Visiting "The Thunder"

The CVTC team is just back from a week-long visit to the fabled "Frozen Thunder" in Canmore, Alberta.  The Canmore Nordic Centre Provincial Park started the snow storage project in 2009 and it has grown annually since.  This year was the CVTC's first training camp to Frozen Thunder and they enjoyed a week of training on the 2.5 km loop.

Frozen Thunder is a huge benefit to skiers from across Canada as it provides early season training at a "reasonable" elevation, paired with the comfort of sleeping in a hotel or at home.  This is in contrast to the summertime glacier training.  The other major benefit is that the snow is guaranteed, so coaches can plan and budget for the visit to Canmore.  Chasing snow across the country in the early season has been stressful and frustrating in years past.

As the reputation of Frozen Thunder has grown, so too have the number of visitors.  This year top skiers from the USA, Canada and a few from Europe and further afield came to Canmore for the season-opening sprint race and a week, or two (or more) of training.

The CVTC boys participated in the sprint race on Thursday, October 24, 2013.  The race was limited to 16 qualifiers in the men's and women's fields (as opposed to the usual 30) due to the narrow tracks and grooming limitations.  The race was also categorized as "open" so there were no junior or U23 rankings.

Parallelling the success of their training and testing to this point, the team performed very well.  The top results was from Sebastian Dandurand who finished 21st, narrowly missing the heats.  "We were very happy with how well Sebastian performed in the qualifer.  The rest of the team, especially our juniors, had breakout results as well," noted Chris Manhard.

Other results included:
21 - Sebastian Dandurand
29 - Martin Schrama
30 - Colin Foley
33 - Sam Morris
34 - Paul Dupuis
43 - Geoffrey Richards
49- Andrew Avis
50 - Ben Osorio
52 - Liam Patterson

Full Results: http://zone4.ca/results.asp?ID=6078&cat=12