Isla Cadell considers Prince George latest sports facility a gamechanger, one that just might give her the training boost she needs to compete for medal podium spots next winter in the world youth biathlon championships in Germany.
Cadell, 17, was a proud host Friday morning, watching her BC provincial teammates and their Team Alberta counterparts roll into the shooting range at Otway Nordic Centre.
Rolling instead of running.
That’s possible now thanks to a $1.25 million investment the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club put into paving a three-kilometre section of the trail network at Otway to create Western Canada’s third roller ski trail to train cross-country skiers and biathletes like Cadell in the warm-weather months.
Cadell and a group of about 12 hardcore biathletes in the Caledonia club have been training on the asphalt track since May. They had to hold off from trying out the track last October to allow time for the asphalt track to cure, but there’s nothing holding them back now and they’re loving it.
“It’s really amazing to share this facility with people from all over the country,” said Cadell, 17, a member of Biathlon Canada’s youth national team. “I never thought this was a possibility and now we have these world-class facilities here and it’s really cool because we’re just a small town in British Columbia.”
The five-metre wide track features extended uphill sections and banked corners on the downhill slopes to minimize the risks of skiing without brakes and Cadell has gotten used to taking those corners without too much fear of a wipeout. It beats worrying about vehicle traffic roller skiing long city streets, where local ski racers used to conduct their summer training.
“The first time I skied it I was like, I don’t want to fall here, but the more you ski it the more comfortable you get with it, but it’s inevitable, somebody’s going to crash, and usually they’re fine,” Cadell said.
Being able to roller ski means biathletes can carry their rifles and it’s easier to simulate racing on snow, where learning a natural routine to load and shoot smoothly with robotic precision are critical skills for accuracy and speed on the range.
“You can’t run with a rifle on your back and you can’t roller ski on the road with a rifle because that illegal, so you don’t get (used to) the weight, and that changes everything,” said Cadell.
“Having this here has changed our training for the better, a lot, and we get to ski the same course we race on (on snow) so that’s pretty cool.”
The Caledonia club is hosting its first races on the new track this weekend. Saturday’s time trials are for cross-country skiers and on Sunday’s the biathletes get their chance to race the clock.
Canada’s national senior team and development team athletes for cross-country and biathlon as well as teams from Biathlon Alberta Training Centre and Sovereign Lake Ski Club are also participating this week in the six-day camp, and they are utilizing the dorm rooms at the UNBC student residence.
Not Nathanael Dean. He can sleep in his own bed 20 minutes away and get fortified for his races with a home-cooked meal, a rare luxury for the 16-year-old Caledonia club biathlete, heading into his fourth season with the BC provincial team.
“I think I’m lucky to be so close to a club that has such an amazing facility,” said Dean. “I love the new roller ski tracks, they’re amazingly smooth. There’s a few corners you have to get used to but I actually I really love them.
“There’s been a few crashes but none on the big hill, we’ve all been pretty lucky. You’re balance develops and you get a little comfortable on your roller skis, but for sure I would not want to be a beginner going down that large hill.”
At the development camp on Thursday, about 50 biathletes were involved and the shooting range was a busy place to be with all lanes occupied.
“I think this is going to make biathlon way more popular,” said Dean. “I hope we continue to hold some major (roller ski) events and trials here, I definitely think it’s possible.”
Emma Lunder retired from the World Cup circuit this year after 16 years as a full-time biathlete competing for Canada. Now 33, she grew up in Vernon and attended a summer training camp at Otway in 2010 but it was nothing like it is now.
“The roller ski track is amazing,” said Lunder. “I think having some good uphills and downhills is something the tracks in North America don’t really have and it’s such good practice for the winter.
“Wide fresh pavement is a biathlete’s dream.”
Ntala Quintilio (nee Skinner) competed in two Olympics in biathlon for the United States in Lillehammer (1994) and Nagano (1998), and is now Biathlon Alberta executive director, overseeing 18 high-performance athletes who made the trip to Prince George this week. Otway is one only three paved Nordic facilities in Western Canada and Quintilio says the Caledonia club did it right.
“It’s world-class, it’s really nice to have such a beautiful place to come and train, there aren’t very many facilities like this,” said Quintilio. “It’s really critical for the development of sport-specific excellence in the sport, you need to be able to roller ski to co e in and do the sport-specific training.
“We’re here because we love training with BC and we want to develop the cultural relationship these athletes have together. They all become one big community when they work together like this. We’re trying to raise their level of competition by using each other’s camaraderie to build on that.”
Quintilio says there’s still a need to make Canadians aware of what biathlon is, and having a year-round facility will almost certainly help Prince George recruit more ski racers and biathletes. Biathlon was strictly men-only as an Olympic sport until 1992 in Albertville. The sport’s prominence with women has increased exponentially since then but Canadians and Americans still face an uphill battle competing at the highest levels against Europeans.
“It’s changed substantially for gender equity from that perspective, but I still think that a lot of people don’t know how much work and dedication it takes to get good at this sport,” said Quntilio. “In general, North Americans are in their late-20s or early 30s before they have the competitiveness that Europeans have in their early-to-mid-20s. (North Americans) compete against nations that have a budget that doesn’t have to travel to Europe, so if you take the national team budget, around $800,000, and $100,000 of that is towards travel, that’s significant. You could be using that towards developing athletes.”
Lunder and her fiancée Christian Gow, who also retired from the World Cup team, know Canadians have to pay to play and the perpetual lack of national team funding weighed in their decisions to step away from the sport as athletes.
“Funding has always been a bit of an issue with biathlon in Canada,” said Lunder, now a full-time community rehabilitation/disability studies student at the University of Calgary
“It’s such an awesome sport but it’s hard to do if you don’t have the financial means and for sure we’ve seen a lot of athletes over the years have to stop for that reason, which is too bad, especially when they have that potential.
“Honestly for me, I’ve been doing it for so long it was time for me to move on to something else.”
The races this weekend start at 9:30 a.m. both days.
Many of the biathletes training in Prince George this week will be back March 5-8, 2026 when the Caledonia club hosts the Western Canadian championships. 76
