Nunavut debuts first cross-country skiing team at Winter Games

When Nunavut’s cross-country skiing coach Benoit Havard talks about the team’s long road to the Arctic Winter Games, his voice cracks with emotion.

“It has been a huge effort just to try to bring kids on the skis,” Havard said, speaking by phone from Mat-Su Valley, Alaska where the Games are being held. They began Sunday and run until Saturday.

It has taken a huge effort because the team Havard and fellow coach Shannon Chartre assembled is Nunavut’s first-ever cross-country skiing team to compete at the Games.

It’s a small crew, with just four athletes: Gabriel Tate Mossey, 12; Callum Anugakuluk Goddard, 11; Breton Livingstone Didham, 11; and Igimaq Williamson Bathory, 15, who last year competed alongside his sister Akutaq Williamson Bathory in short-track speedskating.

“We have four young kids that are just determined and we have some really great hope for the future of skiing in Nunavut,” Havard said.

His love of winter sports started at an early age.

“I was a handicapped child. I had cerebral palsy on my right side,” he said.

“My dream was to be with my friends and play with them, so when I was eight years old my father took away some machines on my legs, like Forrest Gump,” he laughed.

Havard learned to skate when his father made an ice rink.

Benoit Havard, one of the coaches of Nunavut’s cross-country ski team, stands by the ski tracks outside of Palmer, Alaska, on Tuesday as Nunavut competes with its first-ever cross-country ski team at the Arctic Winter Games. (Photo by Dustin Patar, special to Nunatsiaq News)

“I was so determined. I was trying to skate as much as I could.”

Years of playing rough-and-tumble hockey gradually gave way to cross-country skiing in Quebec, where Havard is from.

“My cross-country skiing became sort of a quest for being healthy and being more active, and I was able to make friends since I was maybe nine years old,” he said.

The ski coach and former outdoor adventure guide has been sharing his enthusiasm for the sport, working for about six years to build up the youth ski culture in Iqaluit.

However, the terrain and a general lack of funding presents some unique challenges for sustaining the sport.

“It’s a really difficult area to work on trails and manage equipment,” Havard said.

While cross-country skiing is an outdoor sport — in fact, the only fully outdoor sport Nunavut is competing in at the weeklong Arctic Winter Games — much of the training for it needs to happen indoors or in climates that are warmer than the very cold winters the territory is used to.

That means skiers in Nunavut have less time to train outdoors during the year than those in warmer parts of the country and are often required to fly south to train at established venues with indoor tracks.

So years ago, Havard formed skiing programs with some schools in Iqaluit from kindergarten up to secondary school. He used a four-wheeled Honda side-by-side with tracks that could pull the tools needed to create the grooves of a cross-country ski track in the snow.

“In Iqaluit, they’ve been working hard to try to educate the community to ski,” he said of supporters at the schools.

Havard’s dream is to have a snow cannon in Iqaluit that could be used to make snow for ski trails from September through November and in the late spring. In the colder months from December to February, the athletes can train in the south.

“That’s my vision,” he said.

The four members of Team Nunavut have now been skiing with each other for about two years. These Arctic Winter Games are their first major competition.

“We’ve been working with them yesterday on a few techniques and especially to get to know the snow conditions and the hills, because we don’t ski on that kind of snow usually,” Havard said.

“It’s a harder snow, it’s more cold, so I wanted them to experience it as much as possible before the race.”

The team hit the snow Tuesday for their first races, with Godard, Mossey and Didham competing in the 3.75-kilonmetre mass start free technique event and Williamson Bathory racing in the 7.5-kilometre mass start free technique event.

After a break Wednesday, they return to competition on Thursday.

While the team is just getting started in the world of competition, Havard said he is proud just to see the young athletes working hard on the tracks.

“Like I said to the kids, we’re already winners right now,” he said.