Rosanna Crawford will have her second taste of the Olympics this Thursday in the women’s 15 km individual biathlon race.

The 21-year-old Canmore native – who is proudly sponsored by Sunshine Village –
fought hard in her first-ever Olympic appearance on Saturday, Feb. 13.

Soon after Saturday’s race, Crawford took to her blog.

“I started off the race feeling pretty good, the crowd was so loud and helped fuel me around the course. I came into my prone shooting, saying my cue words in my head, fired off my five shots and hit them all,” Crawford wrote.

But once back on the course, she wrote, her legs were starting to feel heavy.

“I didn’t have much snap, but I just tried to push through the pain. I came into my standing, set up and hit, hit, hit, hit, hit! Awesome, 10/10! What a great way to start off my Olympic races!

“But my legs were just not feeling it and I could feel my self slowing down. I crossed the finish line in 16th, but that doesn’t mean much when only 22 people had finished. I ended up 72nd.

“It’s sort of bitter-sweet.”

Crawford is optimistic, however. She writes that she has come a long way in the past year.

Her heart condition caused her to miss a lot of training over the past three years, and, she writes, she felt “so privileged to even be on the start line” in the Vancouver Games.

Looking beyond the 2010 Games, Crawford said in a conversation with Sunshine Village, she plans to finish off the season snowboarding at the ’Shine with friends before getting back into training over the summer.

And she may even make an appearance at Sunshine Village.

“I’d love to be a liftie for a day,” she says. “I actually applied at Sunshine once, the winter after I graduated high school. But it wouldn’t have fit into my schedule.”

Sunshine Village partner, Marmot Basin, also had a hand in helping Olympian Jenn Heil to the podium – Heil is sponsored by Marmot Basin.

The 26-year-old won a silver medal for Canada in the ladies’ mogul event on Feb. 13.