Whitehorse native Dahria Beatty, 27, has been cross-country skiing since she was three.

She won gold at her first national championships at the age of 14.

Beatty has spent four years on the Junior National team and eight years on the Senior National Team.

She competed in her first Olympic games in 2018.

Beatty is currently training in Canmore, Alberta for the upcoming World Cup season.

“I race in all the disciplines for the most part,” said Beatty. “I tend to focus a bit more on the sprint disciplines, but I do both sprint and distance.”

Sprints are between one and 1.8 kilometres.

“There’s a qualification where everyone goes and does that course individually and the top 30 times move on to the heats. Then they have a quarter final, semi-final, final. So if you make it all the way to the final, you race four times in a day,” exclaimed Beatty.

“It’s a slightly different format than the distance disciplines, which are five kilometres to 30 kilometres for women … you just do them once. There’s individual start formats, where everyone goes out at 30-second intervals, and races the clock, and the fastest time wins.

“And then there’s also the mass-start format, where everyone lines up in the grid format and it’s similar to … if you watch a running race where … the first that crosses the line is the winner. The distance events have both of those formats.”

Beatty explained how she reached this point in her career.

“I did a ton of different sports growing up and had quite a bit of success in cross-country. I represented Canada when I was 15 at World Junior Championships, and I raced internationally while I was still living in Whitehorse in high school.

“After high school, I decided to try to pursue skiing full-time, so I based myself out of Canmore, Alberta, where the national team is based out of for training, and I was able to qualify for the C national team my first year graduation into the senior ranks and have been on the team for the last eight years since then,” related Beatty.

“I just kind of worked my way up … I had lots of race opportunities when I was young – the Yukon ski team, I traveled with them all through my high school career and then made the transition to training with a team down here in Canmore called the World Cup Academy, which is a national development program, which then feeds into the national team, hopefully. Well, that’s the goal.”

Competing in her first Olympic games in 2018 had mixed results.

“I raced in five events,” recalled Beatty. “I had a couple races that went well for me and a couple that were not quite what I was hoping for, but overall it was a very amazing experience. I learned a lot, so I’m hoping to take the lessons I’ve learned from that, and qualify for the Games this winter and be able to produce a bit stronger results having a bit of knowledge of what I’m getting myself into this time. So that’s the goal for this winter.”

There are a couple of ways for Beatty to qualify for the Olympics in Beijing.

“We have to show that we’re showing race form within the Olympic season” said Beatty. “I need to get a top-30 result on the World Cup, here before Christmas, in … any one of the races … then I’ll have met their World Cup criteria.

“If I‘m not able to do that, there are going to be trials races in Canmore the first week of January where the winner of the race goes to the Olympics, so that’s kind of the backup if I’m not able to meet the objective criteria for the World Cup before Christmas.”

As for how she’s feeling going into the season, “I’m really excited to get back to racing … last two years we’ve had a reduced calendar because of COVID, and last year was a very weird year racing. We’ll have lots of precautions this year, but knowing that everyone’s vaccinated now, it’s a level of stress that is taken off, compared to last year, which was an extremely high-stress season. So I’m really excited to get back to racing and just take all the training I’ve done these past few years and put it to the test.”

Beatty has a busy schedule ahead of her.

“There is a full World Cup schedule. Canada’s not going to all the events, but before Christmas, I’ll be racing three World Cup weekends starting in Lillehammer, Norway Dec. (3), the following weekend in Davos, Switzerland … and the final World Cup before Christmas is in Dresden, Germany.

“Currently the plan is to race at a Norwegian FIS (Federation Internationale de Ski) race that last weekend in November to prepare for the World Cups in Norway the following weekend.”

“I leave for Europe Nov. 18, so I’ll be back here – I’ll be training in Whitehorse next week and I’ll be training in Canmore until I leave in November and then I’ll do a few test races here in Canmore, but they’re not official races. They don’t count for anything. They’ll just be getting our bodies ready for the race season, putting a race bib back on and remembering what it feels like to race.”

As with many athletes, it takes a village to get to Beatty’s level.

“There’s a multitude of people who’ve had an influence on my career. It’s been long. There’s so many people in Whitehorse who’ve been a huge influence on my career. I grew up going through the Yukon Ski Team program and with Alain Masson as my coach and his wife Lucy (Steele-Masson) – who’s also an Olympian in cross-country skiing – was definitely a huge role model growing up and someone who always had a huge depth of knowledge to draw on for the young athletes.

“And my parents have always been huge supporters of me, pushing skiing at all points of my career, which has been amazing …

“I was also lucky to have many role models as – teammates and athletes that are just a bit older than me growing up in the Yukon. Emily Nishikawa, who retired two years ago, was my teammate for eight years here in Canmore, and she’s from Whitehorse, so I always had her to look up to and try to keep up to.

“I wouldn’t say there’s one person who’s had a more specific effect on my career, but it’s been a whole bunch of people and the whole community.”

As for her future goals, “goal number one, since it is an Olympic season, is qualifying for that … skate-sprinting is probably my strongest event and how cross-country skiing works is at the Olympics there’s only one sprint event each Olympics, so they alternate techniques, ‘cause there’s the skate technique and classic technique in cross-country skiing.

“So at the last Olympics there was no skate sprint, there was a classic sprint, so I’m very much looking forward to the skate sprint. That has been circled on my goals list for 2022 for many many years, so that’s definitely an event I’m targeting and hoping to make the heat in and see how far I can get. I definitely – I’m hoping to make it into the semifinals – would be my goal for the Olympics, but also just to be skiing into the semifinals and final in the World Cup heats in the skate sprint events as well before Christmas here. Trying to have more consistent races into the semifinals and getting past the quarterfinals.”

“There’s three skate sprints before Christmas on the World Cup so I’m definitely going to be focusing on getting a strong result in one of those events if possible.”

Beatty isn’t ruling out the distance events, either.

“I’m definitely looking forward to racing distance events,” said Beatty. “I had my best ever distance results the very last race of last season where I finished 15th in the World Cup in Engadin (Valley), Switzerland, so I’m hoping to carry some of that momentum and confidence that I got in my distance racing last year into this season.

“The distance races that we’ll do before Christmas are individual starts, so just focusing more on the process for me for those events, and trying to ski and execute as well as possible and see what type of result that gives me, but hopefully it’ll be an improvement from previous years. But because those distance races early in the season won’t be head to head, my goal for those are more process-oriented, even though I have process goals for the sprint as well, but it’s a little more direct. You know exactly what’s happening because there’s a bunch of people around you.”

Beatty has an overall goal in mind for her World Cup races as well.

“I would really love to be in the Top 30 overall in the World Cup standings at the end of the year. That might be a little bit of a difficult task, because Canada has chosen not to go to a lot of World Cups this coming year in order to prepare for the Olympics, or due to budget, but definitely having that consistency that I was talking about. If I can claim that, then being able to be in the Top 30 overall in the World Cup standings would definitely be something I’m hoping to achieve this season.”

Beatty feels like she’s representing the Yukon, as well as Canada.

“Oh, for sure … the Yukon has a huge ski community and has had huge success internationally producing skiers, so I definitely feel like I’m always representing the Yukon, as well as Canada.

“It’s such an amazing community for support. I know there’s always so many people following my racing achievements here, and whether it’s going well or poorly, they’re always supportive. So definitely always representing the Yukon as well as Canada, and the Whitehorse Ski Club even more specifically as well.”