The Quintilio siblings’ season just keeps sliding along.
Three weeks into the Calforex Cup Biathlon Alberta season Henrik and Antija Quintilio, after competing in eight different races, the brother and sister duo found themselves on the podium seven times. The latest being in Camrose on Jan. 14 and 15 where Henrik brought home two gold medals — one in the three-kilometre sprint and the four kilometre pursuit sprint, while Antija earned a silver in the three kilometre sprint. Henrik, 13, competes in the boys Div 1 category using a .22 calibre rifle shooting at targets 50-metres away while Antija, 10, competes in the Air Rifle 2 event with targets 10-metres away.
Biathlon is a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting disciplines.
“I am really happy with how they are both progressing,” said mother and coach Ntala Quintilio.
Ntala and her husband Kevin are former competitors on the biathlon World Cup circuit from 1993 to 1998. Ntala, then known as Ntala Skinner, for the United States team and Kevin for Canada. Besides racing on the World Cup circuit, Ntala qualified for both the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway (although she didn’t race) and 1998 in Nagano, Japan. Kevin also qualified for the 1998 Olympics for Canada.
Besides Henrik and Antija the couple also coach a number of athletes from the Devon Bears.
“Antija has just been so consistent this year. Once again she hit all of her targets and skied very well,” she said, noting in every event last season and so far this year Antija has been perfect from the shooting line.
As for Henrik, he too hit all his targets in his first race (three-kilometre sprint), which helped him finish close to a minute ahead of his nearest rival.
This put him in good position the next day in the four-kilometre sprint.
“It is also called the pursuit race,” Ntala explained, adding in a pursuit race normally competitors start in the order of finish from the shorter sprint distance, with the time between skiers being the amount of time they finished ahead of the next competitor.
In the youth categories skiers start five seconds apart with the winner determined by who crosses the finish line first. In this race Henrik missed one target and was assessed a penalty lap, but was still able to win by close to 40 seconds.
“I am really proud of how both Antija and Henrik did,” she said, adding the thing she was most pleased with was Henrik’s improvement shooting.
Ntala said so far this season his shooting percentage has been hovering around 73 per cent and in Camrose Henrik’s accuracy increased to 97 per cent.
“It shows good ability to assess the range as he is coming in and then having good range procedure and the process of going through each shot,” she said.
Unfortunately, the Quintilio’s were not able to continue their success to the next event in Edmonton on the weekend of Jan. 28-29 due to the lack of snow and it looks like the next event in Grande Praire is also in jeopardy.
“It looks like it is going to be too cold. In biathlon it has to be -15 or warmer because when it is colder than that the air rifles become too erratic,” Ntala said.
The first event of six-race season was in Canmore, in early December. Henrick, 13, brought home two silver medals in both the individual and sprint events. In the next event on the first weekend in January, Henrik finished in fourth in the sprint event and won the pursuit. Anija also won her sprint event.
