CANMORE – Don't wait until four years from now to know the name Anna Parent – she's bursting through the national team's door right now.
With Olympian DNA pumping through her veins, the 21-year-old from Canmore is a natural at cross-country skiing and easily qualified for her first FIS U23 World Ski Championships from Feb. 22-27 in Lygna, Norway, after incredible skiing earlier this month at Olympic Trials.
However, perhaps the most impressive feat for the fast skier was a determined, nipping-at-the-heels chase of the country's best and being recently nominated to the national team.
“I kind of surprised myself,” said Parent. “My next big goal after trials, I kind of showed what I could do and ... right now I feel like I’m targeting the next Olympics.”
At trials at the Canmore Nordic Centre from Jan. 6-11, when matched up against the top skiers in Canada, Parent's was better than good.
In the 10-kilometre classic, Parent’s specialty race, she came from out of nowhere to finish sixth place – only placing behind Canada’s 2022 Olympic team of Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt, Dahria Beatty, Katherine Stewart-Jones, Cendrine Browne and alternate Jasmine Drolet.
Typically not a sprinter, Parent “went hard from the gun in both sprint races” to finish 11th in the classic and eighth in skate where she finished ahead of National Ski Team’s Maya MacIsaac-Jones.
At 21, there's a belief Parent's athletic trajectory is zooming up as one of Canada's next generation of top skiers.
"She's coming up, there’s no doubt there and she's quite confident," said Alain Parent, her father and program director of Canmore Nordic Ski Club.
"It would have been interesting to see where she [would be] without the COVID because she didn’t race last year like everybody, only the ones who went on to world cups."
Along with her father, who's coached at the highest levels, Parent sees a lot of skiing similarities in herself and her mother, Rhonda DeLong, who competed in cross-country at the Albertville 1992 Winter Olympic Games in France.
“My mom was a past Olympian and I kind of feel like I’m following in her footsteps a bit,” said Parent. “She’s very supportive and we talk about all things skiing all the time. I like hearing her stories about when she was on the national team and her Olympic experience. She definitely has been there for me.”
When Parent finished sixth in the 10-km classic, to punch her ticket to U23s, a hug was shared between mother and daughter to celebrate Parent achieving one of her major goals of 2022.
“I’m not as nervous [for U23s as I was for trials]. I’m ready to go out there and experience my first international races and see what it’s like,” said Parent.
Additional Canmore skiers selected are Samuel Hendry and Anna Pryce competing at the U23 worlds and Xavier McKeever at the World Junior Ski Championships.
The complete roster going to the U23 and Junior worlds include: Jasmine Drolet, Marielle Ackermann, Liliane Gagnon, Jasmine Lyons, Sarah Cullinan, Tory Audet, Tom Stephen, Sasha Masson, Derek Deuling, Félix Olivier-Moreau, Max Hollmann, Anna Pryce, Beth Granstrom, Bronwyn Williams, Pierre Grall-Johnson, Rémi Drolet, and Léo Grandbois.
