Tim Roots hadn't shot a rifle in two years.
If he was rusty on the trigger, he did a good job of hiding it.
With a crowd gathered around him Saturday morning at Otway Nordic Centre, Roots had the honour of firing the first live rounds at the newly-constructed biathlon range and he was perfect under pressure. He went 5-for-5 and the crowd voiced its appreciation, cheering with every target he nailed.
"I didn't have a racing heart, actually it was pretty low pressure," laughed Roots.
The new range, one of the showcase facility improvements built for the 2015 Canada Winter Games, is a three-year labour of love for Roots, the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club's director of trails, facilities and grooming, who oversaw the $500,000 construction project.
"I'm absolutely amazed at the way things have come together in the last couple months here," said Roots. "We've gone from a hole in the ground to this. With this range and the ski trails and the entire facility, right down to the parking lots, we now have the ability to run international events here now."
Prince George's biathlon facility is comparable to existing ranges in Callaghan Valley near Whistler and Canmore Nordic Centre in Alberta, both of which hosted Olympic events. Key in completing the project was the work of Dean Price and Nahanni Construction, whose crews spent the summer building the range.
"We had our issues we had to work through," said Roots. "Northern Steel gave us the target structure [material] at cost and we got volunteer crews out here for three weekends in October, about 500 hours of volunteer work."
Otway will be the site of the Western Canadian biathlon championships, Jan. 31-Feb. 2, a test event for the 2015 Games. Roots anticipates athletes from Eastern Canada will come to that event to get a glimpse of what they will see in February 2015. The Caledonia club will also host the B.C. Winter Games trials, Dec. 29.
"I think the kids' shooting is going to increase dramatically in competitions," said Roots. "In the old range we didn't have the ability to have increased heart rate training because the hills close by weren't steep enough. Here, there are all the opportunities to go uphill right away and I think that will increase the calibre of the shooting and skiing. This range here could be any range you'd see in Europe. The big leagues aren't really any different than what we've got here."
For Pierre Beaudry, a longtime Caledonia Nordic biathlon coach and the biathlon sport leader for the 2015 Canada Winter Games, Saturday's official opening was proud moment, considering how much of an improvement it is over the old range tucked into the woods nearly two kilometres away from the new range.
"It's just amazing, we started working on this 10 years ago," said Beaudry. "I think it's going to bring an explosion of biathlon in our club, because now we're front and centre, we used to be in the bush and nobody knew what we were doing."
Beaudry predicts Otway will host the biathlon national championships within two years and foresees Prince George as the site of regional high-performance training centre for the sport. The city is ideal for that, he says, because of the improvements at Otway and because of its proximity to the College of New Caledonia and UNBC, which offer postsecondary options not available to biathletes living in Canmore and Whistler.
"With the college and university so close, there's nothing that compares to it," said Beaudry. "My daughter [Sarah] is in Canmore and it's unfortunate that she can't go to school there.
"We have the weather for it, we always get the right amount of snow, and not too much snow. At Whistler they get too much snow. That range fills up with wet heavy snow and they have to dig it out."
The range is built on a flat area east of the Otway parking lot. Built to accommodate 30 shooters at once, the range targets are set against a large berm that runs adjacent to Otway Road, with high wooden walls at either end a chain-link fence in behind to act as barriers to keep people off the range. A storage building still under construction will contain the the timing equipment and provide a viewing platform for officials during race events.
One of the most attractive features of the range is its spectator visibility. The hill that surrounds the range is laced with ski trails that will allow skiers to watch races in progress. There's also a large space in behind the shooting platforms that will bring spectators close to the biathletes firing their rifles.
"The way we cut it into the bank, it wasn't what we planned, but as it developed we realized its a natural amphitheatre that gives spectators a tremendous view of what's happening.
