Biathlon

Rocky View County, Alta. - For Olympians Rosanna Crawford and Megan Imrie, this wasn't their usual training session.

The biathletes traded cross-country skis for military boots and their modern-day rifles for 1800s-replica weapons. Yet, as if they were at the starting line, they instinctively lunged forward when the director called "action." Over and over, on a warm day last summer, they ran through a forest west of Calgary, flopped on the ground and fired at rusted cans teetering on a log as the cameras rolled.

And, for once in their athletic lives, aim didn't matter. The special-effects expert made sure each shot was a hit.

"Here, we're trying to portray our sport in a new, fun way," Crawford, 21, of Canmore, Alta., who will represent Canada at the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, said during a break from filming.

Imrie, 23, who hails from Falcon Lake, Man., and will also be at the Games, said that without the Olympics at home, opportunities like this to put some little-known sports in the spotlight wouldn't come around.

"I loved it," she added. "It was way more cool than shooting my normal rifle. It was nice - you couldn't miss."

The women are among more than a dozen athletes, including hockey great Wayne Gretzky, champion curler Jennifer Jones and Olympic medalist figure skater Elizabeth Manley who dove into the world of acting as part of a short-films initiative titled Athletes in Motion, which will be shown on television and the Web this week.

The two-minute shorts - 11 altogether - were funded by CTV's Bravo!FACT (the Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent), which has given $15-million in grants to filmmakers to produce about 1,400 shorts over the past 15 years. It's also part of CTV's plan as the Canadian television-rights holder for the 2010 Games to make homegrown Olympians household names.

"This is something where we'll feature the athletes as performers," said Judy Gladstone, executive director of Bravo!FACT, who spearheaded the project, which was two years in the making.

Gladstone didn't want just another profile of jocks talking about their sports or doing them. She wanted to show off the talents of both athletes and filmmakers in a series of mini-movies.

Filming took place last August around British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, and featured bobsled, luge, skeleton, curling, figure skating, freestyle and paralympic skiing and, of course, hockey. Women's ski jumping also made the cut, even though athletes lost in their courtroom bid to be included in the Games.

Directors, drawn from the world of music videos and film, included actor Jason Priestley and author Douglas Coupland. On the sets, the 100-per-cent Canadian crews were eager to have some small role in the Games.
"Working with the athletes is unbelievable. I'm so lucky," said director Clarence Ford, a choreographer who has worked with Cirque du Soleil and So You Think You Can Dance Canada.

"Canadians can feel really proud because it's in their hometown. I want people to see these athletes as celebrities," he added.

As the crew on the biathlon film, best described as a kind of training montage circa 1861, the year the world's first biathlon club was established, prepared a log cabin for the next scene, producer John Kerr and reflected on the project. "Hopefully, this can be the beginning of something ongoing. It doesn't necessarily need to happen because of the Games," he said.

The women of biathlon are used to taking on new challenges. Some athletes - Crawford and Imrie included - already posed nude for the Bold Beautiful Biathlon calendar to raise money for training and competition expenses.

Taking their event out of the sports pages once again may even spark something else. "Somebody who might never actually hear about biathlon now has an opportunity to hear about it," Crawford said. "And, who knows, maybe this will get them up and off the couch and out there doing exercise and maybe four years from now they'll be the ones competing at the Olympics or doing a mini-movie about some sport that they got inspired by."

Athletes in Motion, a one-hour special hosted by Seamus O'Regan, is set to air on CTV on Saturday Feb. 6 at 4 p.m. ET/PT and on Bravo! on Sunday Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT. The shorts will also be found online www.bravofact.com and ctvolympics.ca.