15th and 20th at World Junior Championships

Monday was the final day of the World Junior Championships, we finished off the week with the team relay which is always lots of fun.
Overall it was a great week of racing in the rain which made for tricky skiing conditions. Skiing in completely saturated snow was something new to me and proved very difficult at times but it is something I will have to get used to if I want to continue racing in Europe in the future.

My best race of the week was the 5km classic on Sunday where I placed 15th only 7 seconds from the top 10! I was really happy to have a top 15 result which was one of my goals coming into the championships.
The skate sprint at the start of the week was also a good race for me. I qualified 27th and was able to move up to 20th place in the heats. This being the first time I qualified for the heats in my 3 times at World Juniors, it was great to race head to head with the other nations. I was very proud to qualify alongside two of my teammates. This was first time in many years that Canada has had 3 women move past the qualifiers to the heats!

I also raced the 10km skiathlon where I placed 29th. This was a difficult race for me as 2 feet of wet snow had fallen the night before the race. I was still 2nd Canadian and North American on the day just squeaking into the top 30.

Now that World juniors are over we have been training in Austria where we raced an Austrian cup today. The race was a 7.5km skate in Ramsau. I placed 5th ( 2nd junior behind my Canadian teammate Fred). We are in Austria for three more days before we fly to Latvia to race Latvian Nationals and two Scandinavian Cups.

I have had an amazing time in Europe so far with lots of great racing experience!
Thank you so much to my sponsors Skookum Asphalt, Capital Helicopters, Alkan Air and Icycle Sports, your support has allowed me stay in Europe for the coming races!!

Enjoy the photos!!!!!!
Dahria