Ice oval is expected to firm up for racing Sunday morning. 250 News photos

Prince George, B.C. – “I’m very confident we’ll be able to go in the morning.” With that emphatic statement the Speed Skate Canada Technical Rep for the 2015 Canada Winter Games says there will be Long Track Speed Skating at the Outdoor Ice Oval on Sunday.

The first Long Track races of the games had to be delayed on Saturday after warm temperatures and rain caused a deterioration of the ice surface. Speed Skate Canada’s Christina Chenard says “we were very, very close to being able to race this (Saturday) morning, the ice was almost ready. So we opted to postpone by a day.”

“Tonight it’s supposed to be much colder than it was Last night (Friday). It’s also supposed to get colder earlier in the evening. Last night it only started to go below zero really around 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning. Tonight it’s supposed to start getting cold around 9, 10 o’clock at night which gives us a lot more cold time on the ice.”

“The other thing that we have opted to do is that we are starting racing significantly earlier than originally scheduled. So we will have athletes arriving on our venue tomorrow morning at 5:15. Warm-up will go at 6 a.m. and the racing will start at 7 am.” Chenard says “if we start as scheduled and everything goes as per usual, we’ll be done racing by 9:30 in the morning.”

Races scheduled for Sunday morning are the men’s 3000 metres and the women’s 1500 metres.

If there are any changes to the plan they will be dispatched by the Games Operations Centre.  The Outdoor Ice Oval is located behind the CN Centre and Kin arenas.