Whitehorse native Dahria Beatty has officially been named to the Canadian cross-country Olympic team.

Nordiq Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee announced the team Thursday.

Beatty qualified for the Games with a second-place finish in the Senior Women’s 10 kilometre Interval Start Classic at Canmore, Alta. on Saturday.

Beatty has had this day in mind for a while.

“This has been circled on my calendar for many years, so I definitely have some goals for the Olympics themselves and I’d love to be in the Team Sprint final ... and also hoping to put down some personal best performances in the individual races.”

Beatty feels like it’s an advantage to have some serious racing under her belt heading to the Olympics.

“Once you’re a few races into the season it’s always helpful ... everything becomes a little more second-nature ... it’s nice that we’ve been able to race this week because otherwise there would have been a big break between when we finished racing before Christmas and going to the Games, so it’s nice to have races consistently throughout the season, but we also have a good opportunity here over the next two weeks to step away from the race focus prior to travelling over to Beijing and just focus on the exact training and specific plan to ourselves that we need to do to feel the most prepared for the Games. So it’s nice that we have these few weeks to individualize and work on what each person thinks they need to work on, which isn’t constrained by having to race specific races on the lead-up. That will be nice as well.”

Next up for Beatty is more training for the Beijing Games.

“The entire Canadian (cross-country) team will be heading to Silver Star, B.C on Wednesday and we will be in a bubble there to try to stay safe and healthy, and be training at Sovereign Lake. We’ll be there for two weeks training, do some volume, and Sovereign is also at the same altitude as where we’ll be racing in China, so just acclimatizing to that altitude as well, doing some intensity sessions and specific workouts,” related Beatty.

The Nordic Centre Ski Resort at Sovereign Lake is at an elevation of 1664 metres, or 5500 feet. The Kuyangshu Nordic Centre and Biathlon Centre in Zhangjiakou, China, where the cross-country events will be held, has an altitude of more than 1500 metres, or 5085 feet.

“It is quite similar, so we should be well-adjusted by the time we arrive,” stated Beatty. “Because altitude does play such a big role in an endurance sport like cross-country, we’ve chosen to do our prep camp lead-in to China at a venue that mirrors that altitude in order to get our bodies accustomed for heading over.”

Not surprisingly, as with all athletes going to the Games, Beatty is very concerned about staying healthy.

“For sure, it’s always a worry and a concern,” she stated. “We’ve been extra vigilant leading into these trials and most of the athletes that are competing for spots here pretty much completely isolated themselves from society in order to try to stay healthy. I was very grateful to be able to get my booster before leaving over Christmas. It’s nor something we can do anything about and we’re just being as cautious as possible and trying to mitigate risks by staying in our group and not having any contact and hoping that that’s enough to keep the team healthy and get us over there.”

Beatty is excited to be heading to the Games for a second time, having competed in 2018 in Pyeongchang, Korea.

“It’s amazing to be preparing for my second Games and definitely feels a little different than the first time around, but equally as exciting, and equally proud to be representing Canada and the Yukon.”