Success at Sovereign

The Callaghan Valley Training Centre Athletes started to find their groove in the second set of races this season at Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre in Vernon, BC on December 8 and 9, 2012.

The successful weekend included one silver and three bronze medals and plenty of top-10 finishes.  Most importantly, the athletes could feel a difference, an improvement, in their performances from Canmore and the Yukon training camps.

Saturday's event was a 15 km classic mass start.  The top finishers were on Sweden's World Cup team; they were in BC to prepare for the upcoming World Cup events in Canmore, AB.  CVTC's top finishers were Geoffrey Richards (10th overall and 3rd U23) and Colin Ferrie (22nd overall and 2nd Junior).  Full results are available at: http://zone4.ca/results.asp?ID=5164&cat=all

The 15 km free technique event on Sunday was more challenging with fresh snow and some freezing rain.  A number of top Canadian biathletes joined the event to compensate for a slow start to the biathlon season in North America, which results in some new names at the top of the leaderboards.  CVTC athletes again performed well, collecting a bronze medal in U23 (Geoffrey Richards, 16th overall) and a bronze in Junior (Colin Ferrie, 20th overall).  Full results are available at: http://zone4.ca/results.asp?ID=5161&cat=all.

Season Totals:
Junior Silver Medals: 2
Junior Bronze Medals: 1
U23 Silver Medals: 1
U23 Bronze Medals: 2

The National Development Centre - Callaghan Valley (CVTC) is a high-performance training centre working within the framework of Cross Country Canada.   The Centre's mission is to produce successful skiers at the World Cup level, by providing a concentration of world-class training facilities, coaching and sport science resources for cross-country ski athletes.  For more information on CVTC, please visit www.cvtc.ca.