Cross Country Canada Announces National Team Nominations

Cross Country Canada (CCC) announced its national-team nominations Tuesday with little change to the World Cup and Development rosters. The 2015/2016 Senior National Team will feature 12 athletes, four of which are designated as World Cup Team athletes. All four members of the World Cup Team are men and will be headlined by two-time 2015 World Championships medalist Alex Harvey. The 26-year-old recently began his summer training season despite two surgeries to fix his iliac arteries. Joining Harvey are veterans Ivan Babikov, Devon Kershaw, and Lenny Valjas.  This is the second year in a row that no Canadian women met the qualifying criteria for the World Cup Team.

The Development Team will feature three returning athletes, including Graeme Killick, Emily Nishikawa, and Jesse Cockney. Notably missing from the list is Perianne Jones, who retired this spring.

Rounding out the remainder of the National Team nominations are five U23 Development Team athletes, including Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt, Knute Johnsgaard, Cendrine Browne, Dahria Beatty, and Katherine Stewart-Jones. Bouffard-Nesbitt had a breakthrough season in 2014/2015 where she placed 12th in the 15 k skiathlon at the U23 World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and earned spot on the Canadian squad at the 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships.

The Canadian National World Cup Team will be coached by Justin Wadsworth and Louis Bouchard, Harvey’s personal coach and head coach of the Pierre Harvey Training Centre in Quebec. Norwegian Olympic gold medalist Tor-Arne Hetland will no longer be a part of the Canadian coaching squad after a year on the job.

In addition to Wadsworth and Bouchard, several training centre and club coaches will assist on the World Cup circuit.

The organization’s website also points to three other factors that play into the selection process: the Cross Country Canada (CCC) Strategic Plan to 2018(+), the HP Operational Plan 2013/14 – in particular, the Program Philosophy and Program Operating Principle, and the NST Budget, which may be a limiting factor.