Dare to Dream

For the past 10 years or so, since I began skiing, it has been my dream to represent Canada in skiing on the World stage at the Winter Olympics. But since then I have learned many things, one of the most significant lessons being that nothing like that happens overnight, so it's pretty important to figure out the path that you need to take in order to achieve your desired end result. So for me, about 2 years ago, after making the Academy team, I decided that my first step towards my goal of international competition would be to make the Canadian Junior National Team. So last season I made that my goal, and despite how far-fetched it may have seemed at times, I made it happen. From there, the next step in my mind would be to qualify for World Junior Championships, so I decided that that would be my goal for this season, as it would be my last shot, being my last year as a Junior. And now, after an amazing week of racing in Thunder Bay ON, I am overwhelmingly thrilled to say that I have achieved this goal.

While my preparation for these selection races may have started 10 years ago, my journey to Thunder Bay for Canada's World Junior Trials began last Monday morning. We arrived the Thunder Bay that afternoon and took the rest of the day to settle in to our hotel. The next two days were spent training and testing skis for the first race, which for me was a 20km pursuit on Thursday.

Thursday brought with it some very cold temperatures, and some very exciting racing. The pursuit was a mass start race, so for my category, Junior Male, there were about 60 skiers all desperately trying to get to the front of the pack. So, like in many mass start races, not even 30 seconds into the race, well over half of the field, including myself and my two teammates, found ourselves crashed into the snow in a huge mangled pile of skis, poles and people. Lucky for me, I managed to not break any of my equipment, so after everyone had finished falling on and around me, I was able to get up and go again. On the downside, for me anyway, some of the other big name contenders in the race were not involved in the crash, so that meant I had a lot of catching up to do. I managed to make my way back up the ranks over the next 10km of classic skiing, and ended up coming into the exchange zone in 7th place, 30 seconds behind the lead group. From there I had an amazing skate leg, picking off 5th and 6th early and then finally catching 2nd and 3rd on the second last big climb. I decided to stay with them for a minute or so to catch my breath a bit before attacking as hard as I could on the final climb. To my surprise, I had enough left in the tank to get a lead on the 3 guys behind me, and I held on to finish 2nd place.

Two days later was the classic sprint day, which in my mind was my best shot at qualifying for World Juniors. Sadly, my body did not cooperate with that thought. I felt very heavy and sluggish out there in my qualifier, and my quarterfinal felt even worse. So I ended that day finishing as the 21st Junior, and tremendously disappointed. That night I did everything I could to forget about that day and look on to the following, which was Sunday's 15km skate interval start race, the final race of the weekend.

Going into this race, I knew that I needed to finish in the top 5 if I wanted a chance at getting a spot on the World Junior Team. After my first lap of 5km, I was feeling pretty good, though I was very temporarily disheartened when Andy Shields, the top Junior of the day, caught me. Andy had started 30 seconds behind me, so since we were only 1/3 of the way through the race and he had caught me, I figured he was having a pretty good day. Like you should always do when in that situation, I did everything I could to match his speed and stay with him, and it worked. We skied the next 10km together, pushing each other as much as we could, until the final climb, when I attacked and managed to open up a small, 3 or 4 meter gap. After a very anxious 40 minutes or so of waiting for the results to be posted, they finally came out and showed that Andy had won, and I had tied for 3rd place. I was ecstatic.

It wasn't long after this that I had a pretty good idea that I had made the team, but it wasn't until yesterday afternoon that I received official confirmation that I have been selected to represent Canada at the 2011 World Junior Championships in Otepaa, Estonia later this month! This means that I will be leaving from Toronto next Sunday, Jan. 16th and flying to Helsinki, Finland, where I will spend about a week training. We will then travel to Estonia for the races, and then return to Canada on Feb. 1st.

On a slightly smaller scale, though still very exciting for me, my performance in the races this past weekend have also qualified me for a spot on the 2011 Canada Winter Games Ontario team. This means that I will be travelling to Halifax around mid-February for my chance to represent Ontario at the Canada Winter Games.

So, all in all, I'd say yesterday may have been the best day of my life haha!! I am now back in Penetang for the week before meeting up with the rest of the Canadian Team in Toronto on Sunday.

Here are some relevant links in you are interested:

Pursuit Results: http://www.zone4.ca/results.asp?id=3331

Sprint Results: http://www.zone4.ca/results.asp?id=3343

Skate Interval Start Results: http://www.zone4.ca/results.asp?id=3344

Junior and U23 Athletes representing Canada at Worlds: http://cccski.com/main.asp?cmd=doc&ID=7601&lan=0

Ontario's Canada Winter Games team: http://xco.org/