After seven years of training and competing with Canada’s best short-track speedskaters on national and international stages, a northern B.C. woman decided it was time for a change.
Alison Demarais has temporarily hanged up her blades to pursue other sporting opportunities via the RBC Training Ground, a nationwide talent search in hopes of finding potential future Olympians for various sports.
The Vanderhoof product has been chosen as one of 100 athletes across the country, the only one from B.C.’s north, to go to the first-ever national final for the third annual event.
Speaking candidly with PrinceGeorgeMatters today (Sept. 4), Demarais says she wasn’t entirely surprised at getting the call to Calgary given her strong athletic background.
“At the time of the qualifying event, I had just finished a season of speedskating, so I was training full time and knew I was in good shape physically and mentally,” she explained. “I knew I could make the final, but it’s always exciting to know that you actually have made it.”
RBC Training Ground put over 2,000 registered athletes to several types of fitness tests, including strength, power, speed, and endurance.
Demarais decided to try out and it appeared to be a right-place, right-time scenario as she didn’t attend the Prince George stop on Training Ground’s 35-city tour.
“It was actually in Victoria visiting my sister when they set it up in the gym at UVic,” she said, while also adding she strongly excelled in the vertical jump category considering her speedskating experience. “They had scouts or people from the national sport organizations that are watching the athletes and see who they would like to recruit. After one jump, the speedskating recruit comes up to me and asks, ‘What sport did you do?’ and I said ‘I was a speedskater,’ and she was like, ‘Yeah, go figure.’”
Demarais moved over the Rockies to Calgary when she graduated Nechako Valley Secondary School to start training more competitively with Speed Skating Canada.
The now 22-year-old has finished one season on the World Cup circuit and two seasons prior with Canada’s national development squad.
It donned on her that she needed to find a new path in life and consider what her future could be once she’s officially done with sport, so she signed up for kinesiology courses at the University of Calgary.
“I wasn’t loving it as much as normal. Like, I still love skating, but I had to move to Montreal if I wanted to continue with short-track because that’s the centre for skating in Canada, and it just wasn’t as much as a passion for me anymore. [...] I spent the summer working two jobs in Vanderhoof, so I’m less fit and physically conditioned then what I was in the past four years, but I still feel very confident in my ability, so I’m expecting to go and do what I do. I know how to push myself.”
Before she settles down, she hopes to represent Vanderhoof on the big stage for as long as she can, whether it be long-track speedskating or rugby, another interest of hers.
“I don’t even know how to describe the feeling. I’m so proud of the country and especially of being from a small town in northern rural B.C. because I feel like it's not an experience a lot of athletes can connect with. But, because I’m from that community, I feel very connected with the entire community. I’m very proud of being Canadian and especially because we have a really good international reputation.”
The national final for the 2019 RBC Training Ground is in 10 days, Sept. 14.
If Demarais’ results are to the liking of scouts and recruiters, she could be selected as an RBC 'Future Olympians' and potentially receive funding and resources to pursue an Olympic dream.
