So far his choice to focus his attention on the sport of archery over ski racing is paying dividends.

The St. Michael's College grad, who at 20 is the youngest shooter on the three-member Canadian men's archery team heading to the Beijing Games this week, is quick to confess he misses racing.

A multi-athlete in his third year at Queen's University, Burnes wonders every now and then if he could have been a contender for the Canadian ski racing team, but he harbours no regrets.

"I enjoyed them both immensely, but being on the Olympic (archery) team after just three years of competing, I think I made the right choice," said the Yonge-Lawrence area resident. "Archery, like racing, was just one of those things that I felt naturally inclined towards."

Burnes, who finished third at an Olympic team selection meet in Scarborough last month to qualify alongside Scarborough's Crispin Duenas and Winnipeg's Jay Lyons, said he took to the bow like a duck to water.

Much like racing, things immediately "just started to click," he said.

"It was like racing, but I progressed at a faster rate and I saw no plateau in my near future," he said. "And now, every year I have been improving, shooting personal best scores at almost every tournament."

To this day, he said he still hasn't hit a peak. He's hoping to do so this summer in China.

Burnes, one of the youngest Olympians shooting at the Games, is buoyed by the fact his team is one of the strongest ever assembled for Canada.

The men's program, he proclaimed, has a lot of promise, not only this Olympic year but for years to come. As for this year's Olympic squad, he's convinced it can finish top-eight in prelims, then top-four.

"Crispin and Jay are two of the best shooters this country has ever produced," said the five-foot-ten, 172-pound Burnes.

"I'm just happy to be on a team with them," he continued, noting all three are on the same page and looking to do big things in Beijing.

"We all have the right attitude going into this, we're all young but determined, and we all work well together... the whole camaraderie and chemistry thing is there."

Burnes and Duenas will fly out of Toronto Thursday to pick up Lyons in Winnipeg before carrying on to Beijing on Friday - a week before the ranking rounds.

The team event begins August 11 and individual preliminaries start on the 13th.

"I don't know what to expect, I'm going to take it one arrow at a time, that's about all I can do," he said. "Every one of those athlete are going in there at the peak of their physical ability, but it's the mental (game) that really separates you from first to 64th."