December 13, 2005 – To all athletes and coaches of Nordic ski racing in Ontario The High Performance Committee of Cross Country Ontario would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the athletes and coaches who have made the 2005 training season such a tremendous success. We have had very strong attendance at the LSSD, NCD and SOD dry-land camps, and the Ontario Team had an awesome camp at the Haig Glacier. All indications are that, with very few exceptions, our athletes are well trained and have demonstrated a substantial commitment to achieving their personal goals. Congratulations!

I like to remind anyone who will listen, that Ontario won the 2005 Canadian National Championships and we are aiming to repeat in March 2006 in Lappe. Keep up the great work ! Our Ontario Team is now at Silver Star for early season on –snow training and on December 3rd and 4th, NOD will host the early snow camp in Timmins. These are great opportunities to work on technique and get “sharpened” early. The racing season starts soon! In the background this past year, coaches in Ontario have been taking training courses in unprecedented numbers.

Our coaches’ meeting last April focused on teaching technique and we have two coaches heading out to the World Cup races on ICE assignments in December. At the coaches’ meeting at the first O-Cup this year, we will be celebrating the accomplishments of Heinz Niederhauser with the first annual award for outstanding commitment to coaching in Ontario. Further, we have retained the services of Patti Kitler and Kevin Shields to help us develop programs for the Ontario Team and Midgets. These reports and our action plans will likely be available for your review in the New Year. We are focused on our goal of increasing the number of Ontario racers on the National team by working on increasing participation in racing, building our coaches’ competencies and providing high quality training opportunities for our most committed athletes. The race season in Ontario will be spectacular this year: the first O-Cup is scheduled for Hardwood Hills right after Christmas; there are 3 additional O-Cup weekends (Lappe, Nakkertok and Soo Finnish); a Midget Championship; OFSSAA; the Ontario Winter Games and the National Championships in Lappe. We will also be selecting the Ontario Team for the Canada Winter Games in 2007 this year. For more information on all of these and other race events, visit the CCO website at www.xco.org often.

The criteria for the selection of the Ontario Ski Team have been published in draft form and will be approved in December. You will notice some changes related to achieving minimum points on the IPL. These changes are consistent with the HPC’s goal of having as many Ontario athletes as possible make To all athletes and coaches of Nordic ski racing in Ontario November 23, 2005 Page 2 the National Team. We want to focus our resources on supporting athletes who have made the commitment to achieve World Class results. The 2007 Canada Winter Games will be held in Whitehorse. This event gives Canadian athletes an opportunity to compete for their province and experience an event similar to a World Championship and the Olympics. The ultimate goal for each province is to “Capture the Flag”. To do this, a point system has been designed for each sporting event. You can find more about the CWGs on the website: http://www.canadagames.ca . Ontario will be selecting a Canada Winter Games Team of 7 males, 7 females, 2 coaches and a manager. The detailed selection process is under development, but will be based on races at the 2006 Nationals at Lappe, as well as mandatory participation at training camps during the summer and fall, and a final selection process in December of 2006. To be eligible, athletes must be born in 1984 or later and can not have (a) been on a National Team, (b) participated in an international senior level event or (c) have held a C or Senior card. We will publish detailed selection criteria early in January. We are committed to fielding an outstanding team!

Respectfully,
The High Performance Committee of Cross Country Ontario
Michael Badham, Brad Jones, Mary Tribe, Tory Kullas, Marc Metsaranta, Patti Kitler, Eric Bailey,
Alana Thomas, Jim McCarthy, Dorothy Lothian