Two Drumheller Firefighters came home from the National FireFit Championship with more than personal bests and medals.
They come home with a 2016 FireFit event for the valley.
Duane Bolin and Merv Smith are avid competitors. They competed in both individual and team events at nationals in Kitchener, Ontario on September 19 and 20.
Duane ran a personal best of 1:53 in his individual event, Smith finished with a 2:10, a season best. In the two-man relay, they ran a 1:53 in the wildcard round.
In the team event, on competition day, they ran a 1:56 in the two man, which placed them second overall in the category.
“The team we lost to, we beat them twice this year,” said Bolin laughing. “They had the race of their life and beat us by a second and half.”
They also came home with the okay to host a regional Fire fit competition in 2016.
“We have a good relationship with the organizers and we see them every weekend we compete,” said Bolin. “We got to know them really well when we hosted it in 2011. They loved the venue, it is unique how we had it beside the World’s Largest Dinosaur, it is a perfect fit.”
In 2011 Drumheller hosted about 120 in the individual events from across Canada.
The Drumheller event next year has the potential for even more as Bolin explains this will be a regional contest on the weekend before nationals, which will be hosted in Calgary.
“We’re hosting on September 10 and 11. The following weekend is being hosted at Spruce Meadows. The good thing is how nationals work is there are three wildcard days before the actual tournament,” he explains. “With Drumheller being the week before we might get a lot of the national top end competitors to come to Drumheller the week before knowing they can race Saturday and Sunday, and then pop into Calgary and race the rest of the week.”
“We might get a lot of the top end athletes from out east. They will come out early and make a week holiday of it. We could get a really good showing.”
He says they typically cap events at about180 individual competitors.
‘I think we could reach that max,” said Bolin adding that the community has the capacity to host this size of event.
“It could be more beneficial to the town with more people staying at hotels and using restaurants,” he said. They are in the initial planning phases. It appears this could be the same weekend as the Dinosaur Valley Half Marathon.
“I don’t think we will conflict, I think we will compliment each other,” he said.
