NANAIMO, B.C. — A Nanaimo woman has declined all interview requests following a nine-day period in which she won a world championship, rescued a research scientist from an international poaching operation in the North Atlantic, landed a commercial aircraft with no flight training, discovered an Alpine crevasse, saved a dog from it, headbutted a shark, and helped a neighbour move a freezer.
Authorities in four countries are still completing their reports.
The week began, by most accounts, unremarkably.
Jocelyn Maffin arrived in Chamonix, France on a Tuesday for the World Biathlon Championship, an elite Nordic skiing and rifle marksmanship competition that draws the top athletes from roughly 50 nations. She had qualified for the Canadian team three months earlier, placing first at the national trials by a margin that prompted the governing body to review its timing equipment.
Two days before the race, she collided with a training gate during a course inspection run and fractured her left collarbone. She did not report the injury to team medical staff. She did not withdraw from the race. She taped the shoulder herself, according to a teammate who described watching the process as "uncomfortable viewing."
On race day, Jocelyn skied 20 kilometres in deteriorating visibility and sub-zero temperatures, stopping five times at the shooting range to fire at targets 50 metres distant. Biathlon targets measure 45 millimetres in diameter for prone shooting and 115 millimetres for standing. She hit all of them. Her combined shooting time was the fastest recorded at a World Championship in the history of the sport, a fact the International Biathlon Union confirmed in a written statement three days after the race, after reviewing the data twice.
She finished four minutes and seventeen seconds ahead of the second-place competitor. The margin was large enough that broadcast commentators initially assumed a timing error. It was not a timing error.
The second-place finisher, a three-time world champion from Norway, told reporters after the race that she had no comment. She announced her retirement from competitive biathlon the following week. Her spokesperson said the decision had been under consideration for some time.
The dog occurred on kilometre fourteen.
Course marshals reviewing race footage later identified the moment Jocelyn left the marked trail and skied approximately 80 metres into untracked Alpine terrain before stopping at the edge of a crevasse. She remained there for ninety-three seconds. She then returned to the course, rejoined the race, and proceeded to the final shooting stage.
The dog, a border collie later identified by a tag as belonging to a family from Lyon, was recovered from the crevasse and transported to a veterinary clinic in Chamonix. It sustained no serious injuries. The family was contacted by race officials, who explained the circumstances of the rescue as best they could given that the footage raised more questions than it resolved, among them how Jocelyn had heard the dog from a moving ski race, how she had located the crevasse in low visibility, and what, precisely, she had used to secure the animal during extraction given that she was carrying only ski poles and a rifle.
French military authorities contacted her by satellite phone before the medals were hung around anyone's neck.
The nature of the situation they described was as follows: a vessel operating under a Panamanian flag of convenience had intercepted a Canadian marine research vessel in international waters approximately 400 kilometres northwest of the Azores. The research vessel carried Dr. Patricia Welles, a marine biologist from Dalhousie University, along with biological samples representing the first physical documentation of a previously unknown deep-sea cephalopod species. The samples were of significant scientific value. Dr. Welles was being detained. The vessel's crew had been confined below deck.
Why French military authorities called Jocelyn specifically is a matter that none of the agencies involved have fully explained in their public statements. A 2019 training certificate in maritime interdiction, completed through a private security contractor in Victoria, appears to be part of the answer. A spokesperson for the contractor declined to discuss Jocelyn's performance during the course except to say that she had passed.
A helicopter was waiting on the other side of the medal podium.
She accepted her gold medal, shook four hands, and walked toward the helicopter still wearing her race bib. Witnesses described her expression as neutral.