Here are some of the pics from the Western Canadian Biahtlon Championships in Hinton from last weekend.

We had our AWG Juvenile team competing - Christopher Lirette, Colton Glaicar, Kim Ring and Angeline Magtibay. Emil Klaushagen skiied in the Open Rec division. Joseph Lirette is back on skis and soon be able to race soon - his return from the knee injury he suffered will be the AWG in two weeks (hopefully).

The kids had terrific results - great ski times and very solid shooting! The Saturday race was an individual race and the results are online at

http://www.biathlon.ca/documents/WesternChamps_IND.pdf

The Sprint results do not seem to be online as of yet - the highlight would have to be Angeline capturing gold in the Junior Girls division (Wow!)  Kim had a tough shoot and finished 10th in the same division. Christopher had a solid race and finished 5th in a field of 22 competitors; unfortunately, Colton was a DNS as he had a bout of the stomach flu. Emil was the only competitor in the Rec division and won the gold....he skiied competitively with the Senior boys in Sunday's race.

On the return trip, we stopped in Grande Prairie for an hour to pre-ski the routes for the AWG games in two weeks time. We are hopefult that the strong skiing and shooting will carry over to the Games!   Afterwards, the four junior biathletes leave directly from GP and travel to Quebec where they will represent the Northern Region in the Cadet National Championships during the third week in March. Go CCKA Go!

As you can tell, conditions were warm and everyone enjoyed the trip. A 1:30 Am return on Sunday night made for a long school day on Monday - but it was a very successful trip for the biathletes from Hay River!

Chuck