The Caledonia Nordic Ski Club has announced that three massive events will be coming to Prince George in the next year and a half:
- The 2023 Under 23 Nordiq Canada Selection Trials and Nordiq cup
- The 2024 International Ski Federation (FIS) Para Biathlon World Championships
- The 2024 FIS Para Nordic World Cup
“Today, we are so honoured to be awarded these three events” said Kevin Pettersen, the Club’s Director of Competitions. “These big events, they bring everyone together. Like when we had the Canada Winter Games, the BC Summer Games, and when we had the 2019 World Para Nordic Skiing Championships here last time.”
This will be the second time that the club has hosted the Para Nordic World Cup.
The U-23 Canadian Selection Trails will see Canada’s best Junior skiers congregate in Prince George in the final test to crack Team Canada’s roster for the World Junior U23 Nordic Ski Championships that will be hosted in Whistler.
This announcement was made by Kate Boyd, the High Performance Director, Para for Nordic Canada.
“I can personally attest to the event experience this community puts on, having been a part of the world class event delivered by Caledonia Nordic Ski Club, the City of Prince George and the passionate army of volunteers when Prince George hosted the 2019 Para Nordic World Championships” she said. “Although I definitely admit it was the chilliest World Champs I have been part of, it was also certainly one of the best ever.”
The second two announcements were made, via video, by Johan Eliasch, the FIS President.
“Following a very successful event in 2019, the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club and the City of Prince George, have embarked on another ambitious journey to welcome the world back to Prince George in 2024,” he said. “In addition, 2024 is also the 100th anniversary of FIS, so we look forward to including these World Championships and World Cup Finals as being part of celebrating this historical milestone.”
“We are so thankful to the FIS for giving us these opportunities” Pettersen said, after the announcements. “It has been our vision to host world events continually, we always look at these as then leading to the next event. We look at what we can do as a club and as a community to build those legacy pieces.”
One step the club has made towards being better equipped to host high profile, international events like the ones announced today was upgrading their snow machine well in advance.
“We have an event in middle December that we will use to test out our new expanded snow making system so that we are in good shape in January for hosting the event” said Pettersen.
“From 2019, we were planning on hosting an event in this kind of scope in the next five years. We didn’t wait until we were awarded the event, we kept the ball rolling with improving, upgrading, and expanding our snow making system, so that we didn’t have to wait until the last minute to be able to do things. So we are a year ahead of schedule.”
As well as the strengths the Ski Club has built up in preparation of events like this, Pettersen also said that the location of the club is a huge leg up over similar locations across Canada.
“Everything is so nice and close to the community, and the airport… It makes it very easy, logistically, for teams that come to events like this to get back and forth.”
He also hopes that a team of volunteers will take that easy trip back and forth, they are already assembling teams for both the 2023 and 2024 events.
Tourism PG has estimated that these three events will bring over $4.7 million into the city.
For more information on the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club, click here.
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