Aliah Turner sure picked the right time to qualify for her first Team Canada biathlon duty.
The 18-year-old Caledonia Nordic Ski Club member from Prince George made the cut the Canadian biathlon team heading to FISU World University Games in Torino, Italy, Jan. 13-23, and because it’s being staged in Italy, Turner will have her fan club waiting for her.
“It means a lot, World University Games are every two years and to get to represent Canada on any stage is special to me, but particularly as a student-athlete, which I’ve been pretty much my whole life,” said Turner.
“It means a lot to me to get to compete in biathlon at such a high level but also get a post-secondary education at the same time, which I don’t take for granted. It’s something really cool and people might get to experience it maybe once or twice in they’re lucky and I’m just grateful to be part of the team.”
It just so happens that region of northern Italy is where her grandfather, Zefferino Caron, was born and raised before he came to Canada. For Turner, that means a welcoming committee with her extended family will be there at the races to cheer her on.
“Obviously with an Italian family, there’s plenty of them, and I’ll get to see them,” said Turner, who last visited her Italian roots when she was four. “My grandfather was the only one who left Italy so there’s an exponential number, for sure. Hopefully we’ll get them rooting for me and the whole team.”
Turner last raced in Prince George nearly three years ago when the city hosted the Biathlon Canada national championships in March 2022. This time around there’s more at stake. If she emerges from a field of 52 youth women as one of the top four after Tuesday’s final race she will qualify to go to Idre Fjall, Sweden, Jan. 26-Feb. 5, for the IBU Youth/Junior World Championships.This is her last year racing in the youth age category.
“Being from PG we have such amazing venues and I’m really happy I get to share it with my team and the rest of the biathlon community, these are obviously heavy-hitting races for everyone pretty much,” she said. “This is kind of the peak of the season and PG is the perfect place, we have some of the facilities in Canada. I get to stay at home and stay even longer post-Christmas and over the holidays, which I love.
“I think it will be very fun racing, difficult and competitive and I’ll need to perform at my highest. I’m definitely hitting it hard in January when it comes to high-level racing.”
Turner’s father is Pat Turner, a University Hospital of Northern BC emergency doctor, and her mom is Prince George surgeon Nadine Caron. Aliah, a first-year kinesiology student at the University of Calgary, has the brain power to follow their paths to medical school, if that’s what she decides.
She also has Olympic genes. Her dad was a gold medalist in men’s rowing eights at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Aliah knows where he keeps that medal and doesn’t mind getting it out to show to her friends if they ever ask to see it. She’s obviously benefited from having an in-house world-class athlete and a mom who was a varsity basketball player at Simon Fraser University from 1988-92. Nadine graduated top of her class in medical school and SFU named its academic athletic award after her.
Now on the verge of racing in her first international competition, the dream of making it to the Olympics and realizing her biggest athletic ambition is getting closer for Aliah.
“Definitely within the past year or so, having made the jump from my home club, and I’ve moved, in part to be in school, but mainly my main decision for Canmore/Calgary area was for biathlon,” she said. “I have some fun and exciting goals lined up for myself in the next season but down the road, definitely the Olympics.
“Next year I’ve definitely got my sights on doing some tours in pre-Christmas.”
Turner commutes from Canmore, where she trains with the Biathlon Alberta Training Centre team, at least three times a week to the U of C campus for lectures and labs. She purposely kept her race schedule on the lighter side so she wouldn’t have to miss too many classes in her first year of postsecondary studies.
Liam Simons of Prince George also made the cut for the University Games team and he and Turner will be in action this weekend at Otway Nordic Centre when the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club hosts the Biathlon Canada Youth/Junior World Championship trials on their home courses at Otway Nordic Centre.
Simons, a UBC-Okanagan student, now trains near Vernon with the Sovereign Lake Nordic Ski Club. Turner‘s racing background is similar to that of Simons and she looks forward to sharing her Italian experience with him.
“I’ve trained intermittently with Liam since the beginning of my biathlon career and honestly he’s a really great person to travel with - I got to go to Canada Games with him (in 2023 in Prince Edward Island) as well,” said Turner. “Now we’re going to the FISU event and we’re going to have a really great time and we’re happy to represent PG and Caledonia as well as our respective club teams.”
They each will have five or six races at University Games.
Allie Dickson of Burns Lake is one of the Team Canada coaches.
The world trials start Saturday at 10 a.m. with the women's sprints, followed by the men's sprints at 1 p.m. Pursuits are scheduled for Sunday and 10 a.m. (women) and 1 p.m. (men) and a mass start race is set for Tuesday.
