Meet the family behind the Lappe Nordic Ski Centre in Thunder Bay, Ont.
CBC
At 2 a.m. last Wednesday, Tuija Puiras's alarm woke her up and she immediately flipped on her television.
Puiras had tuned in to watch Canadian duo Graham Ritchie and Antoine Cyr take home Canada's best-ever Olympic finish in cross-country team sprint in Beijing.
"It had to be watched live," laughed the owner and manager of the Lappe Nordic Ski Centre, located on the outskirts of Thunder Bay, Ont.
Many in Thunder Bay's cross-country ski community watched that race with vested interest, as Ritchie trains with the National Team Development Centre, based in the northwestern Ontario city.
But this is just the latest in a long line of Olympic and world-class athletes that have trained on the trails and hills in Lappe. That was always the point of the trails, Puiras told CBC News.
WATCH | Graham Ritchie and Antoine Cyr's post-race interview with CBC Sports
In the 1970s, Puiras and her late husband Reijo bought the property, and started building ski trails through the dense bushes of the region.
"He started the centre as a training ground for himself and for local skiers so that people would hone the kinds of skills that you need at the international and national level," Puiras said of her husband.
Reijo Puiras, who died in 2017 at the age of 65, competed in the 1974 World Cross-Country Ski Championships in Falun, Sweden, and then the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.
While it may be hard to imagine now, with its extensive trail system and well-established culture, the Lappe Nordic Ski Centre was originally run out of the Puiras's family home.
"In the very first years, we'd have everybody sitting in our living room, changing their shirts after a ski," Puiras said.
Over the years, the family bought more land so they could expand the trails. The ski centre — which today hosts a canteen, changing rooms, saunas and waxing rooms — was originally a school bus garage that the family converted.
The centre hosted a number of national and international competitions, including the World Junior Trials and the Canadian National Championships. In the 1990s, the ski centre began to support the National Team Development Centre (NTDC), which works under Cross Country Canada to train elite athletes.
"It is exciting, and I think in some sense you feel like a part of their story," Puiras said of the fact her family created the trails used for elite training and competitions.
