May 8, 2009 – Alex Harvey and his coach, Louis Bouchard, have reached an agreement with Cross Country Canada (CCC) regarding Harvey’s attendance at CCC training camps. At a teleconference this afternoon, Harvey and Bouchard were joined by CCC’s Tom Holland (High /Performance/ director) and Stephane Barrette (Assistant Director of High /Performance), all apparently reading from scripted texts.

The compromise will see Harvey attend three out of four camps. Harvey will remain part of the national senior men’s team and will not be deprived of any funding. Until today, it looked like Harvey would be relegated to the B (development) team and deprived of some funding for only participating in two of the four camps.

Harvey will thus fly to BC on Sunday to attend a training camp near Vernon. The CCC meanwhile, conceded to let Harvey miss an October dryland training camp at Mammoth Lakes, California. Harvey will instead be training on a glacier in Austria this October.

Harvey, 20, spoke in both French and English during the teleconference and stressed that the debate over the past week “was not about Alex Harvey,” and that he, “understood the concept and importance of a team training together.” Harvey also underlined that he did not want to make this squabble public and had hoped that it would be handled internally instead of becoming the stuff of a media frenzy and debates in the Canadian Parliament. The skier has been out of Canada on vacation in Cuba for the past week.

Harvey, who is the youngest member of the team, has distinguished himself with two bronze medals at World Cup events (at Whistler and in Norway) this past winter. Holland and Barrette both spoke of Harvey’s enthusiasm and tremendous talent. Harvey, in turn, spoke highly of his team mates.