Two Squamish-based Olympians say they're ready to hit their respective tracks in the coming week after battling illnesses.
Quest University student Sam Edney of Calgary has had a standout season on the luge World Cup circuit, including a career-best fifth-place finish and a recent seventh-place result on the 2006 Olympic track.
In a luge team press conference Tuesday, Edney said he'll try not to get ahead of himself and stick to his routine in his second Olympics, even though his results this season have given him confidence.
"I can be there, I can be in that top group, but I have to do everything I've been doing," Edney said.
He missed the first day of the Canadian team's training on the Whistler track this week due to a bout with a stomach bug that struck on the day he moved into the athletes village, but is feeling much better and had two sessions on Monday to enjoy the Olympic ice.
"You really get that [Olympic] feel when you go down," Edney said.
He's also feeling support from the Quest community and the sense of a West Coast home from his time in Squamish.
Edney's teammate Alex Gough is also coming into the Games as a possible podium threat, backed by career-best fourth-place finishes on the World Cup circuit this season and her fourth-place finish at last year's world championships, the best-ever Canadian world championship result.
Even a bout with whooping cough can't keep Megan Tandy down for long. The Squamish biathlete is Games-bound and feeling better every day after whooping cough knocked her out of her usual training cycle for almost four weeks, just after she posted several thrilling personal-best results on the World Cup circuit before Christmas.
Tandy looks on the bright side: The break gave her some down time to be stress-free, and it reinvigorated her will to train.
"It also makes you excited when you don't train for four weeks," she said.
The Prince George native has been back in action for just under two weeks, and is feeling "pretty close to reaching my normal standard again" as her energy returns and she still has good speed.
Tandy is also comforted by the fact that she'll be racing essentially in her backyard come Games time. She feels she has a mental edge from her comfort in the Whistler Olympic Park, and her knowledge of the corners, hills, snow and winds.
"I know that trail backwards and forwards," she said.
While she knows the strong competitors who are heading her way will figure out the nuances of the venue and its courses, Tandy won't have to worry about those elements as she makes her Olympic debut.
And she'll have the opportunity to share the Olympic experience with a lot of her supportive family members, a unique chance as she hasn't been able to share her sport at this level with her family before.
"It's really, really cool," Tandy said.
The 21-year-old is the youngest member of Canada's Olympic biathlon team, which is itself one of the youngest squads in the world. The team boasts two veterans capable of regular top-15 World Cup results in Zina Kocher and Jean-Phillippe Le Guellec, along with rising young Olympic rookies in Tandy, Megan Imrie and Rosanna Crawford on the women's team.
Le Guellec will be the only Canadian man competing individually, and he'll be joined by two-time Olympian Robin Clegg and fast-rising young Marc-André Bédard and Brendan Green in the men's relay team.
The four women and Le Guellec said in a press conference Tuesday (Feb. 9) in Whistler that they'll be aiming primarily to give everything they've got in their Olympic events, instead of concentrating on results.
Le Guellec, who has frequently fired into the World Cup top 10 over the last two years, said he'll look to "ski fast and shoot clean," keeping his focus on the process, and hopefully the results will follow in the Callaghan Valley.
Imrie said she'll be happy to be on the start line loving what she does, and Tandy added that "if you're on the finish line and you still love it, that's even better." Tandy said cracking the top 30 would be an amazing result for her, but even if she doesn't reach her goals in this Olympics she'll fight to get back to the Games again.
"It's going to be fun," she said.
