Three medals for B.C., two for Prince George.
And one happy coach.
As a late-winter blizzard approached Charlo, N.B., site of the Canadian biathlon championships, Team B.C. coach Allie Dickson of Prince George had plenty to celebrate with her athletes based on their sprint results on opening day at the five-day event.
Sarah Beaudry, 19, a Caledonia Nordic Ski Club member now based in Canmore, Alta., shot clean in her two rounds in the 7.5-kilometre junior women's sprint, while four misses on the range took Julia Ransom of Kelowna out of the hunt for gold.
Beaudry, a world junior bronze medalist two weekends ago in Maine, claimed her first nationals win of 2014, finishing in 26 minutes 38.1 seconds. That was 1:13.7 ahead of Ransom, the silver medalist, while Rose Marie Cote of Quebec won bronze, 3:38 off the pace.
In the six km senior girls race, a blustery day on the shooting range is all that kept Emily Dickson of Prince George from the gold medal. Dickson, 16, missed three targets in her prone round and two while standing, which left 32.4 seconds off the winning 23:25.3 pace of India McIsaac of Alberta. McIsaac had just one miss in her race, in the standing round. Bryn Robertson of Alberta was third.
"We're really excited, it was obviously a good day for Sarah, starting off nationals 10-for-10 [on the range]," said coach Allie Dickson, Emily's older sister. "Sarah's fighting off a cold right now and hasn't been at training for the last couple days. She was feeling it by the third lap today.
"Emily's upset she didn't hit a few more targets because she was only 25 seconds behind [McIsaac] and missed four more targets. When penalty loops take 25 seconds each, even one more hit would have had a big impact, but that's biathlon racing for you."
Fifteen-year-old Claire Lapointe of Prince George, a first-year senior girl, ended up sixth out of 28 in her category, 1:31.5 behind the winning time. Two of Lapointe's prone bullets missed their mark and she had just one miss while standing.
"We're really happy with how Claire did today, it's her second year at nationals but it's her first year at this category," said Allie Dickson
Matt Neumann of Prince George was fifth in the men's 21-and-older 10 km sprint, a category which included Sochi Olympians Scott Perras of Regina and Jean-Phillippe Le Guellec of Quebec. Perras had three missed standing targets and took advantage of Le Guellec's six missed targets to win in 31:31.9, 16 seconds ahead of Le Guellec's time of 31:47.9. Marc-Andre Bedard was third in 32:14.6. Neumann missed two in each shooting round and was 51.7 seconds out of gold-medal position and nine seconds away from bronze.
"It was windy, a real tough shooting day, everybody was going around the penalty area today," said Allie Dickson. "Le Guellec was a medal contender at the Olympics and when he has that many misses you know it's a tough day shooting."
In other Prince George results, Arthur Roots was eighth among 15 junior men, finishing with four misses, 3:41 behind gold-medalist Christian Gow of Alberta (32:24.7). Caledonia biathlete Bobby Kreitz, 15, in his first-ever nationals race, was 26th out of 32 in the senior boys six km event, completing the course in 25:35.7. Kreitz had eight misses on the range, dropping him 5:18 behind gold-medalist Teo Sanchez of Quebec, who won in 20:17.0.
Pursuit races are scheduled for today, but with 17 centimetres of new snow and high winds expected overnight, there's a good chance the races will be postponed until Friday.
"They're expecting a full-on East Coast blizzard," said coach Dickson.
