BC Athletes come home proud from Collingwood K2 National Championships

BC’s athletes went into the 2010 K2 National Championships with the knowledge that BC had finished third overall last year, 431 points behind Ontario. Based upon entry quota alone, we knew that it would be extraordinarily difficult to beat either Ontario or returning K2 champions Quebec in the points race, as their entry was larger than ours and anyone in the top 30 in any race contributes to the points calculation for the event.

After a superb performance from the team in the SG on Monday, which ended with Emma King in second spot and Alix Wells in fourth for the girls, and Martin Grasic taking the podium with a first place win for the boys, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that we were in second place overall and had taken an early lead on the Quebec team. Having run the SG portion of the Super Combined race that same day, we showed promise for maintaining that lead if the SL races went smoothly enough.

The next morning both the boys and girls held their edges cleanly in the soft Osler Bluff snow and increased their lead on the previous year’s champions by a considerable margin. Although BC saw no podiums in the Super Combined, there were four athletes from BC in the top ten for each gender, more than any other single province had achieved.

Wednesday saw only the girls competing, with the GS race at Georgian Peaks. The race was owned by BC’s own Alix Wells who posted the fastest Canadian time on each of the two runs, handing local favorite Roni Remme her only trip away from the top of the girls podium for the entire week. Emma King also made the top ten with a solid performance landing her in fourth place.

Thursday didn’t shape up quite so golden for the BC boy’s, however three of them packed their way into the top ten including a fourth place finish from the Vernon Ski Club’s Alex Kreutz. A quick tally of the points that evening showed that BC had once again increased our foothold on second place, with a total of 180 points separating us at this point from Quebec. Slalom is a strong discipline for the QC team however, so we knew that Friday would be the real contest as both the boys and girls would be competing in the slalom in our final destination at Craigleith.

The weather got COLD on Friday with rock hard snow and tempatures of -7c. The girls hit the podium with Alix Wells of Prince George in third position, and two of her team mates also in the top ten behind her including Jamie Honsberger in fourth. The boys were not as lucky, however they had two top-ten finishes by Blake Ramsden and Peter Behncke in sixth and seventh positions.

So where were we overall? Team BC was in second place, well behind Ontario but also pretty strongly ahead of Quebec. Not to say that being ahead of the previous year’s champions, who had more athletes attending than we did isn’t good enough, what I think was the most showing proof of why BC had a right to come home proud from these K2 Championships was the overall podiums. With two girls and one boy on the overall podium, BC owned half of the overall podium spots. After only having one of those podium positions last year, this shows the dedication to improvement in our province by the coaches, clubs and most importantly the athletes representing our province.