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Posted on Wednesday August 26th at 9:37 p.m.
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The 28-year-old is almost a certainty to be selected for the Olympics, having reached the A qualification standard.
She will follow in the footsteps of Madonna Harris at Calgary in 1988, the last person to date female or male to ski cross-country for New Zealand at a Winter Olympics.
"I still have to wait until January to be named in the team but I've met the A qualification for the Olympics," Calder said during a break from the Winter Games cross-country programme at Snow Farm this week.
"I'm hopeful, but I guess they still have to say yes. This would be something pretty cool for the sport to get someone there and, hopefully, it'll raise the profile of the sport in New Zealand and show kids in school that it's a really healthy, really fun sport to do."
Calder, who has held dual citizenship since birth, might speak with an Aussie twang, having grown up there with her mother, but she had no problem deciding which country she would ski for.
"New Zealand is where I call home. Most of my family are here, and I go for the All Blacks, so it was a pretty easy decision for me."
She spends most of her time racing for a team in Switzerland, where she has learnt to speak German and the Swiss-German dialect. "I come back to New Zealand whenever I can, but that's only about two or three months of the year. I've got a team over in Switzerland of really good, world-standard athletes and a good support crew over there. In order to do my best for New Zealand, I've had to base myself overseas," Calder, who lives in Tauranga when not training at Snow Farm, near Wanaka, said.
"There's not a lot of support. I've got one sponsor in Tauranga Grace Orthopaedics but that only covers about a third of the bills. The rest, I'm lucky that my family are trying to help out, and I'm doing as much work as I can on the side to make ends meet. It's a pretty tough existence; you continually have to cut corners."
Calder has been affected by a cold during this week's cross-country racing and had not been able to ski at her best.
She is placing realistic expectations on herself ahead of the Olympics.
"I'd just like to do my best for New Zealand, put them up on the world stage and get some cred for New Zealand as a skiing nation. If everything goes right, I think some top results could be possible if we get the skis right, if I'm healthy, if training's gone well."
SOURCE: The Southland Times
ARTICLE: By NATHAN BURDON