Cross-Country Skiing

In 1973, Participaction Canada ran a series of advertisements depicting how a 60-year-old Swede was fitter than a 30-year-old Canadian. Fitness was not a buzzword yet with most Canadians, but much of that has changed in 30 years. Cross-country skiing has become one of the mainstream fitness and sport activities among Canadians, with elite athletes leading the way.

Who can forget the Norwegian cross-country coach, Bjomar Hakensmoen, handing a pole from the sidelines to Goldenıs Sara Renner at the Turin Olympics, when a competitor inadvertently broke Saraıs pole during a race? Sara and Beckie Scott went on to win a silver medal in the team sprint competition. Canmoreıs Chandra Crawford won the gold medal in the 1.1 km sprint. Beckie was also a gold medal winner in the Salt Lake City Olympics, and she competed in the Nagano Olympics, making her the only Canadian cross-country skier to participate in three Olympic Winter Games.

The major competitions in cross-country skiing are the Winter Olympics, the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, and the FIS World Cup events, including the 50km Holmenhollen in Norway, won by Canadian Pierre Harvey in 1988, the only Canadian to ever win any event at that prestigious competition, a showcase for the worldıs fastest cross-country skiers. In fact, cross-country skiing goes back to prehistoric times. Drawings of skiers are found on the walls of caves and on rocks in Europe, dating back 5,000 years and more, showing the ancients using crude skis to move from place to place or to hunt.

This form of skiing has been used by explorers by means of transport, and all Nordic armies have ski-trained infantry for winter operations. Skis gave important mobility to the Finnish army in Winter Warm allowing small groups of Finns to hold off large armies of Russians. In the East Kootenays, cross-country skiing has become a major winter activity. Each community has cross-country trails, used regularly during the winter months by a variety of local enthusiasts, many of who will do a circuit after a hard day at work, an ideal way to shake off the effects of dark winter days. The Kimberley Nordic Centre has many kilometers of trails, double tracked, with easy trails for beginners and challenging trails for advanced competitors, sets of lights enabling skiers to continue after dark.

The growing number of spectators who line the trails to watch supremely fit athletes race against the clock supports evidence for the popularity of modern competitive cross-country skiing. Eighty boys and girls (ages 13-14) will compete at the Kimberley Nordic Centre, accompanied by 16 coaches and 9 officials. Future Olympians may emerge from these young competitors.

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