition to help prepare him for the biathlon national championships in Charlo, N.B., March 21-27.
"I'm feeling a lot stronger than I have been the last couple weeks, I was pretty sick," said Martin. "The conditions on Saturday were really slow, really soft, but I managed to slog through it. My shooting wasn't quite on its game, I only shot 10 out of 20."
Martin still won the individual race by almost six minutes (1:00:57) over Van Kingsley of Vanderhoof (1:06:57). He beat Kingsley by 59 seconds in the sprint while knocking down six of 10 targets.
"I'm OK with that shooting, it's better than I've done in more than one race this season, so I'm starting to get more on my game," Martin said.
"I'm glad I've started to out together my shooting and skiing again. At Canada Games I knew it was going to be grunt against guys as old as 20 or 21 and I wasn't going to have fantastic results. It was all about personal bests. I just moved up a category for nationals this year but I'm hopeful I'll make the top-10."
Martin's Caledonia Nordic Ski clubmates, Arthur Roots and Sarah Beaudry, have also qualified for nationals, having raced B.C. at the Canada Games. Roots won the senior boys 7.5km individual race Saturday and was second to Eric Byram of Rossland in the sprint. As expected, Beaudry won both her senior girls races and will be a medal favourite at nationals.
In other local results, Madison Roll of Quesnel won the junior girls sprint; Greg Tone and Doug McComb of Vanderhoof finished 1-2 in the masters sprint; Leah Forsdyck of Vanderhoof was third in the senior girls sprint; Kieron Langan of Quesnel was third in the senior boys sprint; Tristan Langan of Quesnel won bronze in the juvenile sprint; and Hayden Neil of Prince George captured bronze in the midget sprint.
