Hay River’s Brendan Green named to Canadian Olympic team

Brendan Green is heading to his third Olympic Games.

The 31-year-old, from Hay River, was officially named to Canada’s biathlon team for the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics on Tuesday.

Pyeongchang will be Green’s third Olympic Games. He placed 10th as part of the men’s relay squad at Vancouver 2010 and competed in a range of events at Sochi 2014, moving up to seventh in the relay and taking a best individual finish of ninth in the mass start.

Canada’s 10-strong biathlon team also includes two-time Olympian Rosanna Crawford, who is Green’s partner.

It’s official! @brendanjgreen and I will be competing at our 3rd Olympics this February! #gocanadago @TeamCanada #pyeongchang2018 thank you to everyone who supported and cheered us on over the years! https://t.co/HI0GwlLqEI pic.twitter.com/rBJ1XOSg90

— Rosanna Crawford (@RosannaCrawford) January 16, 2018

In the mixed relay event, staged for the first time at Olympic level during Sochi 2014, Crawford and Green exchanged a baton while competing together for Canada. “Not too many people can say that they’ve done an Olympic race with their girlfriend,” Green later told the CBC.

Kevin Koe, who grew up in Yellowknife, will also attend the Olympics as the skip of Team Canada’s male curling rink. Sochi 2014 Olympian Michael Gilday, from Yellowknife, will serve as a short track speed skating analyst for CBC Sports, while Cabin Radio’s Ollie Williams attends his fifth Olympics as play-by-play for Britain’s BBC.

Green’s achievement in reaching a third Olympics would bring a smile to the late Pat Bobinski, a fellow Hay River resident whose decades of tireless work promoting biathlon in the NWT were a major factor in Green’s early success.

Green paid a moving tribute late last year, when Bobinski – who passed away in the summer of 2017 – was celebrated through posthumous induction into the NWT Sport Hall of Fame.

“Pat was my first biathlon coach. When I was 14 and started to have Olympic aspirations and dreams, Pat was the first guy that really believed in me,” said Green at the time.

“He made a promise to me one day at training. He said: ‘When you qualify for the Olympics and race at the Olympics, I promise I’ll be there.’

“In 2010, when I made my Olympic debut in Vancouver, Pat was in the stands. I knew he’d be there.”