Kimberley Nordic skier Raleigh Tarte, 17, just returned from Slovenia where he competed with Team Canada in the Nordic Junior World Ski Championships.
This is Tarte’s second time going to World Juniors, he was there last year in Whistler for the first time the event was held in Canada in around 20 years.
“It was really cool, we went to Ramsau [am Dachstein], Austria in the Austrian Alps for about a week, before heading over to Slovenia about five days before the competition started just to get used to the time change and all that kind of stuff,” Tarte told the Bulletin.
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Tarte said the weather in Austria was fantastic, sunny with blue skies and temperatures hovering around 12 C in the day, but still freezing over night, keeping the snow from melting. This carried over as they drove into Slovenia, until the last couple of days of the event where it rained, making for some soft and slushy conditions.
“For the most part it was super awesome weather and conditions,” he said. “It was a World Junior Championship and a U23, the Junior category is under 20, so U23 actually won the relay for the first time ever and that was really awesome. And one of the women won the sprint so we had two world Championship medals to celebrate, that was the first time a woman has won the sprint there as well, so it was quite historic, quite a big deal.”
Tarte grew up in Kimberley and played hockey up until he was about 14. His parents are avid skiers and would tow him behind them in the chariot when he was very young, so he’s been around the sport his entire life. He was always a part of the Kimberley Nordic Club’s Jackrabbit program and then from age 9 to 12 joined the TrackAttack Program, which was coached by his dad, Thom Tarte.
“For the most part I really actually hated going out and skiing, because I just really did not enjoy it and they’d always have to drag me out there,” he said with a laugh. “Even when I was 12, it was always like ‘you have to go because your dad’s the coach,’ kind of stuff.
“I always had a decent amount of fun once I got there, we always did relays and we played man tracker and stuff, we were just playing games the entire time so it wasn’t like it was that horrible, but at first they had to drag me out there and I just wanted to play hockey and that was pretty much it.”
Tarte was a dedicated hockey player, playing on a spring team in Lethbridge, meaning drives to Alberta every weekend to practice. In 2017 his minor hockey team won provincials, which he said was the only team from Kimberley to do so in the past 30 years.
When COVID hit, Tarte switched over to cross country skiing and quickly discovered he had a real knack for it. In his first year training on the race team he won the provincial championship and then won a gold medal at the BC Winter Games.
Initially he figured once the pandemic was over he would go back to hockey, but based on how well he was performing with cross country, he knew he had to give it a proper go.
Last year, Tarte was the youngest on the national team to go to the championships by two years.
“It doesn’t usually happen very often,” he explained. “I was a first year U18 last year so I was competing against people who were three years older than me. I kind of went to that championship thinking ‘I’m just here for the experience completely.’”
This year, however, Tarte set out with more clear goals in mind. For the sprint portion of the World Juniors, you have to be in the top 30 to qualify for the heats in the afternoon. Tarte finished 26th, got to race in the quarter final and was then one second off of qualifying for the semi finals, meaning he would have finished in the top 12.
“I was super happy with that,” In the 20K, again I was 26th, which was also a really good result for me and a big improvement from last year. I think it’s just exciting that I still have two more years to get better and definitely in the future my goal is to medal or win those championships for sure.
“The margins are so close at these championships, in the sprint yeah you’re 26th in the qualifying, but I was, over 1.5 kilometres, only a couple seconds off being one of the fastest qualifiers, so you only have to get a little bit better to be contending and I have two years to do that. I’m really, really excited to train a lot.”
Tarte has a lot of people he’s grateful to for helping him get to this level of competition so quickly. His first coach when he started training was Tim Wintoniw, who he said created a really fun team environment. Tarte was one of the youngest on the team at the time and he said Wintoniw helped give him a very good first impression.
“Then we had Frank Ackermann who’s a legend up there, he’s always been super supportive and a driven coach who helped me out,” he said. “Most recently we hired a new Norwegian coach, she’s young, I think she’s 26 and same thing, she’s super supportive and a super fun coach to have this season.”
Pauline Forren, head coach at the Kimberley Nordic Club, said that she feels “very honoured” to have been a part of Tarte’s training life and to watch him progress as an athlete.
“There is not much that can beat the excitement of witnessing an athlete achieving their dreams and goals,” Forren said. “He is working hard every day and is dedicated to his goals, so it is deserved that he is being rewarded with being selected to represent Canada in international events.”
She added the whole KNC community was behind him and there were a lot of people back home watching him compete in Slovenia, including the kids in the KNC TrackAttack and Junior Racer programs.
“A lot of the younger kids look up to him, not only thanks to the fact that he skis fast but also his way of being and that he is not shy of sharing knowledge with the younger skiers in the Nordic Club,” Forren said.
“It is also cool that he gets to experience events like this and can share these achievements with his teammates from BC Ski Team; Alexandra Luxmoore from Revelstoke, Finn Redman and Garrett Siever from Telemark were all also representing Team Canada in Planica.”
Tarte said the KNC has alwasy been very supportive of him and he tried to give back whenever he can, coming to the younger kids’ practises and helping out wherever possible.
“I think it’s important that they see that we all start in the same place,” he said. “We’re a club that’s had a lot of success obviously, like with Molly Miller and Marielle Ackermann in the past and I think it just goes to show that we have the resources, the great facilities and the coaching and the community to create world-class athletes.”
Tarte’s next event he’s preparing for is the Canadian National Championships in Ottawa.
