Stars align for local skier

Maggie McClure was as surprised as anyone when after winning two medals at the NorAm Canadian Eastern Cross-Country Ski Championships over the weekend.

The 17-year-old Haligonian earned a gold and silver medal for her birth-year category in the three-kilometre prologue and the five kilometre freestyle races, respectively.

“I’ve been to this race quite a few times and two years ago I came 10th and that was really exciting,” she said during a recent interview. “I was not expecting to come in the top-10. It was really exciting to finish and then find that out.”

In the 10-kilometre classic race, McClure finished seventh in her birth year. The races weren’t a mass-start, so McClure says skiers don’t know where they finish until after the race.

“I went to do my cool down and my coach came up to she said ‘You were first!” she says. “That was a pretty exciting moment.”

The championships, held from Feb. 5 to 7 just outside of Gatineau, Que., feature some of the best cross-country skiers from Eastern Canada.

McClure was the only skier from Nova Scotia to medal over the weekend.

Her coach, Daniel Murray, adds he was a bit surprised by McClure’s finish but said he thought the “stars were starting to align” for her to capture a medal.

“She’s very humble,” says Murray. “You can tell she’s fiercely competitive, but you would never know it from her routine.”

“I bet most of her classmates don’t even know she won.”

Murray lives in Cape Breton and does most of his coaching over the phone or Skype.

“If anyone’s going to be good, the coaches aren’t going to do it for them, the parents aren’t going to do it for them, they’re going to have to do it for themselves,” he says. “That’s the philosophy I bring to the team.”

McClure, who skis between four and six times a week during the winter, says she got into cross-country skiing just like many athletes get into a sport, through their parents.

“As a little kid, both my parents skied and we would go out on little ski adventures,” she says. “As I got older, they signed me up for lessons.”

In the summer, McClure competes in track and field, specifically the steeplechase. She won a bronze medal in the 2,000-metre event at the Royal Canadian Legion Youth Championships in 2014.

McClure now sets her sights on the National Cross-Country Ski Championships in Whitehorse from March 19 to 26.

“I’m really looking forward to going to Whitehorse,” she says. “I’ve never been up North.”