The 2021-22 season has been a bit of a torture test for Canadian Olympic team biathlete Emily Dickson.
It started in November when she was told she wouldn’t be going to Europe to compete in either the Word Cup or IBU Cup circuits for the season’s first trimester. Two days of sub-par racing for Dickson at the national team trials at Canmore Nordic Centre left the 24-year-old from Burns Lake ninth in the rankings and only the top eight women advanced to the two Canadian squads.
So for the next six weeks, while her friends and teammates traveled Europe to race against the world’s best biathletes, Dickson remained in Canmore with nothing to do but train. Having already experienced the thrill of racing World Cups in 2020 before the season was suddenly cut short by the pandemic, to have that status taken away, coming on the heels of an entire year lost to injury, was a devastating blow.
But then came the call, in the second week of December, after World Cup racer Nadia Moser broke her leg in a tobogganing accident. Biathlon Canada needed Dickson to fly to Europe to take a spot on the IBU Cup team and before she could shake off the jet lag she was in the start gate at Obertilliach, Austria.
She finished 63rd in the individual event, Dec. 16, and two days later placed 33rd in the sprint. Dickson then teamed up with Matthew Strum to finish seventh in the single mixed relay, which helped open the door for her back into the World Cup scene.
Her first race back, in Oberhof, Germany, Dickson was the only one of four Canadians to crack the top-60 in the sprint, hitting nine of 10 targets to finish 60th. The following week in Ruhpolding, Germany, she had to fight off the effects of COVID booster vaccine, combined with a meal that set off her gluten allergy, which left her drained, and her results were a disappointment. But her hot shooting resumed the following week in Antholz-Anterselva, Italy, where Dickson raced the third leg of the women’s team relay and went penalty-free to help Canada (Sarah Beaudry of Prince George, Emma Lunder of Vernon, Megan Bankes of Calgary) finish a season-best 12th. By then, Dickson had already secured her Olympic team spot, an opportunity that came close to slipping away.
“It’s still just setting in for me, it’s been a really long journey to get here,” said Dickson. “You don’t get to tick a goal like this off very often. It’s been a goal of mine for about a decade-and-a-half now. I’ve been doing the sport for 16 years and for it to be reality now, almost, it’s super exciting.
“It’s been an absolute roller coaster this season. I’m happy to be on a high point right now but there was definitely a lot of lower points earlier on. I knew how important the trials races in November were to making the Olympic team and when I had some rough races and things didn’t pan out the way I’d expected them too, I was a little bit worried. I knew making the Olympic team was still possible because I knew the cut-off for the team nominations didn’t happen until the second week of January. To be able to have this really big comeback and race on World Cup a little bit and get a feel for it again was great.”
The Canadian women were just 2:09 off the winning pace in the relay in Antholz and that race, combined with the fifth-place result of men’s team (Scott and Christian Gow of Canmore, Adam Runnalls of Calgary, Jules Brunotte of Sherbrooke, Que.) was a confidence-builder for the Canadians.
“I wish I’d had a bit more on skis to give, but with the way Rupholding went, I was really fighting back to re-energize and I felt pretty drained by the time I got to that relay and I did as best as I could,” said Dickson. “We laid down a pretty solid relay and I’m proud of that and I’m really excited for Beijing. Hopefully that can be the time where things really come together for us.”
Dickson stayed in Antholz with the rest of the Canadian team for a week of high-altitude training before she flew to China from Milan on Saturday. To minimize the risk of a COVID infection they’ve been limiting any contact outside of the athlete bubble as much as possible.
“We’re pretty locked down right now, the whole season has kind of been like that but we’ve really locked down in the last couple weeks since the team was named, just because any positive test right now is a big problem. Everyone is being cautious.”
In the event one of the Canadian biathletes is unable to compete for any reason, alternates Benita Peiffer of Whistler and Trevor Kiers of Sprucedale, Ont., are on standby, ready to travel to Beijing on short notice. Beaudry was an alternate in 2018 at the Olympics in PyeongChang when Megan Tandy of Prince George got sick after the first race and was already training with the team when she was called into service. This year, to minimize the numbers in the athlete village during the Games, alternates are not allowed to be there.
Dickson’s introduction to a large-scale multi-sport games came in 2015 when she represented B.C. at the Canada Winter Games in Prince George. Dickson won medals in all four events, capturing gold in the pursuit and women’s team relay silver in the sprint and bronze in the individual race.
In September 2016, Dickson was diagnosed with celiac disease and it took her a year or two to rid her body of gluten, which robbed her of her strength and endurance and made her feel chronically fatigued. She started racing the IBU Cup circuit in 2016 and has had 18 World Cup starts since her debut on the senior circuit in 2020. She crashed during a national team training session on roller skis in September 2020 resulted in a concussion that wiped out her entire race season, but that paled in comparison to the anguish she felt after the national team trials this season.
“When you’re injured you can kind of accept it, but those trials races were really tough on me because I knew I was fit and knew I was capable,” she said. “I was not relaxed enough, I wanted it too bad in those races and was too tense and to have those races go just poorly enough at I missed out on the tour early in the season was a tough pill to swallow. But it’s all about learning from those setbacks and I feel like it’s really fueled my fire for this season. Hopefully it’s only up from here.”
Dickson has been working with Rachel Koroscil of Team Trail Sports Elite (formerly Team Rad), the team she was part of before she joined the national program. Koroscil also trains Beaudry.
Dickson is the latest biathlete from north central B.C. to join the Olympic family. That started in 1998 when Tuppy Hoehn (nee Collard) of Vanderhoof made the team for Winter Olympics in Nagano. Tandy was a three-time Olympian who competed in Vancouver-Whistler in 2010, Sochi, Russia in 2014 and PyeongChang in 2018. In 1992 in Albertville, France, Tony Fiala of 100 Mile House competed in three events for Canada, helping the men's team to a 10th-place result in the relay.
“It’s definitely pretty cool, it’s the top tier,” said Dickson. “So to be included in that, it’s surreal.
”Canada Games was a good learning experience and it gave me some idea what to expect but it’s going to be Canada Games on a whole other scale and I’m really excited to see what it’s all about.”
Dickson is the first Olympian from Burns Lake since cross-country skier Esther Miller (now Grondalen), a two-time Olympian who competed at the Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980 (33rd in 10 km and eighth in 4 X 5 km in relay) and Innsbruck, Austria in 1976 (34th in the 5 km).
The first biathlon race in Beijing is the mixed relay on Saturday (1 a.m. PT). Canada has yet to name the two women and two men for that race. Dickson will be entered in the 15-kilometre individual race on Monday (1 a.m. PT) and the 7.5 km sprint on Friday, Feb. 11 (1 a.m. PT). If she makes the top-60 cut she will qualify for the pursuit on Wednesday ( 1 a.m. PT) and is scheduled to compete in the 4 X 6 km relay on Tuesday, Feb. 15 (Monday, Feb. 14, 11:45 a.m. PT).
The biathletes are staying in the mountain village, 220 kilometres from Beijing, where they will share the slopes with cross-country skiers, snowboarders and ski cross racers. Dickson knows snowboard cross racer Meryeta O’Dine of Prince George, named to her second consecutive Olympic team, and was looking forward to connecting with her and possibly watching the women’s snowboard cross individual event on Tuesday (10:30 p.m. PT).
