Third Time's The Charm
A Spring Creek resident seeks his place on the podium.
Robin Clegg, 32, is on track for his third Olympic Games next February in Whistler, BC, pulled out of retirement by the tantalizing lure of one more chance, one more shot at a medal, and a personal commitment to the national governing body in his sport to help build one of the strongest Canadian teams yet to take on the world.
Born in Edmonton, raised in Yellowknife and Ottawa, Robin has lived in Canmore since 1996, although these days he divides his time between Edmonton, where his wife Laura Bracco-Callaghan is finishing up her law degree, and Canmore, where he trains with coach Matthias Ahrens. Interestingly, he skis for Quebec’s Chelsea Nordic Club just across the river from Ottawa, where he began his competitive biathlon career.
Unlike its cousin cross-country skiing, biathlon can’t be done anywhere at any time. It’s a facility-based sport, and there are only about 30 biathlon ranges in the whole country (which goes a long way to explaining why it’s such a low-profile sport in the rest of the nation). Here in Canmore, though – home to one of the two national training centres – biathlon is a household word and its athletes are familiar faces among us.
For residents of Spring Creek, Robin is literally a neighbour. Two years ago he and Laura, seeking to maintain their permanent roots in the community, bought an 800 sq ft third-floor suite in Rundle Cliffs Luxury Mountain Lodge and enrolled in the Spring Creek Vacation Properties program. The income from the rentals helps the young couple carry the financial commitment, and they can still spend 30 weeks a year living in the community in which Laura grew up. “We didn’t want to leave the Valley. We wanted to keep our little footprint in Canmore and the vacation rentals fit the bill,” says Robin. “We were able to afford it because of the income it generates, and we can spend Christmas here and one or two weekends a month – it’s very important to us.”
The couple lives in Edmonton for the rest of the time, with Robin studying toward a Bachelor of Commerce with a major in Finance through distance learning at Athabasca University while Laura attends her final year of classes at U of A. In addition, apart from the three weeks he gets off at the end of each competitive season, he’s training non-stop. Competing on the national level since 1995, Robin won two silver medals at the Canada Winter Games that year, and two years later he was the Junior Canadian Biathlon Champion. He’s been a Canadian Biathlon Champion 10 times, a gold medallist in 2005 NorAm racing and hit a career-best eighth place finish in the men’s 20-km Individual at the 2007 World Cup in Slovenia – only the second Canadian male biathlete to do so. His two Olympic outings netted a 28th place finish in the 20-km Individual in Salt Lake City in 2002 (where he was the sole member of Canada’s biathlon team) and a number of middle-of-the-pack results in 2006 in Torino, including 50th in the 10-km sprint, 44th in the 12.5-km pursuit and 36th in the 20-km.
But biathletes, unlike hockey players, get better as they age. Now, as the senior man on the national roster, Robin is in prime position. In the last few years he’s been pretty consistently in the top 20 amid the pack of Americans and Europeans on the international circuit, and in September he was chosen as one of four men and three women for the Senior National Training Group heading for the pre-Christmas World Cup events in Sweden, Austria and Slovenia.
Selection of the Olympic team comes down to those first three World Cups, although, according to Robin, the actual qualification process for 2010 began in 2008, with points for all of the national and international events over those two years accumulating toward a final standing. Canada can send up to four male biathletes to Whistler, but it will ultimately be up to the Canada Olympic Committee to decide who gets to go, based on nominations from Biathlon Canada.
Robin had actually decided to retire at the end of the ’07 season, not performing to the level he expected of himself, when he snagged his eighth-place finish at Pokljuka, Slovenia. Now he’s widely perceived as the leader and inspiration of a team that’s gaining in age and strength and making significant strides as the 2010 Olympics approach.
