HIGH ACHIEVERS: Olympic biathlon’s English in-stadium play-by-play voice belongs to uOttawa’s Roger Archambault

By Martin Cleary

OTTAWA’S OLYMPIC INSIDERS (Part 2 of 5): Roger Archambault has viewed the Olympics from many different perspectives, but never once as an athlete.

In the past 25 years, the associate athletic director at the University of Ottawa has played a vital role for Canada in seven Winter and Summer Olympic Games and one Winter Youth Olympics.

And we can’t forget he has helped Canadian athletes at two Pan-American Games as well as more than 100 World Cups and 15 world championships in biathlon. At the 2019 FISU Winter Universiade, he was the Canadian team chef de mission.

The next and possibly final Olympic journey for the University of Ottawa B.Sc. graduate is the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. The Gatineau resident and Canada’s biathlon expert will serve as the English in-stadium announcer and race commentator for the cross-country skiing and rifle shooting sport, which will be held in Zhangjiakou, China, a 210-kilometre drive north of Beijing.

A quarter century ago, Archambault was a coach and a wax technician for the Canadian biathlon team at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. Seven years earlier, he considered racing for the final spot on the men’s biathlon team at the 1991 Canadian Olympic trials. But he declined, a decision that still haunts him slightly today.

“I had competed (as an athlete) through two quads (Olympic quadrennial periods). This would have been my first Olympic trials,” he said in a recent interview. “But three months before the trials, a coaching opportunity came up in 1991. By September, I was coaching full-time and the trials were in December.”

If he could, he’d like to reverse that decision. But, after he thought again, he knew he had made the right choice.

“In hindsight, I regret that decision,” he added. “I was one of the competitors to have a chance to get the last spot as four of the five had been decided on the World Cup tour.

“My chances as an athlete were OK, but if I made the team, I would have been one of those finishers in the 50s. But I made my choice in 1991 to change that as a coach at 24. They took a risk with me and it paid off. We can build consistency. I was in the sport for 18 years as a coach, technical director and high-performance director. I’ve had far more impact (as a coach/director). It was a conscientious decision, but a little part of me wondered, what if?”

The reality is Archambault continued in biathlon and today is an International Biathlon Union referee and technical delegate for continental events. His biathlon experiences also connected him to the Canadian Olympic Committee and saw him assume a variety of roles surrounding the Olympics.

At the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy, Biathlon Canada’s technical director was the Olympic team leader. Archambault, a level 5 national coach, was regarded as Canada’s leading technical expert on biathlon.

For the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver/Whistler, he was the COC’s manager of Olympic preparation.

Archambault took on another interesting assignment during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. For four days he was responsible for familiarizing 20 head coaches and team leaders on what they might expect at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. As a group, they experienced the Olympic environment and spent a full day at the Athletes’ Village.

For the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, he was hired by the organizing committee for its sports production team. Archambault served as one of three in-stadium public-address commentators calling the races along with Russian and French announcers.

On race day, Archambault would be at the venue three hours before the first race, call the race and stay for 30 minutes after the last skier reaches the finish. Besides doing race play-by-play, he also explained how the athletes qualified for the Winter Games, educated the crowd about the sport and added a few trivia facts.

Archambault will share in-stadium commentary responsibilities with a Chinese announcer for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The National Biathlon Centre has a capacity for 6,000 spectators at the Guyangshu Cluster, which also has venues for cross-country skiing and ski jumping. Archambault is uncertain if the COVID-19 pandemic will have an impact on the number of spectators.

“I’m the voice they’ll hear call the race in the stadium, but TV will defer to its Olympic broadcasters,” Archambault said, when asked if Canadians will hear his race commentary.

He also will be involved in the medal and flower presentation ceremonies.

Archambault has prepared for the Games by assembling hundreds of pages of background data, watching the 2021-22 World Cup races online and receiving the athlete bios. He also has toured the biathlon courses and shooting ranges using a snowmobile to get a good understanding of the various challenging downhills, climbs and corners.

Like an athlete winning a medal, Archambault had a milestone moment at the 2014 Sochi Games. When Ole Einar Bjorndalen helped Norway win the gold medal in the mixed relay, he became the most accomplished male Winter Olympic athlete with eight gold, four silver and one bronze medals.

“It was an historical event,” Archambault recalled with pride. “He became the most decorated Winter Olympic athlete. I made the call and called him the Olympic champion.”

During his race calls from Saturday through Feb. 19, which coincides with Archambault’s 55th birthday, he’ll mention Canadian team racers like brothers Scott and Christian Gow of Calgary and Emma Lunder of North Vancouver in his commentary. They may provide Archambault with another memorable moment in their second Olympic Games. In his last World Cup before the Games, Scott Gow hit all 20 targets and placed fourth in the men’s 20-kilometre individual race in Ostersund, Sweden.

“The most important aspect for athletes competing at the Olympics is longevity,” said Archambault, noting a key reason for success in the ski-shoot sport.

Longevity is something that is on Archambault’s side and he can see himself at the 2030 Winter Games, if they return to Vancouver in eight years.

On Tuesday, Vancouver, Whistler and the four First Nations of Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh signed an agreement with the COC and the Canadian Paralympic Committee to explore the feasibility of playing host to the 2030 Olympics and Paralympics.

“I’m hopeful for the Vancouver bid,” said Archambault, who would love to work with the organizing committee as a full-time employee in the six-year run-up to the Olympics. “That would be a nice way to cap my career.”