In 2010, there was no bigger Canadian cross-country ski prospect than Dahria Beatty.
At 15, she earned a spot on Canada’s world junior championship team and beat women three years her senior en route to a top 30 result. There was talk she had the talent to be the next great Canadian skier, the heir apparent to Scott, Renner and Crawford.
Three years later, after failing to make Canada’s 2013 world junior team, she pulled out of a small Alberta Cup race in Drayton Valley after five kilometres, exhausted and uncertain of her future in the sport.
“I had never felt so exhausted in all my life,” Beatty said. “I called my coach (Chris Jeffries), called my sports psych, called my mom crying. It hurt to walk. I felt tired and frustrated.”
It’s the type of experience that would push many young women to quit the sport, but instead, Beatty learned the power of failure.
Beatty shared her story of adversity as part of the Frozen Thunder Junior Supercamp in Canmore, aimed at Canada’s top teenage skiers. Talking to athletes from British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, Beatty explained her failures made her a better all-around skier, and that she learned more in her failures than her victories.
“I went to world juniors when I was 15, 17 and 19, but it was the in between years where I grew most as a skier,” Beatty said. “At every world junior race, I never achieved my goals.”
Her talk highlighted the highs and lows of transitioning from high school to racing full time, where she had to learn how to properly listen to her body, and find results elsewhere than the podium.
“I had to understand how to lose, and that was the best thing for me – to take defeat and figure out what I needed to work on and use it to motivate me,” Beatty said.
In Drayton Valley, Beatty learned she had overtrained – a common, but crippling problem for young skiers. Her first year away from home, Beatty pushed herself to train with women six years her senior.
