Winning is great when rivalry is friendly

For Iqaluit’s Susie Pearce, even without her silver ulu from this year’s Arctic Winter Games, her week in northern Alberta will be a memorable one.

As Pearce, a 24-year-old nursing student, was trying to lunge as high as possible in the two-foot high kick event, she heard words of encouragement – from the competition.

“It’s completely different compared to other sports,” Pearce said of the Inuit high-kick game. “We give each other advice and help each other out.

“That sharing of knowledge among each other, that kept me playing.”

Pearce will be among more than 1,000 young athletes from around the circumpolar world returning home this weekend from a heady but friendly week of competition in northern Alberta.

By press time, Team Nunavut and Team Nunavik had each collected seven medals in Arctic sports and Dene games. The traditional powerhouses of the Arctic Winter Games muscled ahead with the Yukon in the lead, followed by Alberta North, Alaska and the Northwest Territories. Athletes from Magadan (eastern Russian) and Yamal (Siberia) edged ahead of the eastern Arctic with 14, and nine medals, respectfully.

The Saami and Greenlandic teams were trailing behind with six and five medals each.

The 2004 Games kicked off with less fanfare than normal when a dog team brought in the torch for the opening ceremonies in Fort McMurray, the larger of the two events sites in the Wood Buffalo region.

Team Alaska, top medalist in the last games, paraded into the auditorium first in a stream of blue and yellow followed by Greenland, in blue and white, and Magadan with athletes in no official uniforms, from the Russian Far East.

Nunavimmiut wore bright blue and white parkas, beside the Saami in traditional outfits from their home communities, and an army of athletes from Nunavut, wrapped in flags and dressed in bright red parkas. For the first time, a team from the Yamal region in Siberia came to the games, and stood beside large veteran teams from Yukon and Alberta and Alaska.

An elder prayed for all the competitors to have the strength “to do their best,” as athletes and referees promised to uphold the game’s traditions of fair play and cultural exchange.

“It makes for a celebration of our winter, our snow and ice and our relationships to each other in the North we all share, whether we’re from Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia or the United States,” said Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, who was also in Fort McMurray for the opening.

“The excitement is palpable. You’re all feeling it as athletes, as coaches, as spectators.”

Full results from the 2004 Arctic Winter Games will appear in the next issue of Nunatsiaq News.