One of the spotters behind the Otway Nordic Centre shooting range who knows Canmore biathlete Luke Hulshof’s reputation for knocking down biathlon targets in the blink on an eye saw what was happening as the Alberta Biathlon team member pulled into the range holding a slim lead second ahead of two other challengers.
“Watch out for Luke, here he goes,” said the man as the three shooters got set to start their first standing bout.
Hulshof proved that prediction was right on the money.
He didn’t hang around long for either of his standing shooting sessions in Sunday’s junior men’s pursuit at the Biathlon Canada world championship trials. It took Hulshof all of 52 seconds to nail all five targets in his first bout and get back on the course and he zipped through his inal shooting in just 54 seconds.
To the surprise of nobody watching the smooth operator pulling the trigger, "Machine Gun" Hulshof breezed to the finish all alone in front in that last lap, winning in 29:21.7.
“I started off poorly with four misses in the first two bouts and I knew I had to hit them to come back and luckily I did,” said the 18-year-old Hulshof. “The club I grew up with (Foothills Nordic), we do a lot of fast shooting and a lot of the boys I’m racing are from that club. We always like to race each other and that helped a lot.”
Justin Konoff of Calgary’s Foothills Nordic Ski Club won silver (30:48.0) and Malcolm McCulloch of Highland Trailblazers (Duntroon, Ont.) locked up the bronze (30:48.0).
Konoff, the silver medalist in Saturday’s sprint, left the start gate three seconds behind Hulshof, the sprint winner.
Ethan Hawes, of the host Caledonia Nordic Ski Club, who finished 24th in Saturday’s sprint, gained 11 positions in the youth pursuit and ended up 13th (34:24.8) in the field of 27. In other Caledonia results, Nathanael Dean was 15th (35:08.2), Oscar Nelson was 23rd (38:54.9) and David Hillhouse ended up 26th (45:34.2).
The senior men’s and junior men’s pursuit winners both hail from Chelsea, Que. Jean-Nicolas de Broeck, 20, put down the hammer and got to finish in 35:32.5, 52 seconds ahead of 23-year-old World Cup veteran Zachary Connelly.
Daniel Gilfillan of Vancouver Island Biathlon Club claimed bronze (37:35.3).
Connelly was leading until his last bout when he had three misses, which made his race 450 metres longer. While he made his way into the penalty loops, de Broeck had nobody in front of him and the finish line.
De Broeck’s only miss came on the first standing bout and he ended up shooting 19-for-20.
“I saw Zach missed three and I decided to hit all the targets and did it pretty quickly, I think it’s a personal best for me for a 20-shot race,” said de Broeck, 19, who won bronze in the sprint.
“It’s my first time out here and I’m trying to qualify for world’s for the fourth time in a row and it’s looking good so far. You get your ass kicked the first time, but it really develops you as an athlete. Without that it’s real difficult to see the calibre that’s out there in Europe. The more you go, the more you get used to it.”
Connelly says there’s a lot he can learn from de Broeck when it comes to rapid-fire shooting.
“The young guy is so good in the range, he’s got it down,” said Connelly. “Today we got to ski together a little bit and I told him to hop in and work with me on a few hills and I started pulling away on the flat, being a bit older. I had a blast.”
Connelly, who raced World Cup events last season, had COVID in 2022 when Prince George hosted the biathlon national championships. This is his first time racing the Otway course.
“It’s very different from the European courses, which have a lot more steep hills,” he said. “But here it’s a very sustained effort which I think is really good for these kids to work on because it helps you work on pacing and on an entire race strategy, not just gunning it up the hill, getting to the top and dying down the hill, then gunning it again. It’s a great learning opportunity for a lot of people.”
Liam Simons of Prince George, who won silver in the sprint, got off to a tough start in the pursuit when he missed four targets in his first prone bout and that foiled his return to the medal podium. He did recover with only three more misses in his next 15 shots, but ended up well off the medal pace in fifth place (39:37.6).
His Caledonia clubmate, Liam Sinclair, finished 18th (43:28.2). He shot 16-for-20.
Tuesday’s men’s mass start race begins at 10 a.m., followed by the women’s race at 1 p.m.
