Prince George put itself on the national scene once again in December as the Prince George Blizzard Speed Skating Club hosted the 2006 Canadian Junior Short Track Speed Skating Championships at CN Centre.
Three Prince George skaters took part in the event.
Phillip Shrimpton, 15, was a last minute addition and came in ranked 48th overall on the men’s side.
“It put a little bit more pressure on.
“It would have been nice to have a little bit more notice but what can you do,” said Shrimpton, who went into the weekend ranked 48th. His ranking didn’t change at the end of the weekend. He was entered into the race when a skater was removed at the coaches meeting on Friday night.
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That’s 100 miles in the Imperial system, and it took 400 laps around the outdoor ice oval at Exhibition Park to get that far. He started at 10:29 a.m. and the skies that day (Jan. 24) were overcast and it wasn’t that cold (-8 C), but it started snowing at about 2 p.m., and never stopped. “It was snowing hard and it was windy too and by the time I got to the last hour there was three inches on the ice,” said Fast. “When I got to 80 kilometres, halfway there, it started snowing and I was like, ‘I just need to finish this, I don’t care what the weather’s like.’
Eric Orlowsky of Prince George competes last season at a Canada Cup long track event Dec. 6., 2019 in Fort St. John. The 19-year-old Prince George Blizzard Speed Skating Club alumni, is back training in Prince George while repairs are made to the indoor Olympic Oval in Calgary. - Handout photo
Speed skater Eric Orlowsky is back for an extended stay in Prince George, where he can practice his long-track moves on the outdoor ice oval at Exhibition Park. - Handout photo 2020 was meltdown year for long-track speed skater Eric Orlowsky. When it hit in March, the pandemic wiped out the rest of the race season. It got even worse for the 20-year-old Prince George Blizzard Speed Skating Club alumni in early September when a mechanical failure at the Olympic Oval in Calgary left the 33-year-old facility unable to make ice on its 400-metre indoor oval track while the viral outbreaks continued to cripple the competition schedule.
Three members of the Prince George Blizzard Speed Skating Club will get their first taste of national competition a week from today at the National Short Track Speed Skating Championships in Ottawa.
The trio of Sarah Pousette, Alexis Gaudet and Tim Hempsall qualified at the B.C. Provincial Championship which were held in Kelowna earlier this month.
“It went well [at provincials],” said Hempsall. “I got third and the second race I got a DQ and I had to come back from that and in the third race it looked like a tie and we had the same time but the race judges put me in first.”