Back on familiar ground
Otway trails stir up medal memories for Canadian skiers
Brittany Hudak was good as gold the last time she raced at Otway Nordic Centre. That was four years ago at the 2015 Canada Winter Games and Hudak had a dominant week on the slopes. She won all three of her cross-country ski races and went on to make Canada Games history as the firstever para athlete to compete in the able-bodied team relay, helping Saskatchewan to an eighth-place result.
Three years later at the 2018 Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Hudak shared in a record 16-medal haul for the Canada para nordic team, winning bronze in the 12.5-kilometre biathlon.
Hudak is part of an 11-athlete Canadian team gearing up for the nine-day World Para Nordic Championships at Otway and she’s hoping the positive vibe that comes with racing in Canada will pay off in podium results. Her first race, the mid-distance 10 km standing biathlon, starts Saturday at 12:30 p.m.
“It feels like home and it feels familiar, which is nice – being a para athlete in an able-bodied relay here was pretty cool,” said Hudak, a 25-year-old native of Prince Albert, Sask. “Some of us have raced here before and always just competing on home soil is an advantage because we don’t have to travel far to get here.
“The courses are so similar to Canada Winter Games and we know what we have to do, so that’s an advantage there.”
Hudak lives and trains in Canmore, Alta., home of the senior national team she’s been part of for five years. She was born with part of her left arm missing and was into jazz dancing, track and field, basketball and badminton when she met Colette Bourgonje, a sit-skier who competed in seven Paralympics and won Canada’s first medal at the 2010 Games in Vancouver-Whistler. Bourgonje suggested the 18-year-old Hudak try skiing, and the seed was sewn.
She’s now a two-time Paralympian with two world championships on her resume, coming off a pair of seventh-place biathlon finishes in the Para World Cup in December in Vuokatti, Finland, and was eighth in the cross-country sprint. She’s entered in both disciplines in the WPNC.
Emily Young (nee Weekes) tried to keep Hudak in focus during her Canada Games race and twice came up second-best, winning two silvers for B.C.
“She got the golds and I got the silvers – it’s fun to be back,” said Young, who makes her off-season home in Kelowna. “It’s nice to be close to home and we like the courses here, they’re challenging but familiar.”
Young, 28, won two Paralympic medals in Pyeongchang, both in cross-country – bronze in the 7.5 km event and she combined with sit-skier Colin Cameron of Sudbury, Ont., to win silver in the mixed relay. Young just missed the medal podium at the Para World Cup in Finland, placing fourth in the cross-country sprint.
Athletes from 19 countries have had to deal with frigid conditions for training this week at Otway. The temperature dipped down to -33 C overnight Wednesday but the forecast calls for Saturday (-13 C) and Sunday (-11 C) to be well within the -20 C cutoff.
Young grew up in North Vancouver but she’s developed a thick skin in her five years with the national team and isn’t going to let a bit of cold weather bother her. She’s as tough as they come as one of Canada’s medal threats in cross-country skiing and biathlon.
“It’s perfect, it’s winter and the sun is nice,” said Young.
Young was a competitive wrestler in her second year of university when she suffered an injury to her right elbow at a training camp in 2009. That led to nerve damage which keeps her arm bent at a 90-degree angle and a loss of feeling that extends to her fingers. Unable to continue wrestling she turned to Ironman triathlon and took up skiing five years ago.
Hudak, Young and Natalie Wilkie of Salmon Arm race each other in the standing categories of biathlon and cross-country.
Wilkie, 18, won Paralympic gold in the 7.5 km classic and bronze in the sprint and also reeled in silver in the mixed relay.
The Canadian team arrived Tuesday and Kyle Barber of Stirling, Ont., part of the NextGen development team, skied the Otway trails for the first time. Biathlon is his favourite discipline but the 27-year-old does better in the cross-country events in his first year competing internationally. He placed 18th in the World Cup sprint in Finland.
Barber skis in the standing category without using poles. Born with a condition called symbrachydactyly, which prevented formation of fingers on both hands, he started skiing 2 1/2 years ago when he responded to Paralympic talent search in Toronto.
Visually-impaired skier Brian McKeever, 44 (with guide Graham Nishikawa) and standing skier Mark Arendz, 28, are the household names on the Canadian team as perennial medal threats, with the 30-year-old Cameron also in that category, but the likes of Hudak, Young, Barber, Wilkie, Jesse Bachinsky (Kenora, Ont. – with guide Simon Lamarche of Victoria), Derek Zaplotinsky (Smokey Lake, Alta.), Yves Bourque (Bécancour, Que.), Ethan Hess (Pemberton) are the up-and-comers on the Canadian team who could pull off a surprise or two over the next two weeks.
“I think they’ll do just fine,” said head coach Robin McKeever. “All we worry about is racing to the best of our abilities and then whatever happens... we don’t control who else is there.
“We were (the best in the world) last year at the Paralympic Games but it’s a different year. Everybody’s training, everybody’s moving, everybody’s improving.”
Races are scheduled Saturday, Sunday and Monday, followed by a training day Tuesday. Competition resumes with races next Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.
Spectator viewing positions overlook the biathlon range and offer views of uphill and downhill sections of the course and Hudak says spectators are in for an eyeopening treat watching the best in the world compete for medals.
“You get to watch people with different abilities and how they ski with what they have, but also how good they ski,” Hudak said. “It’s not that some of us have a disability and it’s very evident. It’s very interesting to see the different disabilities but how well people still do without that extra pole or moving your legs.”
The courses are so similar to Canada Winter Games and we know what we have to do, so that’s an advantage there.
— Brittany Hudak