McKeever, Arendz highlight veteran Canadian Paralympic nordic team

OTTAWA - A veteran group of 12 athletes, together with 2018 flag-bearers Brian McKeever and Mark Arendz, symbolize Canada on the 2022 Paralympic Winter Video games in Beijing.

Canada’s staff introduced Wednesday contains eight Paralympic medalists and 10 members of the squad that captured a report 16 medals 4 years in the past in Pyeongchang.

“That is an skilled group of athletes who've received medals below essentially the most intense strain at main worldwide competitions together with a number of instances on the Paralympic Video games,” Kate Boyd, Nordiq Canada’s high-performance director for the Para nordic program, mentioned in a launch.

Becoming a member of Arendz of Hartsville, P.E.I., and McKeever of Canmore, Alta., are: Lyne-Marie Bilodeau (Sherbrooke, Que.), Collin Cameron (Bracebridge, Ont.), Ethan Hess (Pemberton, B.C.), Brittany Hudak (Prince Albert, Sask.), Russell Kennedy (Canmore), Graham Nishikawa (Whitehorse), Christina Picton (Fonthill, Ont.), Emily Younger (Kelowna, B.C.), Natalie Wilkie (Salmon Arm, B.C.), and Derek Zaplotinsky (Smoky Lake, Alta.)

Bilodeau and Picton are the 2 new additions to the staff from the 2018 Video games.

McKeever, 42, is Canada’s most adorned Winter Paralympian, with 17 medals. Beijing will probably be his sixth Video games, and he will probably be in search of extra hardware within the males’s visible impaired class of cross-country races alongside guides Kennedy and Nishikawa.

The 31-year-old Arendz was Canada’s most prolific medallist in 2018. He received a gold, silver and bronze within the biathlon and two bronze cross-country medals in Pyeongchang.

Wilkie headlines a robust ladies’s contingent that features fellow medallists Hudak and Younger. The 21-year-old Wilkie made her Paralympic debut in 2018 as a 17-year-old and received three medals, together with a gold within the 7.5-kilometre standing cross-country snowboarding race.

The 2022 Paralympics will happen March 4-13.

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Jan. 26, 2022.