NCXC24 Junior Boys: National road cycling medallist Carter de Veer shows swiftness on foot to lead Merivale to city crown

Thank you very much to Ottawa Orienteering for presenting the Ottawa Sports Pages’ XC Week! Orienteering is like cross-country running, with a few extra exciting twists and turns. Find out about the adventure that awaits you here.

By Dan Plouffe

It was another day, another medal for Carter de Veer at the national capital high school cross-country running championships. This one was unique for him, however, because it was a golden medal with a runner on it as he celebrated a first city title with his Merivale Marauders junior boys’ team.

Two days after also earning an individual silver medal for completing the 5 km course on Oct. 24 at Walter Baker Park in Kanata second-fastest behind Earl of March’s Luke Van Brabant, de Veer jumped on his bike in Renfrew and won his third consecutive under-17 boys’ Eastern Ontario Cyclocross Series race.

The multi-disciplinary Ottawa Bicycle Club athlete’s dominance on the regional circuit came on the heels of a sparkling summer season punctuated by a bronze medal win in the U17 boys’ time trial at the Canadian Road Cycling Championships in Beauce, QC, where he placed 10th in the road race as well.

Also this season, de Veer was second in the U17 boys’ event at the 50th Preston Street criterium race a year after winning the U15 division, and he recently won a U19 men’s cyclocross race in Rochester, NY. He’s also tried his hand at track cycling, mountain biking and gravel cycling.

de Veer’s father Craig got him interested in the sport, and they sometimes compete in the same race, like at last year’s Paris to Ancaster gravel cycling race, when a 14-year-old Carter won the overall race and then looked back to see his dad finish the 42 km trek 26 seconds later.

de Veer mainly participates in cross-country running to enhance his fitness on the bike, but he enjoys the atmosphere at the meets while racing for his school.

“It’s pretty fun. There are a lot of teams here, and a lot of friends from all over, so it’s pretty cool,” he indicated. “Cycling is super fast, and I’m good at it. Running, I feel like it’s a lot harder. I can get my heart-rate higher. But I like both of them.”

The two sports match each other nicely, he added. Cycling requires strong endurance abilities, as does distance running, and the higher-intensity moments of running up hills and sprinting helps build his fitness for similar challenges on the bike course.

The sports’ schedules aren’t always as great a fit. December is about the only down time de Veer gets from cycling. At present, he mixes in two or three runs per week on top of his time on the bike. After a lot of cycling trips this season, de Veer was very pleased to see the OFSAA XC provincials will be held in Ottawa this year on Nov. 4 at Mooney’s Bay.

“I don’t have to travel as much as last year when we had to go all the way to Toronto, so it’ll be nice to sleep in my own bed,” signalled the repeat city championships runner-up. “I go all over (for cycling), every weekend, so it’ll be a good break.”

de Veer was impressed to see three Merivale runners among the first seven to cross the finish line, with Adam Ginn in sixth and Mason Cobb in seventh. Benyang Fu was 19th in the field of 138 to give the Marauders an impressive team score of 34, while Linden Russell provided support in 32nd.

“It’s pretty great,” de Veer said of the performance of his “jumpy” team who are all friends. “Hopefully we’ll do well at OFSAA too.”

Luke Van Brabant vaults onto podium’s top spot

Van Brabant won the junior boys’ event in a time of 18 minutes, 24 seconds, which was 4.3 seconds better than de Veer, while Ashbury’s Jaiden Lodha followed next, just over 35 seconds later.

All three individual medallists also found their way to the team podium. Lodha led the Ashbury Colts team of Sebastien French (13th), Matthew Lamont (15th), Wincent Wozniak (38th) and Ethan Lafrance (53rd) to second place, while Van Brabant’s Earl of March Lions were third with Adam Wagner in 29th, Sunny Chen (39th), Faisal Alshammri (48th) and Kian Wirtanen (55th).

Van Brabant grew five inches and jumped up three places higher on the results sheet compared to last year.

Through the winter season, the Ottawa Lions Track and Field Club athlete struggled with a bad lower back injury, but got over it just in time for track season, which included a fourth-place performance in the novice boys’ 800 m at OFSAA.

“My training for the past year has been good,” Van Brabant highlighted. “I’ve just been keeping it consistent, with weekly mileage and getting those long runs in.”

Despite being sick the week before the city finals and still feeling a little congested, Van Brabant was satisfied with his performance and is looking forward to the chance to compete in his club’s backyard.

“It’s fun to be able to race on the home field. Hopefully we should have a little bit of an advantage,” noted Van Brabant, who followed in his older sister Amelia’s footsteps as an XC city champ.

As OFSAA hosts, the national capital association receives twice as many entries as it would for an away championships. The four schools with the lowest team score in each division (calculated by adding their top 4 runners’ placings) at the city finals qualified five runners each, while the 10 best individuals who didn’t qualify with their teams secured their spot on the provincial start line as well.

Immaculata’s four-runner entry of Maxime Lanca (22nd), Henry Smith (33rd), Justin Rioux (36th) and Ben Smith (37th) made the most of each position to claim the final OFSAA qualification spot by four points over Glebe.

The individual OFSAA berths went to St. Francis Xavier’s Xavier Rose Royo (fourth), Glebe’s Erich Schreiner (fifth), Redeemer Christian’s Ezra Van Gilst (eighth), Sacred Heart’s Ethan Lyons (ninth), Louis Picton (10th) who beat Louis-Riel teammate Callum Dunbrack (11th) by .6 seconds, Holy Trinity’s Arik Bonilla (12th), Garneau’s Elliott Roy-Gonzalez (14th), St. Joseph’s Hawksley Byrne (16th) and St. Pius’ Jakob Lafferty (17th).

The Ottawa Sports Pages will be posting recaps and photo galleries race-by-race each weekday from Oct. 25-Nov. 1 leading into the 2024 OFSAA XC Championships. Find them all on our XC Week webpage, presented by Ottawa Orienteering.

NCXC24 Junior Boys’ Photo Gallery

Photos by Zach Sikka, sikkasnapshots.com