SHILO ROUSSEAU
Sport: Biathlon
Events: To be determined
Age: 25
Hometown: Thessalon, ON
Residence: Ottawa
Local Club: uOttawa Gee-Gees
First Olympics
Instagram: @shilo_rousseau
VIEW SHILO’S COMPETITION SCHEDULE HERE.
By Keiran Gorsky
Yves Rousseau was supposed to be an Olympian. That was before his ankle gave out two years before he got his opportunity at Calgary 1988. A military man, as were a great many biathletes in his era, Rousseau was well acquainted with this basest bodily treachery.
He tried and he tried to force his way back onto the competitive circuit, but his body refused to cooperate. Propped onto skis, his ankle swelled up to a rather alarming size. So quickly, the dream was over.
“I couldn’t do it anymore,” the elder Rousseau recalled in an interview. “I had to retire.”
As days went by, his six-year stand on the competitive circuit settled into some pocket of the past. Medals dangled in the doorway of his home in tiny Thessalon, Ontario, where he settled down as a welder. Close by, a signed portrait of Myriam Bedard, Canada’s only ever medalist in Olympic biathlon, sat on the wall.
It was roughly 26 years removed from his last race when he received a call from a club in neighbouring Blind River inviting his 12-year-old daughter Shilo Rousseau to compete in an air rifle race.
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Shilo had learned to ski, but holding an air gun was new to her. The night before the competition, the younger Rousseau learned where to place her hands on the contraption and how to align her sights.
“Whatever she takes on, she does it. Like she gives it her 100%,” Yves Rousseau underlined.
There was no world where Rousseau wasn’t going to become extremely proficient. From then on, every Sunday, they would make the 40-minute drive along Lake Huron to train at the club. They set up a target in the backyard they would shoot at together.
In the Antholz Valley nestled in the towering Rieserferner Mountains, it is the younger Rousseau who will be going to the Olympics 40 years after her father’s career-ending injury. Yves, her mother Cecilia, and all of Thessalon stand behind her.
It has been a slow and steady ascent through the IBU biathlon rankings all the way to Italy. While at the University of Ottawa, Rousseau burst onto the scene at the 2023 FISU Games in Lake Placid, where she became the first Canadian ever to win three medals at a Winter World University Games.
It wasn’t her first experience representing Canada in an international competition, but it seemed to Rousseau the first time she truly donned the maple leaf.
“At World Cups, it feels like it’s Biathlon Canada, not Team Canada,” Rousseau explained from her conditioning camp in Lavazè Pass, where soon-to-be Olympians are acclimating themselves to the altitude of the Italian Alps. “FISU is so special because you really feel like you’re part of Team Canada.”
Rousseau was offered a spot on Canada’s national team after the event, but opted to stay in Ottawa to finish her undergraduate degree en route to medical school. With a similar enthusiasm to which she speaks of her Olympic qualification, Rousseau was quick to mention the culmination of her studies – a research paper on the seasonal adaptive capabilities of goldfish published last summer in a prestigious biochemistry journal.
It was challenging, at times, watching her peers flying around the world on tour while she was confined to the trails of Gatineau. World Cup dates had an awful habit of coinciding with exam days.
Even lacking any competitions on the horizon, Rousseau was meticulous with her scant free time. She assured and reassured herself that biathlon was a sport well-suited to late bloomers. Her best course of action, she decided, was never to rush things.
“I wanted to get my schooling done and keep up my training in Ottawa so that when I got older I didn’t feel like I needed to hurry up and get on with my life and leave the sport earlier than I wanted to,” explained the 25-year-old.
It was never a challenge Yves dealt with during his career, nor was the financial burden so many Olympians and prospective Olympians face today. The prospect of a CAF Olympian, the elder Rousseau speculated, generated positive publicity. It was enough to earn him a livable wage.
“There’s nobody that could excel the way she does in the sports and at school at the same time,” Yves Rousseau signalled.
Shilo began to divide her time between school and ski after enrolling for a master’s degree in neuroscience. After spending most of her debut season toward the back of the pack, she surprised herself in qualifying for this year’s IBU World Cup. Years of training coalesced into a newfound confidence – and a slew of top-30 finishes in Oberhof and Ruhpolding.
The results inspired her to drop graduate school and commit to her athletic career for the time being. Rousseau has not yet decided what she will do if she is accepted into the University of Toronto’s medical school or the Northern Ontario School of Medicine University.
For a small-town kid, it has been more than a little disorienting hopping from competition to competition without a place to call home. Rousseau gave up her Ottawa apartment in July and has been living, as she describes, “out of a suitcase.”
But her real home has never felt far away, even continents apart. Back in Thessalon, Yves and Cecilia Rousseau have been arranging watch parties with carefully inserted explanations on how the sport works, in order to prepare an animated though largely unfamiliar audience. During her World Cup run, dozens crowded into the local curling club to watch her on a big screen.
“No matter how I do, they’re so proud of me,” Rousseau beamed. “It’s really motivating and encouraging having their support and knowing how proud of me they are. It’s been incredible.”
The festivities will continue on through the Olympics, with the local Tim Hortons reportedly providing Timbits and coffee for everyone. At home, Yves Rousseau will be watching.
“He’s over the moon,” Rousseau said of her father. “I feel like I’m living out his dream.”
Zach Connelly fast-tracks international rise with Olympic appearance
ZACH CONNELLY
Sport: Biathlon
Events: To be determined
Age: 24
Hometown: Orleans
Residence: Whistler, B.C.
Local Club: Chelsea Nordiq
First Olympics
Instagram: @zconnelly37
VIEW ZACH’S COMPETITION SCHEDULE HERE.
Rousseau will be joined by Ottawa’s Zachary Connelly on the men’s side. The Chelsea Nordiq product was part of Team Canada’s mad dash into the top-20 at the recent IBU Nations Cup to secure Canadian men four Olympic biathlon slots. Canada earned just enough points to squeak in.
“Damn, that was hard,” team veteran Adam Runnalls wrote on social media after the fact.
Connelly, 24, has established himself as one of the top Canadian biathletes in recent years and has been gaining international race experience in the IBU Cup and World Cup circuits, twice cracking the top-50 in individual races on the top tour.
Earning Olympic status represents quite the rise from the first time he stepped onto skis and fell flat on his face. Hailing from a driven family of ironman triathletes and marathoners, Connelly quickly figured out how to stay on his feet by watching YouTube tutorials. He learned to shoot after joining the Army Cadets at age 12 and trying biathlon near the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
Connelly moved to Whistler after graduating from high school at Louis-Riel to train at the Whistler Nordic Development Centre.
“It’s kind of where I want my life to go,” Connelly said in recounting his journey into the sport during a 2020 interview with the Ottawa Sports Pages, which did not receive a reply to interview requests in advance of the Olympics.
Read More: From youth worlds in Slovakia to Canada Games in Red Deer in a week for biathlete Zach Connelly
Connelly secured his spot in Italy with a series of positive results at the IBU Cup in the winter, including a 17th-place finish in the Mass Start 60 event in Lenzerheide.
“Generally, his skiing is quite strong. His shooting can be very good, but for sure, his strength lies in his skiing,” noted Andrew Chisholm, his national team coach. “He works incredibly hard, for sure.”
The men’s relay team will have a hard act to follow after surprising the world with a sixth-place finish in Beijing 2022.
OLYMPIC BIATHLON COMPETITION SCHEDULE:
Add Shilo’s full schedule to your calendar on this page.
Add Zach’s full schedule to your calendar on this page.
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