From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.
Erik Bjornsen, Sadie Bjornsen Maubet, and Rosie Brennan enjoy a very different race atmosphere at NordicX. (Photo: Eric Maurer / NordicX)
What comes to mind when you think of a cross country ski race? Depending on your location and how you choose to interact with the sport, there are likely a variety of answers to the question, but it’s likely that there are some common themes.
“Cross country events are pretty much all the same when you boil them down, you know?” said retired US Ski Team member and 2018 Olympian Reese Hanneman. “It’s a test of endurance and speed over a set course, and it’s timed, and you’re usually out there in the woods alone. And I mean, that’s what cross country [racing] always will be, but I always felt like there was room for more.”
In what he described as “living out [his] 10 year old dream”, Hanneman set out to break this mold. His dream came to fruition on April 2nd in his home of Anchorage, Alaska, as cross country skiers from the junior level to recent Olympians careened down the slopes at Hilltop Ski Area, rounding tight turns, skating uphill, and catching air – with some not-so-graceful landings – off of jumps before finishing amidst a festival atmosphere at the base. The event was NordicX, an untimed, head-to-head “nordic-cross” event where style points on the final kicker into the finish might earn you a lucky loser spot in the next round.
“I knew that there was a lot of appetite for [an event like] that because every time I coach kids, which has been quite a bit over my career, I see that same energy and excitement for hitting jumps and sessioning little whoopty-dos or tabletops. And basically, there’s no cross country event that caters to that.”
One of many kids enjoying the features on course and in the Kiddie Cross terrain park at NordicX. (Photo: Eric Maurer / NordicX)
While Hanneman wanted a non-traditional event, he was not looking to eliminate the character or skills of cross country skiing altogether. He pulled from his experience competing in the 2016 Red Bull Nordix event at Lake Louise in Alberta, where he raced against other top international skiers including Norway’s Petter Northug and his US Ski Teammate Andy Newell.
“It was so fun and it was so crazy and scary and fast. And I was like, ‘Man, I need to bring this to Alaska.’”
In creating his own event, he said he wanted to navigate the “delicate balance of new, exciting, and extreme, but also staying true to cross country skiing. It’s one thing to build a little booter next to the xc ski trail and ski ’round and ’round hitting it with your friends, and it’s another to try and package that experience into a full-on event that offers excitement for all ranges of skills and ages.”
JC Schoonmaker does a 360 into the finish at NordicX. (Photo: Eric Maurer / NordicX)
“I knew it needed the right venue,” Hanneman continued. “I wanted something ‘net downhill’ because otherwise I felt like it would be too similar to other xc races, a loop with the same start and finish meant that in order to have a huge downhill you would need a huge uphill. But I also wanted it to be ‘cross country’, so that it truly rewarded good cross country skiers, and so that cross country skis were truly the best tools for the job.”
As the course and conditions hinged on both the weather and Hilltop’s grooming, an official course map was never set. To ensure the event catered to skiers beyond the nucleus of elite skiers based in Anchorage, an A-, B-, and C-Line was established on each of the features, making air-time not requisite and allowing athletes to select a route that felt safe, at the expense of simply forgoing the fastest line, which might pay off in the end if it kept the racer upright with equipment intact.
Holding to the spirited theme of the event, Hanneman described it as “a freestyle event in both feel and in practice,” meaning there were no official course maps, no timing, and plenty of subjectivity in the results. Get sendy and try to 360 off the final kicker into the finish only to crash and stall out before the line? Style points – you just became the lucky loser and can move on. Flooded legs from the uphill sprint section cause you to catch an edge off the drop and yard sale? The crowd loved it – lucky loser spot for you also.
Not everyone stuck the landing at the finish of NordicX… (Photo: Eric Maurer / NordicX)
No official prologue seeded athletes; after a few hours where skiers could preview the course, the event simply kicked off with heats of six in the quarterfinal, splitting the 100 athletes between open and junior men’s and women’s categories. Among the field were six Olympians: alphabetically, Erik Bjornsen, Rosie Brennan, Hannah Halvorsen, Logan Hanneman, Sadie Bjornsen Maubet, and JC Schoonmaker, most of whom ended up on the podium at the end of the day. Next year, Hanneman hopes to include additional categories for parents, masters skiers, etc.
For those who weren’t up for racing or couldn’t quite match the on-ski agility of Maubet or Schoonmaker, a continuous stream of raffles offered plenty of alternative opportunities to win. A DJ fed the energy at the base, while emcees Rob Whitney and Lee Bolling kept the momentum alive between heats, announcing the winners of numerous prizes from sponsor companies like Odlo, Fischer, Oakley, Skull Candy, Toko, and more.
Emcees, director of radness, associate director of send: keeping the energy high at the base with continuous prize drawings. (Photo: Eric Maurer / NordicX)Rosie Brennan charges around a tight turn as she races through the heats at NordicX. (Photo: Russell Hood / NordicX)
Though these factors added to the festival atmosphere at the base, spectating alone was plenty exciting. In particular, the finish of the senior men’s final was one to watch.
“You couldn’t have scripted a better finish,” Hanneman laughed. “You had JC Schoonmaker, who’s one of the fastest sprinters in the world right now, and Erik Bjornsen, who was just on fire all day back from retirement. [They were] just completely sending it and just flying through this final steep slalom section, and Erik is trying to catch JC, and JC is trying to hold him off. They go to the finish, over this big table top, and everyone’s holding their breath. JC goes off it and does this massive spread-eagle.”
But he didn’t stick the landing. Landing a little too far in the backseat, Schoonmaker’s skis washed out from underneath him, leaving him sliding across the snow toward the inflated archway that marked the finish. He stalled out just before reaching the line.
“Erik is coming at Mach 50, about to beat him to the line. JC has to roll over and, like, flops [his skis] over the line.”
Erik Bjornsen sticks the landing, but JC Schoonmaker flops over the line first for the win.a (Photo: Eric Maurer / NordicX)
From a photo finish, Schoonmaker was awarded the victory, with Bjornsen narrowly taking second. U20 APU athlete Michael Earnhart skied to third, taking the final podium step.
“NordicX was one of the most fun races I’ve participated in,” wrote Schoonmaker after the event. “It took me back to middle school building jumps with my friends and seeing how far we push the skinny ski boundaries. Everyone who took part in putting the race on did a great job and with the spectators who came out, it really just had a good vibe to it. Everyone was having a great time and I’d definitely like to do it again. My highlight was watching some of the younger skiers before the race who were hitting the last jump doing 360’s and backflips and seeing how pumped up they were to be there.”
The men’s NordicX podium: JC Schoonmaker came out on top in a dramatic photo finish with Erik Bjornsen, while Michael Earnhart took third. (Photo: Ophira Group / NordicX)
In the senior women’s senior division, it was a current and former APU athlete sweep, with Sadie Bjornsen Maubet taking the win ahead of Hannah Halvorsen in second and Rosie Brennan in third.
“Nordic X was a super fun event, with a fun new twist to nordic skiing, and nordic ski spectating,” wrote Bjornsen Maubet. “Reese did an amazing job of dreaming up this super fun and social way to share our sport with our community… I relied on my thirty years of spending most of my days on nordic skis to attempt to gracefully make it down the little jump park. Though incredibly inspired by all the young kids catching tons of air, and throwing font and back flips, I figured I better save those moves for another life. The day was full of tons of laughs, cheers, and excitement. It felt special to put a bib on beside my previous teammates, and participate in the fun.
“I look forward to watching this spectator friendly event grow in the Anchorage Community. I think my husband had the most fun of us all, as he showed up with his chainsaw without the blade, some flares, and wearing a hat that said ‘Make the Bjornsen’s Great Again’. He was the cheering squad of the day, representing his French blood and the famous French Team Valoche cheering squad.”
The women’s podium at NordicX: Sadie Bjornsen Maubet took the top spot ahead of Hannah Halvorsen and Rosie Brennan. (Photo: Ophira Group / NordicX)When you can’t spray, pour. Winner Sadie Bjornsen Maubet shares a champagne celebration with third place Rosie Brennan. (Photo: Ophira Group / NordicX)
For Hanneman, there were also a number of smaller highlights he’s enjoyed looking back on. While marking the course with food coloring, he loved watching skiers riding the lift to the top of the course on their skinny skis, and seeing athletes from 13-year-olds to veteran racers sessioning the course to dial in their lines and strategize. During the heats, he watched a number of young athletes gain confidence, and perhaps some additional skills, after working through initial trepidation surrounding the new race experience.
“There were some juniors who you could see at the start of the day were pretty intimidated by the last part of the course, which was really steep and had some sharp slalom turns,” Hanneman explained. “It was definitely challenging their skill level. And by the end of the day, like they were coming through and just ripping, and they were having so much fun and you could tell they had gotten a lot better just in a couple hours.”
One of many kids enjoying the features on course and in the Kiddie Cross terrain park at NordicX. (Photo: Eric Maurer / NordicX)
For those 12 and under and too young to compete on the full course, there was a “Kiddie Cross” course, which included banked turns, tabletops, a rhythm section, and a number of other terrain park features for kids to play on and session.
“The parents love it, right? Because the parents are just sitting there in the sun, watching their little kids just love cross country skiing.”
He commented that he had friends who had been trying to sell their child on cross country skiing but felt like it was a hard sell compared to downhill skiing. “They were like, ‘Oh, man, I’ve been trying to get her out on their cross country skis all year and they don’t want to go,’ and they brought him to this event and their kids were like on their on their cross country skis just doing laps up the hill 1000 times so they could go back and hit the jumps again. So for me, that right there is like the essence of this event.”
A pair of NordicX racers ride the chairlift with their skinny skis. (Photo: Andre Horton / NordicX)
In reflecting on the event and its impact on the local cross country ski community, Hanneman felt it added “a shot of energy… I mean, there’s so many cool races out there, but this is just a little bit different. And I think it gets people excited.”
While the biggest air and most impressive skill was seen from the elite racers, Hanneman kept coming back to the youth participating in the event, highlighting that it really was his boyhood dream to see an event like this in Alaska.
“Something like this would have probably excited me for a whole year like knowing that it was coming. And I think the more people that we get excited about cross country skiing the better, because I think it can be a really fun sport, but, let’s be honest, sometimes it has this perception of being kind of slow and boring, and hard.”
He described it as the type of event that could nudge skiers with that perception to give it a try, opening their eyes to what’s possible and how fun the sport can be. While there are perhaps other locations in the US that might be a candidate to host, Hanneman also explained why Anchorage is an ideal location for NordicX.
Spectators catch the NordicX action from the base of the Hilltop Ski Area in Anchorage. (Photo: Eric Maurer / NordicX)
“We have a huge ski market here, massive participation in high school skiing, and obviously a ridiculous number of elite-level racers here.”
On all accounts, the first year of NordicX was a success, which begs the question: what are the plans for next year?
“So many people came up and were like, ‘I can’t wait for next year.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, man, I don’t know.’ I haven’t necessarily committed, you know? This was a crazy undertaking.”
Since retiring from professional ski racing, Hanneman has been investing his time and energy in starting and serving as CEO for the PR agency, Ophira Group. He and his wife also welcomed a baby girl in March, 2021, and he’s remodeling their family home. He expressed that pulling off the inaugural event was already “pushing the limits” of what he should take on.
Balancing CEO and family life with NordicX planning, Reese Hanneman hosts the xc ski event of his childhood dreams. (Photo: Ophira Group / NordicX)
“I do want to say thank you to the team that we put together which includes Lauri Bassett (exec. administrator at Cross Country AK) and Rob Whitney, and the people at Hilltop, because without them, this absolutely would not have happened.”
As for next year, “people are too excited about it for it to not happen again.” And he wants to see it happen for a second year. To pull it off, he anticipates putting together a larger team to more evenly distribute the workload, “just so that we can all maintain a healthy NordicX-life balance.”
DIY Dachstein: September tracks on a snowfield in the Chugach mountains, Sept. 27, 2020. (photo: Gavin Kentch)
The koan that skiers are made in the summer has been around for longer than this website. The related truism, that summer snow time is necessary to effectively compete as a high-level skier come winter, also has a venerable history.
For example, here’s Luke Bodensteiner, writing in Endless Winter about why he had journeyed to a place where “the weather sucks all year long” to ski on the Sognefjellet snowfields in August 1993: “We all come to this spot simply to be able to ski a race faster than everyone else.” Or Billy Demong, discussing summer training on Eagle Glacier nearly 20 years ago: “In the late 90s and early 2000s, we were all working super hard, but we hadn’t quite broken through. I was on Eagle Glacier in 2002 because as a team we were committed to be the best.” Or Andy Newell, who first skied on Eagle the same year: “As the overall level on the World Cup continues to rise, summer training camps have become even more important. To be competitive at the very top level, you simply must get on snow at least once a summer.”
Bottom line, as Reese Hanneman wrote in an essay for a Boulder Nordic Sport catalog a few years ago, “All the best skiers in the world are on snow in the summer. Do you really want to try to be the best skier who wasn’t on snow?”
All well and good, but what happens when a global pandemic interrupts access to estival snow, for many athletes for the first time in a decade? More rollerskiing, of course, is the predictable and relatively simple answer. But bigger picture, it’s also a chance to introduce a new stimulus to long-established training patterns, and to replace travel and camps with increased consistency training out of a home base. Judging from conversations with three veteran athletes and two longtime coaches, high-level American skiers seem to be cautiously optimistic about how well this summer’s training will prepare them for the 2020/2021 World Cup season that starts in Ruka late next month.
(Disclaimer: It should go without saying that the global health toll of the coronavirus pandemic, and resultant inequality, are bigger problems than the inability of professional athletes to train on snow in the summer in the manner to which they are accustomed. Because this is a ski news website, the rest of this article focuses on the latter, but that is not intended to deny the existence and importance of the former.)
Background: In a normal year…
Here’s another saying you may have heard recently: These are uncertain times. In a normal summer, the Alaskan skiers would be on snow through at least mid-May, then all national-team skiers would meet in Bend for a two-week on-snow camp in the second half of May. Skiers with Alaska Pacific University Nordic Training Center, or APU, would then spend one week a month in each of June, July, and August skiing on Eagle Glacier, a short helicopter flight above Girdwood, Alaska.
Some national-team skiers – typically heavy on Stratton Mountain School and Craftsbury athletes, less so APU – would then spend two to three weeks in New Zealand in late August and early September, nearly all of it on snow at the Snow Farm. Groomed skiing returns to Independence Mine, about 75 minutes outside of Anchorage, in mid-October (probably), and to Frozen Thunder, in Canmore, about a week later (quite reliably). Arriving in Europe a few weeks ahead of the season’s first World Cup races typically affords athletes more on-snow time before first putting on a bib.
Summer skiing at Independence Mine, above Palmer, Alaska, May 30, 2020. (photo: Gavin Kentch)
This year, Independence Mine was skiable through the end of May, but everything else has been off the table. No Bend Camp; no Eagle Glacier; certainly no international travel to New Zealand, let alone to Canada for Frozen Thunder or Forêt Montmorency. It’s hard to survey the entire country, but this reporter’s cumulative four-plus hours of skiing since June 1, on snowfields in southcentral Alaska, may be among the highest on-snow summer nordic training loads in the nation, depending on how much time APU athlete Ari Endestad put in during a late-June (!) crust skiing trip in the Alaska Range. Until snow starts to accumulate at Independence Mine – the Mat-Su Ski Club’s historical first date of grooming there has recently been a tantalizingly close October 15 – American skiers’ collective summer snow drought looks likely to continue.
What all this means
So is this a problem when it comes to on-snow performance in the upcoming race season? Not really, according to multiple athletes and coaches.
“You can accomplish 95 percent of your technique goals, perhaps,” on rollerskis, U.S. Cross Country Team Program Director Chris Grover said in a late-May interview with Cross Country Skier magazine (22:54 mark of podcast), speaking at a time when summer training options were still unknown. “And so we’re in a good place; even if we never touch snow this summer, we’ll be ready to race when we get to next winter.”
“We’ve had many instances over the years with athletes who have missed on-snow opportunities in the preparation period, and gone on to have breakthrough winters,” echoed USST Head Coach Matt Whitcomb in a recent email to FasterSkier. “The dryland training is the cake, and the snow is the frosting. Americans will be frosting our cakes this fall when the snow flies, and this should lead to top performances during key mid-season international championships. I’m not one who attaches irreplaceable value to prep period on-snow training.”
2018 U.S. Ski Team camp at the Snow Farm in New Zealand. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)
“The assessment period, that’s still ahead of us; that’s the race season,” echoed longtime APU Head Coach Erik Flora in a recent phone interview. “But … at least the athletes I work with, they’re in a good position right now heading into the winter.”
“Of course, we will have to see when the races hit,” APU and USST athlete Rosie Brennan wrote to FasterSkier, “but I feel very optimistic that the summer has had a positive impact on my training.”
“I’m hoping that some other training strategies – workouts that I normally won’t do because of the glacier, and a different strength routine – will have actually given me an advantage,” emailed APU skier Becca Rorabaugh to FasterSkier. “This is a good year to try new things and shake it up!”
(Against all this enthusiasm, Whitcomb did provide a more nuanced look at some potential disadvantages, while acknowledging a former athlete’s gentle chiding about his perennial optimism: “Since Holly Brooks once asked me to not always be so positive,” Whitcomb added, “I will start by saying that Norway will have an advantage in the early season. Many of them have found some snow. But Norwegians are often competing for start spots and racing very fast in period one, which allows us a window to catch up when their performance flattens. It all balances out. Beyond that, this is a global pandemic, and every team has been affected. Americans don’t have to do things better than we ever have, but just as good as we can. That will be good enough for this season. I’m confident in our preparation, and believe we’ll deliver great results to our fans.”)
What’s happened instead
“There is naturally more roller skiing” this summer than in prior years, Whitcomb noted, “since during an on-snow camp we will do little to no roller skiing. The sessions on roller skis versus on snow are similar.”
This is sensible enough. But everyone contacted for this article also discussed the broader implications of this year’s changes, be it for the overall training stimulus, travel schedule, training schedule, or all of the above.
Pepa Miloucheva skates behind CGRP biathlete Casey Smith while at a training camp at La Forêt Montmorency in Quebec in early November 2015. (Photo: Caitlin Patterson)
Here’s Rorabaugh, for example, who as a longtime APU athlete has logged three glacier camps each year from 2007 through 2019, making for an impressive 39 cumulative weeks of summer glacier time. (Flora says that athletes typically log 20–30 hours of ski time in a week at Eagle Glacier. Taking the midpoint of this range, 25 hours, yields a healthy 975 total hours of summer snow time over the past 13 years.)
“2020 has been structured similarly to a normal summer of training,” Rorabaugh wrote. “The only difference is that where we would usually have a high volume week on-snow, we have done one in town. My overall training volume may have decreased slightly, since it’s hard to get quite as carried away with dryland training, but it’s also been more consistent week-to-week. We might be doing slightly more running than in the past, but the balance between rollerskiing and running is very similar. My joints and feet are actually the healthiest they’ve been in years though, probably because I’m not able to pound them into the ground with the expectation of a low-impact glacier camp for reprieve. Staying in town is forcing me to be a more responsible athlete, and I think my body appreciates it. Actually the biggest challenge for me this summer has been adapting to at-home strength training. Not having access to a weight room has definitely tested my creativity and self-motivation.”
Or here’s Scott Patterson, like Brennan also an APU and national team athlete, in an email to FasterSkier: “The big changes to my training have mostly been the consistency of time in Alaska and a few alterations for indoor training. We haven’t had any USST camps or APU glacier camps so there have been a lot of weeks just plugging away in Anchorage. It was nice that the snow held on fairly late so it’s only recently that the desire to get sliding on snow has really caught up to me. Not having camps definitely changes things and has its downsides, but I am also really appreciating having fewer obligations and travel days through the summer.”
Ida Sargent, Sophie Caldwell, Sadie Bjornsen, and Rosie Brennan enjoying freshly groomed snow on Eagle Glacier in summer 2011. Photo courtesy of Sophie Caldwell.
And here’s Brennan, another veteran athlete with a long history of summer snow time: “It’s definitely been a bit of an experiment this year, but I have really chosen to look at the potential benefits. For one, as an older athlete it gets harder to introduce new stresses that create the adaptation needed to keep improving. This summer has certainly provided me a different set of stressors that I have had to adapt to. Travel also takes away training days and always comes with some sort of a need to adjust to the new training environment, so without travel, my training has been just so consistent.”
What about technique work?
As Grover said, “You can accomplish 95 percent of your technique goals” on rollerskis.
Others were a little less sanguine. As Patterson noted, “Those weeks of glacier time in the middle of the summer are a great opportunity to preserve the on snow feel even when in town rollerskiing. It’s easy to forget that skis don’t kick like ratchets, pole plants are much softer than pavement, and asphalt never turns to deep slush. I usually try to use the glacier weeks as high volume periods with fairly intense focus on the technical aspects of actually skiing. In town, it has definitely taken some adapting to not have the focus week or the on snow technique.”
And Rorabaugh, a Fairbanks native, sounded similar themes. (Relevant: Even in an era of climate change, Fairbanks, Alaska, reliably provides hard-wax skiing for at least four and probably five months a year, from early November through late March. Fairbanks skiers once started a spring marathon on the Chena River, in downtown Fairbanks, at temperatures of –12° F. On March 25.)
Audrey Kentch, 5, skiing in wet-snow conditions in Alaska, June 2020. (photo: Gavin Kentch)
As Rorabaugh wrote, “Summer on-snow training is a good time to work on technique and try new things, and to adapt to dramatically new ways of skiing. It’s also a vital opportunity to practice skiing in slushy conditions – something that an Alaskan skier might be unprepared for. At my first JNs in Lake Placid I remember being utterly shocked that people skied on sloppy trails, and having no idea how to do it! Thankfully I’ve had a lot of practice on Eagle Glacier since then.”
Looking ahead to the start of the season, Rorabaugh noted, “I don’t think I’ll change my approach when I get on-snow this fall because it’s a different time of year. Early season snow is a good time to transfer dryland fitness to skiing, but it’s not as much of a technical laboratory. It’s more about technical honing than totally revamping.”
No matter what the summer looks like, the first few times back on snow are necessarily different than rollerskis, and can potentially require some degree of transition. As Whitcomb observed, “It takes a few days for everyone; the skate skis feel long and awkward, and the greater hip area muscles get sore from slipping on classic skis. Our first few on-snow workouts in Finland each season call for short, easy training, and after that we’re good to go. I also think it is harder for juniors than for seniors, but neither case is a big deal.”
A more nuanced aspect of this issue involves the optimal application of summer snow time for working on ski technique. Flora is a firm believer in his seriatim method, which involves one week on snow at roughly one-month intervals from June through August.
The June camp is “usually the introduction of new ideas,” Flora told FasterSkier. “And the nice part about being on snow is that it’s real-time, real snow. So it applies 100 percent; you’re not adjusting for a rollerski kick, or, you know, road-style terrain; you’re on snow, and it’s World Cup-style terrain. And so, usually, June, we use to introduce ideas, and then July is kind of, refine and play with those, and then usually by August, you can see those changes kind of setting in. And so that’s a pattern that we’ve used for over a decade. And it’s an effective pattern.”
World Cup terrain: The groomed ski trails on Eagle Glacier gleam in this view from the training center on a late-July evening in summer 2019. (photo: Gavin Kentch)
When attempting to translate this pattern to an exclusively dryland paradigm, Flora explained, he found himself emphasizing more of a “steady amount of technique work in the summer” this year.
Has it worked? With the significant caveat that the race season has yet to begin, Flora is cautiously optimistic: “As far as which one is more effective? Hard to say; I think they both work. One thing right now seems to be we have a number of athletes that have made jumps this summer, you know, similar to in years past. But again, we’ll see as the on-snow time comes.”
Flora is similarly confident about an athlete’s ability to ski well in early-season races this year, even if they have transitioned from rollerski kick to hard-wax skiing at Independence Mine, only to be thrust into, say, a messy artificial snow, above-freezing, klister slopfest race in World Cup Period One. Flora expresses his hope that APU’s “style of coaching and education” has let the athletes “create an adaptable kind of platform to work from. And so when … they show up and it’s icy or soupy, or whichever it may be, that they’re ready just to jump on their skis and adjust.”
Finally, Flora also cites his athletes’ accumulative lifetime on-snow experience: “The athletes that I’ve worked with for a while, I’m confident that they’re ready to kind of jump into any kind of conditions, that those athletes also have thousands and thousands of kilometers behind them, of glacier soup, and spring-like conditions. … I think for my main group [of athletes], everyone is comfortable kind of moving forward. I don’t know that one summer has a huge impact into that. … I guess I’ll know more about that in a few months.”
Towards a philosophical understanding of summer snow
Flora’s observation about lifetime glacial kilometers skied raises a final point: What, perhaps in a more fundamental sense, does summer skiing mean? The final paragraphs of this piece on FasterSkier attempt to limn an answer, and Chelsea Little’s lovely, lyrical essay on summer skiing at Italy’s Passo dello Stelvio does much the same. But what do coaches and athletes have to say about it?
For Flora, summer skiing is, as discussed, an opportunity to install and ingrain technique changes relatively early, “so by the time they’re in the racing season it’s an automation or a natural movement, as opposed to trying to race and then also think about new movements.”
But it’s also a chance to, well, ski a whole lot. This may seem obvious, if not downright unremarkable for professional skiers who ski all winter long, but for Flora it stands in contrast to, perhaps counterintuitively, the relatively reduced amount of actual skiing that occurs during the World Cup season, which brings with it travel days and recovery days and multiple venues with limited snow on small loops.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CC2PpdbpXKD/
As Flora notes, “What’s really interesting about those numbers is that if you go up to a glacier camp, and you ski, say you ski 20, 25, 30 hours that week. And you take that across roughly 15 k an hour, or you can even just look at the pure hours. Most of the athletes in the wintertime are training anywhere from, you know, 30 to probably upwards of 60 hours a month, at most, during the race season. And so the amount of time you get at a camp – if you’re having 30 hours in a week of training up there, take two camps and you have over a month of skiing already. And so the time up there is different than the race season too, because a lot of times when you’re traveling and racing, you’re skiing once a day, jogging in the afternoon, where on Eagle, you’re skiing twice a day. And so that time has a huge impact on kind of turning the body into a ski body.”
All athletes and coaches also noted that summer skiing is some sort of change – a new physical stimulus, to be sure, but also just a change. Whitcomb spoke of the danger of “monotony,” and of the need to avoid not just an outright overuse injury, but also the “physical plateau” that can result from consistent use of one training mode. Brennan unconsciously mirrored Whitcomb almost verbatim, writing, “As for an overall approach, I have tried to remain very consistent all summer so no one activity gets into a level in which I’m risking overuse.” And Flora, similarly, said that he began the summer by telling his team, “the opportunity ahead of us is just the change in stimulus.”
It’s hard to discuss these changes, in this year, without trafficking in tropes, but here are a few more to end things: Every disruption is a chance for improvement. It’s not a challenge, it’s an opportunity. The only thing constant is change.
In all seriousness, though, in a sport where the increased sharing of information has led to high-level training looking relatively homogenous around the world, the unparalleled summer of 2020 provides a chance to see what winter results look like when traditional summer training is disrupted. As Flora said, he’s confident now, but we’ll all know more soon.
He is proudly Alaskan and has resisted the temptation over the years to migrate elsewhere. We are talking about twenty-nine-year-old Reese Hanneman who has in fact migrated from his hometown of Fairbanks to the more southern maritime climate of Anchorage, Alaska.
So the question has been, is Reese Hanneman retired? After many years on the SuperTour, winning five national titles, stints on the World Cup, and an Olympic team nomination last year, the answer to that question really is how you define retired. He’ll not be on the SuperTour — he did not contest any domestic races at that level this season — but you might find him racing in places like China.
If you follow Hanneman on Instagram, you’ll know his creative eye impresses. He is the founder of the creative PR agency the Ophira Group, and he is finishing his engineering degree. He still finds time to “train” but certainly, the hours are down.
We caught up with Reese Hanneman, the older of the two cross-country skiing Hanneman brothers, (Logan is 25) in mid-February after he had competed in the China Tour de Ski. (That race concluded in early January.)
Reese Hanneman (APU) rollerskiing in Homer, Alaska, in the spring of 2013. (Photo: Woodski)
With ski season winding down, you may be one of the lucky ones hitting the road for some quality family/friend/significant-other time. Here’s a one-hour workout you can squeeze in on-the-go, which we received from Alaska Pacific University (APU) skier Reese Hanneman back in 2013. Hanneman, now 28, and his brother Logan, 24, raced at their first Olympics this past winter in PyeongChang, South Korea. Read the original workout here.
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[circa June 2013]
It’s summer time, or close to it, which means vacation season is here. Whether you have a family reunion on a beach or a trip to the mountains planned, it can be tricky to carve out time for training while you’re on the road.
Alaska Pacific University’s Reese Hanneman has a solution to this dilemma: a compact, efficient interval workout that fits into a single hour. It can be done on rollerskis, in running shoes, on a bike — with whatever equipment you have available away from home.
“If I’m on vacation with people…and I’m only going to get one workout in a day, I want to do more than go ski or run or bike for an hour at distance pace, because that’s not that hard,” Hanneman explains.
He frequently returns to this threshold workout when he’s pressed for time. It’s short on warm up and cool down time, but the meat of the workout is challenging and efficiently improves overall fitness. In the past, Hanneman has repeated this session as many as three to five days in a row when he’s traveling. And it clearly works for him: he racked up early-season World Cup starts in Canada and had a series of career-first podiums on the SuperTour last winter. The traditionally strong sprinter improved his distance chops, too, and finished last season with a sixth place at U.S. 50 k Championship in April.
The workout:
Warm up: 10-15 minutes Level 1 (L1)
3×10 minutes L3, with 2 minutes of recovery in between. For added intensity, “if you really want to push yourself,” ramp up the pace to L4 or race pace for the last 3 minutes of each interval.
Cool down: 10 minutes L1
Total workout time: about 60 minutes
By the end of the session, Hanneman is usually pushing the pace.
“If [I] do that hard enough, without it being a sprint workout, I feel like it’s improving my fitness and improving my skiing,” he said. “If I was on a vacation for weeks on end and I did that every other day, I would still come away from that travel feeling like I improved as an athlete.
“For me, obviously you could just do a straight hour of threshold, but by breaking it up then [I’m] able to push it pretty hard in L4,” he added. “So you get that feeling at the end where you feel like you were moving really fast.”
In a perfect world — say, at a training camp — Hanneman would do such a workout after a 45 minute warm up beforehand with some pickups and have time for a longer cool down. But when he has to fit a session in a small window — within a road trip lunch stop, for example — he returns to this stripped-down version.
“On a family vacation, where you’re someplace not suited well to a training block, you don’t want to be that weird person always out training during your family vacation,” Hanneman reasons.
The quicker threshold intervals also work well outside the summer vacation context, when work and life encroach on workout time.
“I think you could reach a pretty high-level doing workouts just like that,” Hanneman said. “People are always under this illusion that you have to do so many hours.”
That’s not just the sprinter in Hanneman talking, either. He’s always considered himself to be a hybrid, but with a jump up in his distance racing last season he’s approaching training this summer with more distance focus.
“I’m trying the Kikkan approach,” he laughed. “It worked for Erik [Bjornsen]. Certainly I have been more consistent as a sprinter, but some of that was mental, too. I’m trying to help myself expand my horizons.”
The mixed relay podium on Sunday at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt., with Stratton (center: Simi Hamilton, Paddy Caldwell, Jessie Diggins, and Sophie Caldwell) in first, APU (left: Erik Bjornsen, Scott Patterson, Sadie Bjornsen, and Kikkan Randall) in second, and Craftsbury (right: Adam Martin, Alex Howe, Ida Sargent, and Caitlin Patterson) in third. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): Mixed relays
For the second-straight year at the SuperTour’s season-ending Spring Series, the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team won the mixed relay, with three of the four athletes who raced on last year’s 4 x 5-kilometer mixed relay squad.
Simi Hamilton, Sophie Caldwell, Paddy Caldwell, and Jessie Diggins combined for the win on Sunday in Craftsbury, tagging off in that order, with Diggins crossing the finish line first for the third-straight day. Diggins is undefeated in three races so far at Spring Series, after winning Friday’s classic sprint and Saturday’s 10 k freestyle mass start. The women’s 30 k classic mass start remains on Tuesday, followed by the men’s 50 k classic mass start on Wednesday.
Diggins and her Stratton teammates beat the Alaska Pacific University (APU) first team by 13.2 seconds at the line with a time of 53:43.2. The co-ed mixed relay has been held at SuperTour Finals for the last five years, and APU won the first three editions of the race from 2014 to 2016. Stratton won last year in Fairbanks, Alaska, with Ben Saxton, Hamilton, Caldwell, and Diggins.
APU led most of Sunday’s race, with Erik Bjornsen starting them off. He came through the first exchange in first place, just 0.2 seconds ahead of Hamilton in second. Behind them, Adam Martin of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project tagged in third, 0.8 seconds out of first.
Paddy Caldwell (302) tags his Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team teammate Jessie Diggins (402) in second, while Craftsbury’s Caitlin Patterson (430) looks on, at the final exchange of the mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. Diggins went on to anchor Stratton to first place. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Sadie Bjornsen then extended APU’s lead to 7.3 seconds over Stratton’s Sophie Caldwell in second. Behind them, Craftsbury’s Ida Sargent came through the second exchange in 10.3 seconds back in third.
APU’s Scott Patterson went on to hold off Stratton’s Paddy Caldwell on the third leg, tagging 3.5 seconds ahead in first. Diggins came up big for Stratton on the anchor leg, passing APU’s Kikkan Randall to secure the win.
Craftsbury held its third-place position during the second half of the race with Alex Howe and Caitlin Patterson to finish third, 56.2 seconds behind Stratton. More than a minute later, APU 2 (Tyler Kornfield, Rosie Brennan, Logan Hanneman, and Rosie Frankowski) crossed in fourth (+2:04). Stratton’s second team (Saxton, Julia Kern, Andy Newell, and Erika Newell) placed fifth (+2:47.3), APU 3 (Reese Hanneman, Becca Rorabaugh, Eric Packer, Hannah Halvorsen) sixth, Dartmouth Ski Team (Luke Brown, Katharine Ogden, Gavin McEwen, Abigail Drach) seventh, Northern Michigan University (Zak Ketterson, Vivian Hett, Ian Torchia, Nicole Schneider) eighth, Middlebury College (Peter Wolter, Cate Brams, Adam Luban, Katie Feldman) ninth, and US Biathlon (Russell Currier, Clare Egan, Raleigh Goessling, Susan Dunklee) 10th.
Thirty-one “official” teams and eight “unofficial” teams competed, with NMU/CSS/NYSEF leading the unofficial teams with a time of 1:00:01.9 (which ranked 19th overall).
Racers have the day off Monday before the women’s 30 k and men’s 50 k classic mass starts (part of U.S. Distance Nationals) on Tuesday and Wednesday, starting at 9 a.m. EDT. Watch the races live on the SuperTour live stream.
Martin racing in Craftsbury’s Green and Black (R), leading in the mixed relay at 2018 Super Tour Finals, just ahead of APU’s Erik Bjornsen (L), in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Sadie Bjornsen (l) tags APU teammate Scott Patterson in first at the second exchange of the mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Sophie Caldwell (l) about to tag Stratton teammate Paddy Caldwell in second at the second exchange of the mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Scott Patterson (301) tags his APU teammate Kikkan Randall (401) in first, while Stratton’s Jessie Diggins (l) waits to be tagged in second place, at the last exchange of mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Alex Howe (r) tags his Craftsbury teammate Caitlin Patterson (l) in third at the final exchange of the mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Jessie Diggins anchoring the SMST2 Team to the win in the mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Jessie Diggins celebrates as she anchors the SMST2 Team to the mixed-relay win at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Jessie Diggins about to celebrate with teammates after anchoring the SMST2 Team to the mixed-relay win at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Caitlin Patterson anchoring the Craftsbury Green Racing Project team to third in the mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team members and 2018 SuperTour Finals mixed-relay racers: (from left to right) Andy Newell, Annie Hart, Sophie Caldwell, Jessie Diggins, Erika Newell, Simi Hamilton, Ben Saxton, and Julia Kern. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
A musically inclined Stratton Mountain School supporter at the mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Bridger Ski Foundation teammates Andrew Meyer (r) and Corey Stock (l) during the final exchange of the mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. Stock anchored the team to 17th. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Cambridge Sports Union skiers during an exchange at the mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Retiring World Cup skier Liz Stephen raced the mixed relay with an unofficial team from her high school in East Montpelier, Vt., at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. They called themselves “U-32 High School”. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
A team made up of NENSA, Onion River Nordic and Montpelier club athletes at the mixed relay at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Jessie Diggins (3) celebrates her win in the women’s classic sprint final on Friday at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt., ahead of her Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team and U.S. Ski Team (USST) teammate Sophie Caldwell (4) in second. Craftsbury’s own Ida Sargent (in green and black), also of the USST, placed third, and Sadie Bjornsen (second from l, in blue) of Alaska Pacific University and the USST placed fourth. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): Classic sprints
The end of the racing season is just around the corner. The U.S. SuperTour Finals (a.k.a. Spring Series) kicked off Friday with 1.3-kilometer classic sprints at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, and four other days of racing are set to follow on Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Andy Newell (101), of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team and U.S. Ski Team (USST), racing to first in the men’s classic sprint final at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt., just ahead of his Stratton teammate Ben Saxton (102). Erik Bjornsen (103, behind Newell) finished third, Kris Freeman (119) placed fourth, Simi Hamilton (106) fifth, and Reese Hanneman (behind Bjornsen) sixth. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
The U.S. Ski Team (USST) made the trek from Europe less than a week after racing at World Cup Finals in Sweden. Despite the travel and fatigue at the end of a long season, Andy Newell and Jessie Diggins, who both train with the Vermont-based Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team in the offseason,came won the men’s and women’s finals, respectively.
In Friday morning’s qualifiers, Simi Hamilton, also of the SMST2/USST, and Sadie Bjornsen, of Alaska Pacific University (APU) and the USST, posted the fastest men’s and women’s times, respectively. Newell qualified second, and Diggins qualified third.
Bjornsen went on to win the first quarterfinal and first semifinal, while Diggins did the same — winning the fifth quarterfinal and second semifinal. In the final, the two U.S. teammates met for the first time of the day. Diggins went on to cross the finish line first in 3:40.23, followed by her teammate Sophie Caldwell (SMST2/USST) 1.42 seconds later in second. Ida Sargent, of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project and USST, placed third (+5.18), and Bjornsen narrowly missed the podium in fourth (+0.29), Rosie Brennan (APU/USST) placed fifth (+6.54), and Kikkan Randall (APU/USST) rounded out the final in sixth (+13.56).
On the men’s side, Newell won all three of his heats, from the first quarterfinal to the first semifinal, right up to the final, crossing the line for the last time in 3:23.82. Hamilton won the third quarterfinal and placed second behind Newell in their semifinal in a photo finish for first (+0.01). Erik Bjornsen (APU/USST) won the other semifinal after winning the fifth quarterfinal as well. Ben Saxton (SMST2) advanced to the final as a lucky loser, along with Reese Hanneman (APU).
In the final, Newell bested Saxton, his Stratton teammate, by 0.68 seconds for the win. Erik Bjornsen took the final spot on the podium in third (+1.41), ahead of Kris Freeman (Caldwell Sport) in fourth (+2.14), Hamilton in fifth (+3.02), and Hanneman in sixth (+4.5).
SuperTour Finals continue Saturday with 10/15 k freestyle mass starts.
Jessie Diggins (SMST2/USST) racing to the third-fastest qualifying time in the women’s classic sprint qualifier at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. She went on to win the final. (Photo: John/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Andy Newell (SMST2/USST) racing to the second-fastest qualifying time in the men’s classic sprint qualifier at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. He went on to win the final. (Photo: John/Lazenbyphoto.com)
A pink-haired Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing in the women’s classic sprint at 2018 SuperTour Finals at her home course in Craftsbury, Vt. She qualified in 19th and went on to place 22nd on the day. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
U.S. biathlete Emily Dreissigacker having some fun in pink while racing the women’s classic sprint at 2018 SuperTour Finals at her home course in Craftsbury, Vt. She qualified in 25th and went on to place 24th overall on the day. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Andy Newell (101) leading one of the men’s classic sprint heats with Northern Michigan University’s Daniel Streinz (101) at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. Streinz reached the semifinals, where he finished third for seventh overall, while Newell won every heat, including the final. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Jessie Diggins (3) leads Ida Sargent (2) during one of the classic sprint heats at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John/Lazenbyphoto.com)
The women’s classic sprint top six at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt., with (from left to right) U.S. Ski Team members Kikkan Randall in sixth, Sophie Caldwell in second, Jessie Diggins in first, Ida Sargent in third, Sadie Bjornsen in fourth, and Rosie Brennan in fifth. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
The men’s classic sprint podium at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt., with Andy Newell (c) in first, Ben Saxton (l) in second and Erik Bjornsen (r) in third. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Jessie Diggins (in sunglasses) during a photo opp with some young fans at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (l) edging Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov (3) and Norway’s Eirik Brandsdal (not shown) in the first semifinal of the men’s classic sprint at the World Cup in Drammen, Norway. Klæbo went on to win the final, ahead of Brandsdal in second and Bolshunov in third. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
In the classic venue that are the Drammen city sprints, it was a singular affair from start to finish during the men’s World Cup 1.2-kilometer classic sprint on Wednesday. In a race format that tapered from a field of 61 skiers to the winner, one only needs to track the skier in the overall World Cup’s leader bib to follow along.
The yellow-bibbed skier, Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, didn’t surprise with his sprint win in Drammen as much as place another high performance stamp on his 2017/2018 campaign.
Klæbo won the qualifier in 2:49.32 minutes. Teammate Eirik Brandsdal skied to second in the qualifier, 3.5 seconds behind Klæbo. Russian Alexander Bolshunov skied the third-fastest qualifying time, finishing 4.48 seconds back. This puts some things in perspective, if anybody thought Klæbo would bloat in his post-Olympic gold medal glow — he won three golds in PyeongChang — you’d be wrong.
Klæbo would have have good reason to cash it in. What exactly does the 21 year old need to prove? Coming into Wednesday’s race, Klæbo had already captured the Sprint World Cup Crystal Globe. It’s the Norwegian phenom’s second-consecutive overall sprint title.
Yet Klæbo is also on the verge of sealing up his first Overall World Cup title. After the Drammen sprints, Klæbo leads the overall standings with 1308 points. Behind him, Martin Johnsrud Sundby of Norway (who did not contest Wednesday’s sprint), trails in second place with 980 points total.
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo leads his quarterfinal with fellow Norwegian Fredrik Riseth (l) and Sweden’s Emil Jönsson (30) at the World Cup classic sprint in Drammen, Norway. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
“It was really important to me to get the 100 points today,” Klæbo told the International Ski Federation (FIS) after the race. “I need as many points as I can get against the other guys for the [overall] Crystal Globe. I will race the Holmenkollen 50 k this weekend and I know it will be tough. Also it’s great to win here in front of all the people. I was second here last season and I’m really happy to now have won Drammen.”
Let’s circle back to what Klæbo needs to prove, beyond padding his overall lead by another 100 points by winning the Drammen sprint. He’s proving at his young age, pending any monumental flameout, that he’s setting the stage for a historic international cross-country ski career.
This season alone, Klæbo has won six of nine individual sprint World Cups. He’s won 10 World Cup races in total. That win total puts Klæbo in rarefied company: in the men’s field, only Petter Northug (with 10 wins) and Sundby (16 wins) have won 10 or more World Cup races in a single season.
Winners want to win. Amidst the five-deep crowd surrounding the sprint course featuring Drammen’s iconic Bragernes Church, with his pink-themed flare, Klæbo proved once again he is a consummate winner.
There was his dominating qualifier. Then there was Klæbo’s quarterfinal, in which he looked less threatening. He won the first quarterfinal by 0.7 seconds in a photo finish with Brandsdal. That heat seemed to be a test run, as if Klæbo were feeling the course out and asking himself how it skied with five other bodies jousting for tracks and inside lines. There was never the hallmark Klæbo burst of speed or any real dominance. Klæbo kept in contact up the long initial uphill, and down through the tight and sinuous S-turns after the course’s highpoint.
If in fact the first quarterfinal was a dress rehearsal, Klæbo must have realized that any real podium threats would be drag racing up the final quarter-kilometer climb that finished nearly smack-dab in front of the church.
The first semifinal featured the day’s top-three qualifiers: Klæbo, Brandsdal and Bolshunov. (Bolshunov advanced by winning the second quarterfinal.) The three skiers finished 1-2-3 with Klæbo taking the win in another photo finish with Brandsdal.
Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov leads five Norwegians in the men’s classic sprint final at the World Cup in Drammen, Norway: (from l to r) Eriik Brandsdal, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (yellow bib), Sindre Bjørnestad Skar (10), Kasper Stadaas (16), and Emil Iversen. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
Tactically, Bolshunov played his hand early. Determined to break Klæbo, the Russian led out hard and took the sharp end of the race in earnest. At the top of the course, Bolshunov had strung the five other skiers out behind him. Moments before the highpoint and entering the technical downhill S-turns, Bolshunov and Klæbo gave a burst of speed and distanced themselves by 10 meters. As Klæbo learned in his heat, even with speedy skis, the downhill is not decisive. It’s more a function of skiing out front, staying on your feet and entering the final straight with enough high-octane gas to turbo the finish.
Up the final climbing stretch, which seems as eternal as some flame burning inside the Bragernes Church, Bolshunov faded slightly, while Klæbo and Brandsdal pulled ahead.
Klæbo’s second takeaway: he already knew the course was won on the final straightaway climb. If he could match Bolshunov on the remainder of the course, Bolshunov could not mirror him in the final meters.
The final played out like Klæbo’s semi. Bolshunov punched it early. Klæbo sat behind the Russian, matching him pole for pole, stride for stride. Up front was as good a place as any for Bolshunov. Besides the Russian, it was an all-Norwegian final. There was Klæbo and Brandsdal, along with Sindre Bjørnestad Skar, Kasper Stadaas and Emil Iversen.
The men’s podium from Drammen’s 2018 classic sprint. Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (c) placed first, his teammate Eirik Brandsdal (l) was second, and Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov (r) finished third. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Bolshunov again led up and over the top of the course, through the S-turns and through the tucking downhill. Brandsdal trailed by 10 meters, but by the final turn before the uphill to the church’s front door, the threesome had regrouped. Again, as the double poling got down to business, Bolshunov faded, Klæbo pulled away and Brandsdal could only stay a second behind the day’s winner. And of course Klæbo was able to toe the line as he bowed to the frenzied crowd. Nothing to prove except he can win with panache and win in style when the Norwegian cameras turn out in force.
Klæbo won the final in 2:44.69 minutes. Brandsdal followed 1.04 seconds back in second place, Bolshunov finished third (+3.78), Bjørnestad fourth (+6.55), Kaspar fifth (+8.71), and Iversen sixth (+11.45).
Bjornsen Reaches Quarterfinals, 18th Overall
Erik Bjornsen was the lone North American who advanced to the heats, qualifying in 26th and finishing the day in 18th.
“I was feeling good,” Bjornsen told FasterSkier after the race. “It’s a tight course. It was a bit scrappy. … It’s my first time here qualifying for the heats, so I’m learning some things, for sure.”
Bjornsen skied in the fifth quarterfinal with Iversen, Russia’s Alexander Panzhinskiy, Finland’s Ristomatti Hakola, Emil Nyeng of Norway, and France’s Lucas Chavanat.
The American skied near the back of the group but avoided any real mishaps. Although the sport is not roller derby, Drammen’s tight-and-rutted corners offer up a close cross-country skiing cousin.
The U.S. Ski Team’s Erik Bjornsen toeing the line in fourth during Wednesday’s fifth heat in Drammen, Norway. Bjornsen placed 18th on the day. (Screenshot: NRK broadcast)
“I feel like – I kind of missed a few spots,” Bjornsen said. “At the bottom corner I was pushed to the outside. I was almost moving up into second, and looking back maybe I should have gone around him on the other side.”
Up the never-ending final straightaway, Bjornsen poled himself into a position to potentially advance to the semifinals as a lucky loser. However, that didn’t pan out for Bjornsen. Iversen won the heat in 2:51.96 minutes, Panzhinskiy placed second (+0.20), Hakola third (+0.99), with Bjornsen in fourth (+1.18).
Andy Newell racing to 33rd in the men’s classic sprint qualifier at the World Cup in Drammen, Norway. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Also for the U.S., Andy Newell missed the quarterfinals after finishing 33rd in qualification, 0.9 seconds out of 30th. Logan Hanneman and Kevin Bolger finished 49th and 50th, respectively, and Reese Hanneman 56th. The U.S. Ski Team’s Simi Hamilton sat out Wednesday’s sprint as he is recovering from an illness.
For Canada, Julien Locke finished 51st in qualifying, Alex Harvey was 54th, and Andy Shields 58th.
Maiken Caspersen Falla of Norway (center) won the classic sprint in Drammen and all but wrapped up the Sprint Cup. Stina Nilsson of Sweden (left) was second and Jessie Diggins of the United States third. (NRK screencap)
FIS Cross Country World Cup (Drammen, Norway): Classic sprints
The cross-country World Cup hit the city on Wednesday, with classic sprints contested in the Oslo suburb of Drammen on snow which had been trucked onto the streets. And the crowd was rewarded with wins by two Norwegian favorites: Maiken Caspersen Falla in the women’s sprint and Johannes Høsflot Klæbo in the men’s race.
In the women’s final, Falla and Natalia Nepryaeva of Russia battled at the lead for much of the race, but Falla pulled away from the field on the last climb to the finish. Stina Nilsson of Sweden and Jessie Diggins of the United States pulled past Nepryaeva in the final few hundred meters to claim spots on the podium; Krista Parmakoski of Finland was fifth and Katja Visnar of Slovenia sixth.
With the win, Falla all but wrapped up the World Cup’s Sprint Cup crystal globe: she is just two points from having it clinched, with one sprint remaining on the calendar. In Falun, Sweden, in ten days, she more or less just has to make the heats to earn her third Sprint Cup in a row.
Also racing for the United States, Sadie Bjornsen and Sophie Caldwell made the quarterfinals, but did not advance past that round. Bjornsen ended the day in 21st and Caldwell in 27th.
Ida Sargent and Rosie Brennan were 47th and 48th in qualifying, followed by Kikkan Randall in 50th and Kaitlynn Miller in 53rd.
For Canada, Emily Nishikawa finished 52nd and Dahria Beatty 55th.
Great Britain’s Nichole Bathe, who raced for the University of Alaska Fairbanks, finished 58th.
In the men’s final, Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov set the pace for most of the heat. Klæbowas on his ski tails, and drew even on the course’s on downhill, where Norwegian teammate Eirik Brandsdal also caught up to them. Skiing back up to the finish, Klæbo ramped up to a furious tempo and was uncatchable. Brandsdal passed Bolshunov to claim second by a healthy margin. Sindre Bjørnestad Skar finished fourth, Kasper Stadaas fifth, and Emil Iversen sixth, all for Norway.
The lone North American to make the heats, Erik Bjornsen, qualified in 26th and finished the day in 18th. Teammate Andy Newell just missed the quarterfinals after finishing 33rd in qualification. Logan Hanneman and Kevin Bolger finished 49th and 50th, and Reese Hanneman 56th.
For Canada, Julien Locke placed 51st in qualifying, Alex Harvey 54th, and Andy Shields 58th.
The men’s 1.6 k freestyle sprint podium at Saturday’s World Cup in Lahti, Finland, with Italy’s Federico Pellegrino (c) in first, Russia’s Gleb Retivykh (l) in second and Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (r) in third. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
The men’s freestyle sprint final in Lahti, Finland, started in almost comical fashion: the six men who had made it to the final heat of the day skied slowly, then even slower, as nobody wanted to lead.
The final was full of dangerous men. Norwegian youngster Johannes Høsflot Klæbo has won five sprints this season, and he just became an Olympic gold medalist in the sprint in PyeongChang, South Korea, a mere ten days ago. In his quarterfinal and semifinal heats, he had put in big turns of speed which had dropped most of the field.
They hadn’t dropped Italy’s Federico Pellegrino, though, and the 2017 World Champion was the only man competing in Lahti who had beaten Klæbo in a sprint this season.
Then there was France’s Lucas Chanavat, who put in a huge burst of speed up a hill in his own quarterfinal, perhaps mimicking the move that Klæbo usually makes to test it out or prove a point.
They were all lurking there in the final, along with Russia’s Gleb Retivykh, Finland’s Ristomatti Hakola – consistently one of the fastest qualifiers on the World Cup – and Norway’s Sindre Bjørnestad Skar.
Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo leading his quarterfinal, which included Italy’s Federico Pellegrino (3) and American Erik Bjornsen (29), in the men’s 1.6 k skate sprint at the World Cup in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Klæbo finally got up to some sort of speed on a gradual downhill, stringing out the field after a full 90 seconds of being clumped together and moving at walking pace. But he still wasn’t going full bore. On one of the final opportunities, it was Skar who went to the front and sprinted up a hill, finally turning the speed dial to “full”.
Coming down the final hill into the stadium, it was Skar, Klæbo, and Pellegrino, who overtook the leader going into the last turn. In the finishing stretch, the two Norwegians seemed to just fade away; Pellegrino sprinted for the line and a big win of 0.77 seconds.
“I think that when I returned after the Olympics, back home I had a very good time, really good weather in the Alps,” Pellegrino – the silver medalist in the PyeongChang sprint – said in a post-race interview with FIS. “And it was very good to recover and train a lot, so that I could come here in the best shape. I’m really proud of this.”
Also surging past the Norwegian duo was Retivykh, who had accelerated into and through the final corners and pulled away in finishing lane.
“I have been waiting quite long for the World Cup podium,” said Retivykh, according to FIS. “Last time I was top three was in PyeongChang last year. So it feels great to be back. I am not surprised to be second because I knew I could do it. It feels great… I am sharing the podium with two great athletes.”
Klæbo hung on for third, +0.90 seconds, and Skar was fourth, +1.30. He edged Hakola (+1.44) while Chanavat was left in sixth (+7.55).
Coming into the final as the giant everyone feared, Klæbo’s tactics had not paid off.
“I’m glad this was not the Olympics,” Klæbo told Norwegian broadcaster NRK, according to a translation. “Pellegrino was too strong. I had nothing to answer with. Then you have to be thankful for third place. And I’m still smiling pretty wide.”
Pellegrino, meanwhile, played his cards exactly right. He also beat Klæbo here one year ago to win World Championships gold, and he channeled that experience.
“I lost too many races in the past when I was leading almost the whole race,” he told FIS. “I think that on this track I know how to do it.”
And with the win, Pellegrino became the most decorated skate sprinter in men’s World Cup history. It was his tenth skate sprint victory, a new record.
With third place, however, Klæbo has sealed this year’s overall Sprint Cup trophy even though there are still two sprints to come in Drammen, Norway, and Falun, Sweden.
“That is a bright spot, then,” he told NRK. “It helps a little, but there was no snap today. The [qualifier] was good, but otherwise it was a bit dead.”
By placing 11th in the freestyle sprint in Lahti, Sun Valley’s Kevin Bolger won some Gruyere cheese for being the top-ranked Continental Cup skier of the day. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)
Bolger 11th in World Cup Debut, Bjornsen 20th
You didn’t have to scroll very far down the qualifier results sheet to find the name of a World Cup debutant. In 16th place was Kevin Bolger of the Sun Valley XC Gold Team. The SuperTour leader made the most of his opportunity, and NRK broadcasters referred to him as “the surprising man – Kevin Bolger.”
“Honestly, I didn’t necessarily expect him to qualify in a Scandinavian World Cup, in his first go at it,” Bolger’s coach Chris Mallory wrote in an email. “He generally builds into sprint days as they progress, as he’s a bit of an all-arounder. But he really stepped up to the plate today.”
In his quarterfinal, Bolger was last out of the start gates and sat in sixth place for much of the race. But near the end of the heat he moved into fifth and then coming into the finish turned on the afterburners to move up to fourth.
The last of the quarterfinals, it also turned out to be the fastest one, and both Bolger and third-place Karl-Johan Westberg of Sweden moved on to the semifinals as lucky losers behind Retivykh, the heat’s winner, and second-place Franceso De Fabiani of Italy.
“He’s a big glider, and can carry his speed really well, but he’s focused a lot on improving his speed this year,” Mallory wrote of that finishing sprint.
In the semifinal, Bolger couldn’t quite pull the same move. He was again in sixth out of the gate, but Pellegrino broke a pole, dropping to last. The two traded off places as Pellegrino then caught back up, and then replaced his pole again. Then Bolger passed Emil Iversen, but the Norwegian passed him back by the finish and Bolger ended up sixth in the semifinal and 11th on the day.
Bolger before the start of his semifinal heat. (NRK screencap)
Bolger graduated from the University of Utah last year and it is his first season as a full-time senior racer with the Gold Team, although Mallory said that Bolger had trained with Sun Valley for two years as a high school postgraduate before heading to college.
Before heading to Europe for the World Cup, Bolger had won a SuperTour sprint in Ishpeming, Michigan, and placed second and sixth in 20 k and 10 k races there. Earlier in the season, he was second in the skate sprint and fifth in the classic sprint at U.S. National Championships.
“My goal was for him to get some World Cup starts and a top 30 this season, so those opportunities would keep coming,” Mallory explained. “I watched FIS live timing all night, normally not so exciting, but last night it was!”
Erik Bjornsen of the U.S. Ski Team and APU qualified in 29th place and in his quarterfinal, had a poor start position as a result of his bib and was immediately shunted to the back of the heat.
“Up the first climb I tried to make a couple moves, but I was just kind of boxed in,” he explained.
He was in the first quarterfinal, along with Klæbo, Pellegrino, and Renaud Jay of France. By late in the heat Bjornsen was able to move up to fifth when Poland’s Maciej Starega, who had led early, began to fade. Then in the final downhill he moved into fourth and held that position through the finish.
Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo and Italy’s Federico Pellegrino (3) going head to head down the finishing stretch in the first men’s quarterfinal at the World Cup 1.6 k skate sprint in Lahti, Finland, with American Erik Bjornsen (l) chasing. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
But he hadn’t been able to get to the front early in the heat, and by the finish, the two eventual podium finishers were jetting off at hyperspeed. Though he wasn’t able to catch onto their tails, Bjornsen said that he was feeling better than he had at the Olympics, where his results had been disappointing.
“I definitely kind of struggled,” he admitted of the 2018 Olympic experience. “It was some of my worst distance racing of the year, so it was obviously very frustrating.”
After today’s sprint, however, there might be light at the end of the tunnel.
“I felt like I had good energy left,” Bjornsen said of his heat. “I tried making moves on both sides… the fitness is feeling a lot better than it was a couple of weeks ago. And so, I mean, the peaking plan for the Olympics didn’t work as planned. But it’s been a relatively good season for me, pretty consistent. I had a lot of top 30 finishes… I’m just trying to move past [the Olympics] and have a solid period four on the World Cup.”
He now looks to the 15 k classic on Sunday, which he called “one of my favorite races.”
And on getting upstaged by Bolger, Bjornsen seemed the opposite of upset.
“I was just really psyched to see that,” he said. “The kid has put in a lot of work the last few years and – I mean, I was very surprised. It was great to see. I like to see those younger dudes coming here and having successful results. It’s really impressive. You know, it’s his first World Cup and he just looked comfortable and good out there. It’s just the perfect transition to the World Cup. Keep it up!”
Canada’s Julien Locke on his way to 42nd in the men’s 1.6 k skate sprint at the World Cup in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
“It was so awesome to have two World Cup first timers, Kelsey [Phinney] and Kevin, have such impressive results,” agreed teammate Sophie Caldwell. “Kevin had the race of the day and it was so inspiring for our entire team, staff, and hopefully all the skiers back home to see that success in a young, up and coming racer who just sent it today. We were going crazy!”
The rest of the North American field did not make it into the quarterfinals. In the qualifier, Logan Hanneman (APU) placed 49th (+11.45). Paddy Caldwell (U.S. Ski Team/SMS T2) finished 59th (+13.55), and APU’s Reese Hanneman and David Norris placed 61st (+14.33) and 67th (+19.27).
Julien Locke led Canada in 42nd place (+9.78), and Andy Shields finished 60th (+14.29).
Logan Hanneman (Alaska Pacific University) on his way to 49th in the men’s 1.6 k skate sprint at the World Cup in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
The men’s 1.6 k freestyle sprint podium at Saturday’s World Cup in Lahti, Finland, with Italy’s Federico Pellegrino (c) in first, Russia’s Gleb Retivykh (l) in second and Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (r) in third. (Photo: FIS Cross Country/Twitter)
FIS Cross Country World Cup (Lahti, Finland): Men’s & women’s freestyle sprints
The defending world championships from the 2017 freestyle sprint prevailed again in Lahti on Saturday, with Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla winning the women’s 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint final and Italy’s Federico Pellegrino coming out on top in the men’s 1.6 k final at last year’s World Championships venue.
Falla’s rise to the final started with her qualifying in 12th, 7.96 seconds off the fastest qualifying time set by Sweden’s Hanna Falk in 2:54.72. Russia’s Natalia Nepryaeva qualified second (+0.63) and Finland’s Krista Pärmäkoski third (+3.62), just ahead of Germany’s Victoria Carl in fourth (+3.88) and American Sadie Bjornsen in fourth (+3.88). Four American women qualified for the heats, with Sophie Caldwell in 17th, Ida Sargent in 21st and Rosie Brennan in 29th.
The women’s 1.4 k freestyle sprint podium at Saturday’s World Cup in Lahti, Finland, with Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla (c) in first, and Sweden’s Stina Nilsson (l) and Hanna Falk (r) in second and third, respectively. (Photo: FIS Cross Country/Twitter)
Falla went on to place second in the first quarterfinal, 0.71 seconds behind Sweden’s Stina Nilsson in first. According to the race jury’s ruling, Carl obstructed Pärmäkoski coming out of the last downhill before they entered the finishing straight and both crashed out of contention, with Pärmäkoski finishing fifth in the heat (+12.11) and Carl sixth (+49.5). Carl was relegated to last (30th place) for the obstruction.
Falla then won the first semifinal by just 0.04 seconds over Nilsson in second. The two other Swedes in that heat, Falk and Ida Ingemarsdotter, advanced to the final as well as lucky losers with fast-enough times.
In the final, Falla found herself at the front of the pack early then held her position to the finish, crossing the line in 2:54.83 and beating Nilsson by 0.36 seconds. Sweden had two on the podium with Falk in third (+0.78), Germany’s Sandra Ringwald placed fourth (+0.88), Ingemarsdotter was fifth (+1.83), and Switzerland’s Laurien van der Graaff placed sixth (+3.02).
Caldwell was the lone American woman to make it past the quarterfinals, as she placed second in her quarterfinal, 0.25 seconds behind Ringwald in first, then fourth in the second semifinal, 1.46 seconds behind Ringwald, who also won that heat. Overall, Caldwell finished the day in eighth.
Bjornsen placed 17th overall after finishing fourth in her quarterfinal, 2.84 seconds behind Falk in first. Sargent had been second in her quarterfinal until the final tight lefthand corner into the finishing straight, where she slipped to sixth and ultimately finished sixth, 1.07 seconds behind Sweden’s Anna Dyvik in first. Overall, Sargent finished the day in 27th, and Brennan placed 29th overall after finishing sixth in her quarterfinal, 4.91 seconds behind Ingemarsdotter in first.
Two American men advanced to the heats as well, with Kevin Bolger of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) qualifying in 16th in his World Cup debut, 6.38 seconds behind Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who topped the qualifier in 2:59.06. Erik Bjornsen of the U.S. Ski Team qualified 29th, 8.29 seconds back.
Meanwhile, Pellegrino qualified for the heats in third (+1.9) behind France’s Baptiste Gros in second (+1.23).
There, Pellegrino won the first quarterfinal by 0.19 seconds over Klæbo, with the Norwegian visibly backing off before the finish — comfortable enough to automatically advance to the semifinals in second place. But Klæbo showed Pellegrino what he’s made of in the first semifinal and beat the Italian by nine-hundredths of a second.
Bolger also raced in that first semifinal after placing fourth in his quarterfinal, 0.73 seconds behind Russia’s Gleb Retivykh in first. Bolger’s time was good enough for one of two lucky loser spots in the semifinals, where he went on to finish sixth, 1.86 seconds after Klæbo. Overall Bolger finished the day in 11th.
Erik Bjornsen placed 20th on the day after finishing fourth in the first quarterfinal (with Pellegrino and Klæbo), 1.56 seconds out of first.
In the final, Klæbo set the tone, slowing the pace to almost a stop at one point, while he and Pellegrino stood side by side at the top of the course. On the way down, they accelerated, but Norway’s Sindre Bjørnestad Skar was the one who truly attacked. It might’ve been a bit too early, as Pellegrino caught him by the top of the final climb and took the lead on the following downhill into the stadium. Pellegrino held off his challengers, including Retivykh who came on strong out of the downhill, to take the win in 3:16.73, 0.77 seconds ahead of Retivykh in second and 0.9 seconds ahead of Klæbo in third. Skar settled for fourth (+1.3), Finland’s Ristomatti Hakola placed fifth (+1.44) and France’s Lucas Chanavat finished sixth (+7.55).
In the qualifier, Canada’s Dahria Beatty finished 34th, +13.39 and just 0.9 seconds from making the quarterfinals. She was the only Canadian woman competing.
American Kelsey Phinney (SVSEF) was also close to making the cut. In her first European World Cup, she placed 36th in the qualifier, +13.74. Caitlin Patterson and Kaitlynn Miller, both of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project, placed 56th (+20.12) and 61st (+21.70).
Mathilde Petitjean of Togo, a primarily Quebec-based skier, finished in 59th (+20.80).
In the men’s qualifier, Logan Hanneman (APU) placed 49th (+11.45). Paddy Caldwell (U.S. Ski Team/SMS T2) finished 59th (+13.55), and APU’s Reese Hanneman and David Norris placed 61st (+14.33) and 67th (+19.27).
Julien Locke led Canada in 42nd place (+9.78), and Andy Shields finished 60th (+14.29).
American Chloe Levins racing to seventh in the junior women’s 7.5 k sprint on Saturday at IBU Junior World Championships in Otepää, Estonia. (Photo: Terri Dickson)
Poland’s Kamila Zuk won her second race in a row, taking gold in the junior women’s 7.5 k sprint after also winning the individual at World Junior Championships. Zuk had one penalty to two by second-place Marketa Davidova of the Czech Republic, who finished 26.0 seconds back. Bronze went to Myrtille Begue of France, who shot clean to finish 52 seconds back.
The sole U.S. starter, Chloe Levins followed up her sixth-place finish in the individual with seventh place in the sprint. Levins had a single penalty and finished +1:31.7.
For Canada, Megan Bankes was close behind Levins in ninth, with two penalties and +1:49.5. Teammate Nadia Moser was 21st, also with two penalties, +2:46.2. Emily Dickson finished 36th, +3:50.5 with two penalties, and Zoe Pekos just missed the pursuit cutoff in 66th (+6:22.4) with four missed shots.
In the junior men’s 10 k sprint, Vasilii Tomshin of Russia took the gold with perfect shooting. France’s Martin Perillat Bottonet was second, less than a penalty-loop’s worth of time back at 20.5 seconds – and he did have one penalty. Norway’s Sverre Dahlen Aspenes took bronze (+29.4) with two missed shots.
Trevor Kiers led Canada in 16th, a breakthrough result; his previous World Juniors best was 39th in the pursuit last season. Kiers missed two shots, both in prone, and finished 1:34.9 behind the time set by Tomshin.
Adam Runnalls placed 26th for Canada (+2:08.3) with three missed shots. Teo Sanchez also qualified for the pursuit by placing 53rd (+3:19.2) with one penalty, and Angus Tweedie was left on the outside looking in with 69th place (+4:41.3) with three missed shots.
Cody Johnson led the Americans in 37th, with clean shooting, 2:31.1 back from Tomshin’s time. Tim Cunningham was the next finisher in 71st (+5:13.5) with seven missed shots, followed by Jacob Pearson in 79th (+6:24.2) with two penalties and Cam Christiansen in 86th (+7:52.5) with three penalties.
Canada’s Len Valjas (l) and American Andy Newell scrambling during the first leg of the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay on Sunday at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad)
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Zooming in on the leaders of Sunday’s nordic race, the Olympic broadcast stream focused on a red Norwegian suit set against the backdrop of Russian maroon. The televised showdown presented for the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay final leg was shaping up to be between the Olympic Athletes from Russia and Norway: Denis Spitsov verses Johannes Høsflot Klæbo. As the two skiers struck out for Lap 2 of 3 of the final 10 k leg, both spectators and screen apprehensively followed.
Had the camera panned 250 meters ahead, it might have caught the flurrying ski tails of American Noah Hoffman, dashing the top of the 3.3 k lap’s initial climb. Around 45 seconds earlier, Hoffman had been tagged into the race as the anchor leg for the U.S. men. His hot start was not just for show or a final push to the front. If he wanted to prevent the U.S. team from an eliminatory pull, he would need to stay ahead of Spitsov and Klæbo.
A cat-and-mouse game between the leaders certainly could buy the U.S. skier a little more time to pad the time gap. But until then, he sifted a reductionist race: Stay in the game. Don’t get caught by Klæbo.
American Noah Hoffman anchoring the U.S team during the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay on Sunday at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad)
“The highlight for me was watching these guys stick with their guys,” Canada’s Len Valjas said of his relay teammates in a post-race interview with FasterSkier. “And another one was watching Noah stay away from Klæbo. We were all yelling, cheering for him. That was amazing.”
The relay had more than one race in the works. Hoffman staying in front of Klæbo was one. Canada’s Graeme Killick catching Sweden was another.
After Valjas scrambled the first classic leg, he came through the exchange in 10th, handing off to Killick for the second classic leg. As Killick headed out for his first lap, Sweden was four places and 38.3 seconds ahead.
The 28-year-old Canadian, in his second Olympics, was by no means deterred. Working kilometer by kilometer, Killick strode past the Czech Republic’s Martin Jaks, Germany’s Thomas Bing and eventually Sweden’s Daniel Rickardsson.
After moving up three places, Killick went through the second exchange in seventh with the seventh-fastest time, passing off the race to Russell Kennedy. Going into Leg 3, 2.6 seconds separated the Canadians from the tag between Sweden’s Rickardsson and Marcus Hellner. All said and done, Killick had made up 40.9 seconds to catch and pass Sweden.
“Everyone, I think, skied to a higher level today,” Killick told FasterSkier after. “We were all able to dig deep for our teammates and make sure we pass off in good position.”
“Anything can happen in a relay and that’s one of the reasons it’s always exciting to get on the start line and do your best,” Killick continued. “When I tagged off Russell, he was with Hellner … It was cool to see everyone dig so deep and just fight for the team.”
Racing Canada’s third relay leg, Kennedy, a 26-year-old Olympic rookie, held tight to Hellner through the first lap. And again through the second. And through the first half of the third. It was not until around the final major climb, that Hellner broke away from Kennedy’s red maple-leaf suit.
Canada’s Graeme Killick racing the second leg of the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay on Sunday at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. He brought the team from 10th to seventh with the seventh-fastest second-leg time. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad)
“I was psyched when I saw GKill killed it, and gave me an amazing position,” Kennedy said after. “But I was also a bit nervous because … I was walking to the line with Hellner and I was like, he’s an Olympic champ. I got to stick with him and hold on, and that’s what I did. I just locked on, the wax techs gave me amazing skis today, and I held on as hard as I could. He threw in a sprint at the top of the hill, blew me up, but I was psyched to have made it almost three laps with him.”
Hellner has two relay gold medals from the Olympics, one from 2014 and another from 2010, as well as two 30 k skiathlon golds from the 2010 and 2014 Games. The 32-year-old Swede is also a multiple-time World Championships medalist with several top-10 World Cup 15 k freestyle results. While Kennedy considers himself more of a sprinter, Sunday’s performance may perhaps change his perspective.
“I was just thinking, don’t blow. Do it for the team,” Kennedy said. “I knew that if I could hand off to Knute in a good position, were were in a really good position for us. Can’t ask for much more than that. I gave it everything for sure. I was just happy we caught the Slovakian guy so Knute had someone to ski with. But yeah, amazing day for me, for sure. I felt really good.”
Canada’s Knute Johnsgaard (12) racing the final leg of the the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay on Sunday at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. He anchored the team to ninth for its second-best Olympic relay result. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad)
After skiing the seventh-fastest third leg, Kennedy came through the exchange in eighth and handed off to teammate Knute Johnsgaard, also in his first Olympics, for the final freestyle leg. Johnsgaard kept the Canadians ahead of the Czech Republic, staving off Kazakhstan until the final kilometer and a half.
“It was pretty tough for me, especially the sprint hill,” Johnsgaard, 25, said. “We knew it was going to be hard. We did the best we could.”
Canada finished in ninth, 3:41 seconds off first, which was taken by Norway’s lineup of Didrik Tønseth, Martin Johnsrud Sundby, Simen Hegstad Krüger, and Klæbo in a time of 1:33:04.9. The ninth place ties the country’s second-best Olympic relay result, which was set at the Calgary Games in 1988. Canada’s best relay finish was in 2010 when the team placed seventh with Devon Kershaw, Alex Harvey, Ivan Babikov, and George Grey.
Harvey opted not to race Sunday’s relay, and Johnsgaard started in his place.
In last year’s World Championships team relay in Lahti, Finland, with Harvey on the team, the Canadians were lapped out of the race.
“We’ve had some terrible luck with relays. I think we did great today,” said Valjas, a 29-year-old two-time Olympian. “It’s not our A-team; we knew that coming in. I think we performed amazing and I’m super happy with how it went. Especially all these guys staying with some serious big names in cross-country skiing. I’m impressed, these guys were fighting hard and I’m proud of all of them.”
Alongside the Canadian’s solid team performance, the U.S. had several personal highlights. Scrambling in the first leg was American Andy Newell in his second race of the week (after placing 37th in the individual classic sprint) and potentially, the 32 year old’s last Olympic race.
“The sprint day was really disappointing, because I knew I had a lot more to give in the qualification. To be just out was frustrating, I know I had a much better result than that in me, and my body is feeling better than that result,” Newell told FasterSkier on Sunday. “To be able to come back and get another start, it was great.”
Having scrambled in Olympic relay races before, Newell explained that allowing the pace to burn off the front was part of his plan. Through the first lap he was 2.3 seconds off the lead pace. Around 5 k, he was racing with Canada, Estonia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Germany around 6 seconds back. With around one lap to go, Kazakstan’s Alexey Poltoranin bulldozed to the front and began pushing pace. Newell stuck to his racing plan.
“It’s a high-pressure event. Somebody who has raced first legs for their country before, talk about being nervous the night before, when you know you’re going to go off and the rest of the team’s counting on you,” Newell said. “Relays … there’s so much national pride, no matter what team you come from. Whether it is a Norway/Sweden rivalry or and Canada/U.S. rivalry, they all go back and have their history.”
“I probably haven’t raced a 10 k in probably over a month, talk about nerve racking,” Newell continued. “To step to the line with Poltoranin, some of these guys, when you know they are much better 10 k classic skiers than I am.”
Poltoranin has reached the World Cup podium numerous times in distance classic races. On Sunday, Newell came through the exchange in 12th, 1:28.8 minutes behind Poltoranin in first.
“I just have to go and be like, ‘A minute twenty back, it feels like a bad race, but these guys are the best in the world. … It sounds bad, but we have to do what we call damage control a little bit, try to ski with the guys we can ski with, and put our team in the best position we can,” Newell explained.
American Resse Hanneman racing the second leg of the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay on Sunday at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. In his first Olympic race, after being tagged in 12th, he came through the second exchange in 14th. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad)
He passed off to American Reese Hanneman for the second classic leg. The event was Hanneman’s debut Olympic race. The 28-year-old Alaska native was called on to the team as the first alternate.
“Skiing with the top 13 classic skiers in the world … for me, it became apparent that I was going to have to really focus and make it hurt to minimize the time I was going to lose to them,” Hanneman said. “I could barely see or stand up by the end of it. I’m not happy with how I performed, but I’m happy with how deep I was able to dig.”
Hanneman tagged off to Scott Patterson in 14th, who then took the American’s first freestyle leg. Creeping up on Patterson were the race leaders. He geared up through all three of his laps, holding off both Norway’s Simen Hegstad Krüger and Russia’s Alexey Chervotkin.
“All the coaches were out there going, ‘You’ve got two minutes. You’ve got 1:39,’ just the whole way,” Patterson said, referring to his time back to the leaders. “It’s not the direction you want to be getting splits, but that’s where we were.”
“Also, we knew with Erik [Bjornsen] sitting out, with Simi [Hamilton] sitting out, with Paddy [Caldwell] sick, we knew were in a little bit of a tough shape for today, so not getting lapped was a bit of goal going in,” Patterson added.
With Hoffman anchoring the final three laps, the Americans achieved their goal. Don’t get caught by Klæbo became ‘Klæbo can’t catch me.’
“They weren’t charging their second lap — my first lap — but I knew they would be charging on the last lap and I knew I needed every second I possibly could, so I went out hard,” Hoffman said. “I was just viewing it as a 6.6 k race. Like the last lap doesn’t matter at that point, just got to get there. I did everything I could and it was close but I am pretty psyched that we as a team made it.”
The Americans finished the relay in 14th (+9:24.2) out of 14 teams.
“You never know how its going to go down,” Hoffman said of relays. “Unless you are scrambling you don’t know what the start is going to be like, where you’re going to be, if you’re going to be alone, if you’re going to be with people, you got to be adaptable, you got to be able to make your own plan out there.
“This was my first time ever anchoring a relay so that’s pretty cool experience,” Hoffman added. “I had a lot of support finishing. … Even though we were a long ways back the crowd seemed to stick around for me, which was pretty fun.”
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo anchoring the Norwegian men’s 4 x 10 relay to gold on Sunday at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, while Denis Spitsov (background) celebrates silver for the Olympic Athletes for Russia. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad)
For a while in the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay on Sunday, it looked like the Russians might run away with the win. But that was just two classic legs and 20 k into the race, with a lot more racing to come.
While Kazakhstan’s Alexey Poltoranin had handed off in first at the first exchange, just ahead of Andrey Larkov of the Olympic Athletes from Russia, Italy, France and Norway skied together behind them, with Norway’s Didrik Tønseth trailing off the back, 18 seconds behind.
On the next classic leg, Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov put a hurt on the field. Within the first 3.3 k lap, he was 25 seconds ahead of Kazakhstan’s Yevgeniy Velichko in second, who was followed closely by Italy, Norway and France in third through fifth. Sweden’s Daniel Rickardsson had fallen farther behind to more than a minute back in sixth place, after his teammate Jens Burman lost contact with the lead group on the first leg.
By the second exchange, Russia was 24.5 seconds clear of second place, while Italy’s Francesco de Fabiani tagged Giandomenico Salvadori in second, France’s Maurice Manificat tagged Clement Parisse in third (+28.0), and Norway’s Martin Johnsrud Sundby tagged Simen Hegstad Krüger in fourth (+32.1). Kazakhstan’s Velichko had fallen off the pace and was another 19 seconds back in fifth.
Over the next 10 k, the first skate leg, Krüger and Parisse reeled in Russia’s Alexey Chervotkin, catching him before the end of their second lap. One lap later, Krüger came through the final exchange in first, tagging Johannes Høsflot Klæbo 0.4 seconds ahead of France in second. Chervotkin tagged Russia’s anchor Denis Spitsov in third, 16.2 seconds back, while Finland’s Matti Heikkinen passed Italy’s Salvadori on the last climb to put Finland in fourth (+58.6).
Team France celebrates its bronze-medal finish in the men’s 4 x 10 k relay at the 2018 Olympics on Sunday in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: FIS Cross Country/Twitter)
Early in the final leg, France’s Adrien Backscheider took the lead ahead of Klæbo. The two held Spitsov off until the end of the second lap, where Spitsov came through the stadium first to start the final loop. Spitsov and Klæbo soon upped the pace, dropping Backscheider, and shortly after the 8.27 k checkpoint, Klæbo truly put the jets on to accelerate away from Spitsov. He dropped the Russian on a climb just before the final uphill, where it was clear that the gold was Norway’s.
As he sped down into the stadium, Klæbo relaxed his arms, skied to the sideline and took a flag from the stands. He looked back for a moment and then crossed the finish line first in 1:33:04.9 hours, while Spitsov followed 9.4 seconds later for silver for Russia. Backscheider held on for bronze (+36.9) as his team exuberantly celebrated with him at the finish.
Finland placed fourth (+1:40.5), Sweden fifth (+2:05.6), Germany sixth (+2:08.2), Italy seventh (+2:35.2), and Kazakhstan eighth (+3:31.4). Canada was ninth (+3:41.0) for its second-best Olympic relay result (with Len Valjas, Graeme Killick, Russell Kennedy, and Knute Johnsgaard), and the U.S. finished 14th (+9:24.2), out of 14 teams, with Andy Newell, Reese Hanneman, Scott Patterson, and Noah Hoffman.
France’s Martin Fourcade lunging for his second gold of the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, winning the men’s 15 k mass start on Sunday. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad)
Martin Fourcade is the champion once again. Six days after he won the 12.5-kilometer pursuit for his first gold in PyeongChang, the 29-year-old Frenchman did it again in the men’s 15 k mass start on Sunday, winning in a photo finish at the line.
He took charge on the first loop, leading the field into the range for the first prone shooting. There, Fourcade shot a penalty and slipped to 19th, but it wasn’t over.
Clean shooting on the second prone brought him up to eighth, 9.4 seconds out of first. Germany’s Benedikt Doll took that lead at that point after his second stage without a miss. Meanwhile Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø shot three misses on that second stage and dropped out of contention.
One loop later, Fourcade moved into first with a clean standing. He left the range about 1 second ahead of Germany’s Simon Schempp and 2 seconds ahead of Germany’s Erik Lesser, after both made it through the first three stages without a miss. Doll missed one to slip to seventh, almost 30 seconds behind.
After Fourcade and Schempp exchanged leads over the next loop, Lesser moved into first just before the final shooing, Going head to head, Fourcade and Schempp both missed one while Lesser missed two. Fourcade and Schempp still left the range in first and second, respectively, separated by 0.4 seconds, while Lesser slipped to fifth, 22.5 seconds back.
Doll left the range in third (+19.2) after cleaning and Norway’s Emil Hegle Svendsen moved into fourth (+21.9) with a clean standing stage as well.
In the end, Fourcade outlunged Schempp for the win in 35:47.3 minutes, with Schempp finishing less than a tenth of a second behind for silver, and Svendsen beat out Lesser in the finishing stretch by 0.4 seconds to claim bronze, 11.2 seconds behind, while Lesser settled for fourth (+11.6). Doll followed them in fifth (+18.8), Austria’s Julian Eberhard placed sixth (+30.7) with three penalties, Norway’s Erlend Bjøntegaard seventh (+32.1) with two misses, Norway’s Tarjei Bø eighth (+34.6) with three penalties, Sweden’s Jesper Nelin ninth (+34.6) with two misses, and Slovenia’s Jakov Fak 10th (+36.1), just ahead of the Czech Republic’s Ondřej Moravec in 11th (+36.3), with one miss each.
Sadie Bjornsen (U.S. Ski Team) during the classic leg of the women’s Olympic 15 k skiathlon at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. She placed 31st in her Olympic debut.
If you read FasterSkier, two aspects of our coverage generates the most reader comments: doping violations and their adjudication, and team-selection criteria. Although here we are, two days away from the PyeongChang Olympics’ Opening Ceremony with Sochi doping still plaguing the news, as the title suggest, this piece is about team selection.
On Jan. 26, U.S. Ski & Snowboard revealed its 2018 U.S. Olympic Team — a list 20 skiers deep comprised of nine men and 11 women. The U.S. Ski & Snowboard press release announcing those selections used this statement to describe the roster: “The team includes 20 athletes who qualified for the team through World Cup results as well as domestic racing results at the L.L.Bean U.S. Cross Country Championship.”
The buzz following Olympic team selection followed two major threads, one focused on team size, the other on the selection of non-U.S. Ski Team (USST) women sprinters.
In considering why team size remains a concern, let’s zip back to 2014 when the USST was allocated a quota of 17 athletes for Sochi. The team that headed to Russia was 14-athletes deep; seven men and seven women. The remaining three U.S. spots were were reallocated to other nations. At the time, U.S. Ski Team Head Coach told FasterSkier that the small team was by design.
U.S. teammates Sadie Bjornsen (l), Kikkan Randall (c) and Jessie Diggins at the finish of the women’s 2014 Sochi Olympic relay, in which they placed ninth with Liz Stephen.
“With seven women and seven men, we have our start positions filled,” Grover said in 2014. “Seven and seven was the magic number for us.”
One line of reasoning is that a smaller team is more easily managed and the potential for medals are higher.
An Olympic cycle later, the current iteration of the U.S. Cross-Country Olympic team is six skiers larger. That’s partly a function of the depth of the U.S. women’s team on the World Cup and partly a function of how the Olympic selection criteria was interpreted during the team nomination process.
In explaining how the team was named, U.S. Ski & Snowboard Chief of Sport Luke Bodensteiner said that U.S. Ski & Snowboard (formerly USSA) was not mandated to use all of its quota spots for the 2018 Olympics.
“That is a decision we made,” Bodensteiner said on the phone. “We received, across all of sports at U.S. Ski & Snowboard, 110 quota spots, and we accepted all 110. However, we have 109 athletes; one athlete is participating in two different disciplines.”
Bodensteiner clarified that the uneven split of nine men and 11 women on the cross-country team was a result of the women’s depth both domestically and on the World Cup. He explained that the selection criteria does not specify how the spots are distributed between men and women.
“It is really based on results achieved on World Cup ranking and then the Olympic selection list points,” Bodensteiner said. “As it worked out, more women scored more points, actually scored more rankings in the World Cup than the men, and then more selection points than the men on the women’s side. So we just applied down the sort of next-best points in most cases, and that is why [we] have two more women than men and that is just a function of the women scoring more substantial points in the tryout events.”
Practically speaking, a larger team means more variables to manage but clear upsides for the broader cross-country community.
“Filling quotas presents clear positive possibilities and also some challenges to both mitigate and maximize…,” Bodensteiner said. “We try to take everything into account like utilizing start positions in the Olympics and how large a team quota we get. There are challenges for a bigger team, in particular, when you exceed the start possibilities. In cross-country, we have a number of athletes that probably won’t compete. That creates challenges like issues with health, waxing skis, and maintaining a positive team spirit. On the other side, there’s the positive: we have a lot of cross-country athletes going to the Olympics. It is a great experience generally, and something the community appreciates, that the athletes have that opportunity.”
Bodensteiner communicated that several athletes are not expecting to start races in PyeongChang are onboard in terms of fulfilling U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s performance outcomes in PyeongChang.
“We have also had quality discussion with athletes that we have no place to start,” Bodensteiner said. “We have been able to share our concerns that with a large team, we’d like dynamics that do not distract from winning medals. We spoken about how we mitigate those concerns and we have oriented those athletes in terms of how to help mitigate and work together to establish the way to go about doing business. They have been good, highly productive discussions.”
Team Selection: Nominations from the World Cup Qualifying Criteria
Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit, the athletes who met the following objective criteria: “Any eligible athlete that posts a top-8 individual final World Cup result during the selection period [Nov. 23, 2017, through Jan. 15, 2018] in the following events will be selected to the Team: Sprint C, individual start 10/15 km F, and 15/30 km Skiathlon.”
Sophie Caldwell (U.S. Ski Team) racing to sixth in the individual freestyle sprint at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
U.S. Ski Team members Sadie Bjornsen, Sophie Caldwell and Jessie Diggins automatically qualified for the Olympic team by meeting the top eight in an Olympic event threshold. Bjornsen qualified on Nov. 24 in Kuusamo, Finland, with a second place in a classic sprint. Caldwell qualified in the same race in eighth place. Diggins made the Olympic team on Dec. 12 in Lillehammer, Norway, when she placed sixth in a classic sprint. (Regarding both Bjornsen and Diggins, each scored multiple top-eight results in Olympic events during the selection period; we’ve simply specified the first instance each skier automatically qualified.)
Three skiers down, 17 to go.
The second-tier of the objective criteria reads as follows: “Athletes ranking in the top-50 in the distance World Cup standings or the top-50 in the Sprint World Cup standings as of January 15, 2018 shall be selected to the team.”
Rosie Brennan, Kikkan Randall, Ida Sargent, Liz Stephen, Erik Bjornsen, Simi Hamilton and Andy Newell jumped the top-50 hurdle.
Let’s run through the men first. On Jan. 15, Hamilton was ranked 15th, Newell 36th and Bjornsen 49th on the World Cup sprint list. Bjornsen was also ranked 41st on the distance list.
For the women, Sargent was ranked 13th on the World Cup Sprint list and Randall 19th. We’ll get back to this in a moment, but Brennan was ranked 43rd on the sprint list and 34th on the distance list. Liz Stephen ranked 35th overall on the distance list.
Some of the chatter heard after the Olympic team selection had to do with a portion of the criteria stating that no more than five athletes per gender would be selected based on sprint results, including all of World Cup sprint results, World Cup sprint rankings, and the domestic OWG points list.
So far we’ve discussed six more skiers, bringing us to nine athletes, all current members of the U.S. Ski Team (USST) and all qualified from their World Cup results.
U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover wrote in an email that he believed the World Cup-based criteria served the purpose of fielding the most competitive team.
“From my perspective, the objective World Cup criteria worked well,” Grover wrote. “The fastest athletes were selected to the PyeongChang team.”
He also acknowledged that the inclusion of overall results from the Tour de Ski’s (TdS) final hill climb as part of major championship qualification criteria would be revisited.
“One bit of criticism/feedback that we received was that the Final Climb from the Tour de Ski should not be included in the selection period, because it is a special event that is not representative of the races at a major Championships,” Grover wrote. “I think this is a valid point. The Final Climb has been in our criteria for years, and nobody has complained until this season. Although we believe this race has been effectively useful in identifying our aerobically fit skaters, we are very open to removing it from future criteria and closing the World Cup distance selection period one day earlier. This is something we can discuss with the Cross Country Committee this spring.”
Non-World-Cup-Based Nominations
Filling out a team large enough to fill the four-starters-per-nation race quota allowed the coaches and selection committee to refer to the 2018 Olympic Winter Games (OWG) points list (click “2017/2018 SuperTour Points” under “Resources” on right side of page). That points lists kept a running total for the season’s first two SuperTour weekends and weighted results at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage. (For sprinters, points were allocated only for qualification results, not the final results.) The rankings were then further organized by an athlete’s two best sprint results and two best distance results in separate columns on the spreadsheet (note: those columns were blank on Monday morning.)
For the men, team selection appears to have been rather straightforward. The top-three ranked distance skiers were selected off the OWG points list. In order, those athletes were USST member Scott Patterson, Alaska Pacific University’s (APU) Tyler Kornfield and former USST member Noah Hoffman.
Patterson, who is in his first season as a USST member, did not score World Cup points in Period 1 and declined an offer to race the TdS as his path to Olympic qualification. Patterson contested U.S. nationals as his potential qualifying route to the Games. Patterson won the 15 k skate and placed sixth in the 30 k classic mass start.
APU’s Tyler Kornfield (126) celebrates as he crosses the line first in the men’s 30-kilometer classic mass start on Jan. 7 at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska. Eric Packer (118) finished second and Denver University’s Eivind Romberg Kvaale (124) placed third. Kornfield reached the podium in three out of four races at 2018 U.S. nationals.
Second on the OWG list was Kornfield, who won the 30 k classic mass start, placed 13th in the 15 k skate, qualified sixth in the skate sprint and third in the classic sprint. He also placed third overall in both the classic and skate sprints at nationals. Kornfield’s all-around point scoring catapulted him into the team selection conversation.
Third on the list was Hoffman, who placed second in the 15 k skate at nationals and fifth in the 30 k classic mass start. Hoffman also scored World Cup points in 28th in the Lillehammer 30 k skiathlon, a race loaded with home-field Norwegian talent.
Paddy Caldwell, also in his first season as a full-fledged USST member, played his qualifying hand by remaining in Europe and racing the TdS. In his first winter racing full time on the World Cup, Caldwell has popped solid results. His nascent 2017/2018 World Cup resume is highlighted by the 19th-fastest time of day in Kuusamo’s 15 k skate pursuit and the 19th-fastest time of day on the TdS’s final climb 9 k skate pursuit. However, Caldwell landed outside the top-50 bubble on the World Cup distance list.
Patterson was selected as the highest-ranking athlete on the 2018 OWG selection list. As specified in U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s Olympic team press release, Patterson’s selection, according to U.S. Ski & Snowboard, was not a discretionary pick.
However, Hoffman, Kornfield, and Caldwell were all selected to the Olympic team by discretion. Bodensteiner, himself a former U.S. cross-country Olympian, explained over the phone that Hoffman, Kornfield, and Caldwell were nominated to the team by head coach Grover. Those nominations were then reviewed and approved by a three-person committee composed of Bodensteiner, U.S. Ski & Snowboard President Tiger Shaw, and former USST member Holly Brooks as the athlete representative.
Bodensteiner provided firsthand insight into Caldwell’s nomination and approval process.
“Chris Grover presented to the committee whether Paddy was qualified to be part of roster,” Bodensteiner said. “From an athlete-management standpoint, Paddy is somebody we have all agreed has got high potential for the future and the coaches were very interested in getting him into this environment [on the World Cup] and let him race a lot and developing him that way. We could have declined to accept Chris’s nomination of discretion. When I think of developing Paddy, for him it is not necessarily about performance in this Olympics but about future Olympics. Also, in thinking of his development, you don’t want to pull a guy like that out of racing for a month. We agree from an athlete management standpoint we want to make sure he has that experience. On our phone call about Paddy, Chris Grover does get into specifics about [Paddy’s] recent results. Paddy will get a start and maybe more in PyeongChang.”
It should be noted that in an interview about team selection this past summer, Grover stated that development occurs at many lower levels, like Europa Cups, World Juniors, etc., but “It does not and should not come at the World Championships or the Olympics. … It’s not a development trip; it’s a competition trip at the very highest level.”
At the same time, the criteria allows use of discretion for “Indication of medal potential in future Olympic or World Championship competition (such as international age group results and rankings) that would be materially enhanced by selection to the team.”
In the past, that “future medal potential” option for discretionary selection has rarely been used.
“We haven’t used it that way,” Grover said this summer. “Obviously the language is there if we were to choose to use it, but in the past we really have not used it that way, and I don’t anticipate using it going forward into this season. … We want … the fastest skiers on the start line in Korea, and those are the ones that we’re gonna be selecting.”
In PyeongChang, it’s likely that Patterson, Hoffman, Bjornsen and Paddy Caldwell will form the core of the U.S. Olympic men’s distance starts, with Kornfield getting several warranted race opportunities. Hamilton also skied himself into the Olympic distance race start mix by placing 12th in the 15 k skate mass start in the final pre-Olympic World Cup weekend in Seefeld, Austria. The 15 k skate at the Olympics is an individual start.
Factored into the men’s Olympic sprint-start equation are brothers Logan and Reese Hanneman. The Alaskan brothers (both members of APU) were the two highest ranking sprinters on the OWG list. Logan, the younger of the two, placed first and second in the U.S. nationals classic and skate sprint qualifiers. Reese placed third and first, respectively. Older brother Reese also doubled up by winning both the skate and classic sprint crowns. According to the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Olympic team press release, neither Hanneman was considered a discretionary pick.
Depending on Erik Bjornsen’s race schedule, the U.S. coaches will have a core of Newell, Hamilton, the Hannemans, and Bjornsen for the classic sprint. In case of illness, Kornfield has sprinting chops as well. He’s a former two-time classic sprint national champion who reinforced his sprint cred with his double-podium performance in the sprints at the 2018 nationals.
Time to bring the discussion back to the women’s Olympic team selections. To restate, Diggins, Sadie Bjornsen, Sophie Caldwell, Sargent, Randall, Brennan, and Stephen all qualified objectively with their World Cup results. That’s seven female athletes, which leaves four spots remaining on the 11-athlete women’s Olympic cross-country team.
“We acted on the principle that we wanted to maximize start rights in each race,” Bodensteiner explained. “There was an interesting dynamic to women’s team. We have a generous quota and the need to fill spots. Our top women are going to race quite a bit and they ultimately exhaust start options for other skiers.”
In other words, this team is in PyeongChang to medal. Yet even with that caveat, “slam dunk” could be used to describe the nomination of Caitlin Patterson, of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP). She was the top American in all four races contested at nationals. She won the 10 k skate, and both the skate and classic sprints, and was the first American in the 20 k mass start classic (and second overall). Patterson was selected off the OWG point list as the highest ranking female athlete.
Caitlin Patterson (Craftsbury Green Racing Project) racing to 52nd in the freestyle sprint qualifier at the last World Cup on Jan. 27 in Seefeld, Austria. The next day, she placed 23rd in the 10 k freestyle mass start. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
With the exception of Caitlin Patterson, Scott’s older sister, who again reinforced her Olympic readiness with a 20th place in Planica’s 10 k classic, start spots remain scarce for non-USST women skiers at the Games. That said, three more domestic-circuit-based female skiers were nominated to the Olympic team: Annie Hart (Stratton Mountain School T2 Team), Kaitlynn Miller (CGRP) and Rosie Frankowski (APU).
Frankowski was second on the distance OWG points list after placing fourth and second*, respectively, in the 10 k skate and 20 k mass start classic at Nationals (*she was the second American, third overall in the mass start). According to Grover in an email, Frankowski remains an “alternate” for the distance events.
If we don’t include Hart and Miller yet, we’re at 18 athletes total, nine men and nine women.
According to Bodensteiner, initially the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) relayed that U.S. Ski & Snowboard had a quota of 18 cross-country athletes.
“Once we get that quota, we are required to make an entry,” Bodensteiner explained. “So we do the selection, in this case on 18 athletes. We do the entry, and then it is a couple days later when you start with this reallocation. It is really hard to determine what is going to happen there. Because you don’t know if Norway is going to give back a spot, or Germany or even a Macedonian. You just don’t really know what is going to happen.”
According to Bodensteiner, the U.S. was reallocated a 19th team spot. Soon after the additional reallocated spot, the USOC informed U.S. Ski & Snowboard that a 20th quota spot was added.
“That creates some interesting dynamics for selection because then you select your team, and couple days later, in this case, a 19th quota drops,” Bodensteiner said of the team-naming process. “And the coaches had done all their nominations about coach discretion that they wanted to do. And when we hit 19, and then eventually 20, and made a subsequent selection, that is a fairly dynamic process as well.”
For both the 19th and 20th spots, which Bodensteiner confirmed were Hart and Miller respectively, the selection committee in consult with the USOC, decided to go strictly off the point hierarchy from the women’s domestic list.
“Ultimately we decided to accept [the 19th and 20th spots], and at that point did not elect to use anymore coach’s discretion and just re-apply the procedure, with the athlete on objective criteria that had the next-best selection points,” Bodensteiner said.
Hart topped the OWG sprint list. Yet, as mentioned earlier, the criteria is written in a way to seemingly cap the number of sprinters at five in either gender. Last year, as a result of the the strict interpretation of those guidelines used to select the U.S. team for the Lahti World Championships, no domestic sprinter was selected to the World Championship roster. (Sophie Caldwell, Diggins and Randall all advanced to the final in that event. Diggins earned silver, Randall bronze.) The requisite lack of sprint opportunities for U.S. based women skiers at cross-country events like World Championships or the Olympics may be the cost of fielding perhaps the strongest women’s sprint team in the world. Sophie Caldwell, Diggins, Bjornsen, Randall and Sargent are internationally recognized sprinters. Even in a best-case Olympic scenario, one of these podium threats will be cheering during sprint qualifications, as only four can start a given race.
Yet the U.S, Olympic team will bring six female sprinters to PyeongChang. Bodensteiner stated that despite the language in the criteria (“will not exceed”), capping the number of sprinters at five per gender is not absolute.
“That is where, as I have explained with the quote-unquote sixth sprinter, that it was not a selection that was made in that allocation of 18,” Bodensteiner said. “That was made basically in consultation with the USOC and an external review to decide what’s the most fair application of the criteria in terms of filling the 19th position. That is where we as a selection committee would have looked at the athlete with the next highest selection points even knowing this athlete would be a reserve but we defaulted to the person who had the highest selection points.
“Annie is an interesting spot in thinking about how deep to get, and looking at outstanding results in sprinting, rather than choose lower on the distance list,” he continued. “It made sense to choose and recognize exceptional results. Discretion allows the committee to fill start rights and use the criteria in the most equitable way possible.”
Miller and Caitlin Gregg were tied for third on the women’s OWG distance points list. With their two best races considered, each athlete earned 56 points. Miller was selected over Gregg by applying the criteria’s tie-break procedure.
As a notable aside, multiple athletes alleged to FS, in writing but off the record, that Olympic team selection had been influenced by internal arbitration, external civil litigation, or the threat of either or both of these. However, both the existence and outcome of arbitration procedures are confidential, and multiple docket searches in state and federal courts revealed no lawsuit that had actually been filed.
Asked whether the USOC had been prompted to begin arbitration to either open up more Olympic team spots or be included on the team beyond the original 18 athletes selected, Bodensteiner stated that the USOC helped guide those particular selections.
“I guess what I will tell you, there is always an opportunity for independent review,” Bodensteiner said. “And that is where the USOC is really involved with us and we have a lot of discussions with them, like what’s the proper application of the procedure in terms of being applied fairly and equitably with the 19th selection and probably the 20th. We had done a lot of consultation with the USOC on both those selections.”
Bodensteiner also made clear that it is in every interested party’s right right to advocate for themselves.
“The athletes have the protection to challenge a selection position,” Bodensteiner explained. “It can be any reason they feel wronged. It is also not part of public record. They have the opportunity to make a complaint to USOC — they oversee the whole process. The USOC also approves the selection criteria, they have influence over it. Yet, they do not tell us to fill our quotas. So, the athlete can file a complaint to the USOC and they, the USOC, will moderate the discussion with the athlete who feels they wrongly have not been selected. If we can not come to terms, it is referred to an arbitrator.”
As far as FasterSkier has been informed, at least one athlete, and potentially more, was involved in official arbitration in connection with the 2018 U.S. Olympic cross-country selections. The USOC is not a government funded agency and it’s arbitration records are not public documents.
“That is not public record, we have dealt with that in the past, that is as deep as I want to get,” Bodensteiner said. “It is interesting when you get into application of criteria. Despite what you write specifically, they are open to interpretation. We maintain fidelity to criteria as much as possible. Some people will feel that wasn’t the right process. I understood to be something different. We will always go on and rewrite if there are any ambiguities and make better criteria.”
As of Wednesday morning, FasterSkier was still seeking comment from the the USOC regarding the reallocated spots — spots 19 and 20 — on the U.S. Olympic cross-country team.
Moving forward, Grover wrote that Hart will be a reserve for the classic sprint and Miller a reserve for the distance events.
It’s full steam ahead with 20 U.S. cross-country athletes in PyeongChang. As the final rosters take shape in what on paper could bring the U.S. its first Olympic cross-country medal in almost two generations, coaches like Grover and the USST women’s coach Matt Whitcomb will be carefully penning out each race’s start roster for the Games.
In the often black-and-white world of elite ski racing, Bodensteiner conveyed he, too, could imagine the pressure exerted on both the athletes and coaches in the Olympic pressure cooker.
“It takes pretty adept coaching to work the athletes through that and deal with the athletes who don’t get selected to race in each competition,” Bodensteiner said about the tough race start decisions facing the team. “That can be a tough thing for athletes for sure. You can imagine the pressure on the team sprint race right now. That is going to be a pretty difficult challenge for those guys. I anticipate it will be a tough one for the athletes. There’s a very high potential to get a medal there and there are certainly more than two athletes that are probably thinking they should be on that team.”
The Games begin on Feb. 10 with the women’s 15 k skiathlon.
The podium for Day 2 of the Seefeld Triple Nordic Combined World Cup, with Japan’s Akito Watabe in first (c), Germany’s Vinzenz Geiger (l) in second and Norway’s Jarl Magnus Riiber (r) in third. (Photo: FIS Nordic Combined/Twitter)
FIS Nordic Combined World Cup (Seefeld, Austria): Normal hill/10 k
Two of the same men from Friday repeated on the podium on Day 2 of the Seefeld Triple Nordic Combined World Cup, with Japan’s Akito Watabe notching his second-straight win on Saturday.
Norway’s Jarl Magnus Riiber, who finished second on Friday, placed third in Saturday’s individual normal hill/10 k Gundersen, while Germany’s Vinzenz Geiger placed second, more than a minute behind Watabe.
Watabe jumped to first and started the 10 k with a 25-second head start on Riiber in second. Geiger started seventh, 1:45 minutes back, and rose to second at the finish, 1:05.5 behind Watabe (who won in 23:28.5) and 3.4 seconds ahead of Riiber in third (+1:08.9).
For the second day in a row, Norway’s Jan Schmid narrowly missed the podium in fourth (+1:14.1), up from fifth after the jump.
Taylor Fletcher was the lone American competing on Day 2, and he ended up 31st, up 10 places after jumping to 41st. Fletcher started the 10 k race 4:44 out of first then finished 3:52.9 behind Watabe.
The Seefeld Triple concludes Sunday with the individual normal hill/15 k Gundersen.
American Sophie Caldwell (l) and Switzerland’s Laurien van der Graaff (r) tied for first on Saturday in the women’s 1.1 k freestyle sprint final at the World Cup in Seefeld, Austria, while Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla placed third. (Screenshot: ARD broadcast)
FIS Cross Country World Cup (Seefeld, Austria): Freestyle sprints
It doesn’t get any closer than that. On Saturday, American Sophie Caldwell and Switzerland’s Laurien van der Graaff tied for first in the women’s 1.1-kilometer freestyle sprint final at the World Cup in Seefeld, Austria. They both finished within one-hundredth of a second of each other to take the victory — the last sprint before the Olympics — in 2:18.65 minutes.
Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla finished 0.21 seconds later for third place.
The women’s freestyle sprint podium at Saturday’s World Cup in Seefeld, Austria, with American Sophie Caldwell (l) and Switzerland’s Laurien van der Graaff (c) tying for first and Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla (r) placing third. (Photo: FIS Cross Country/Twitter)
“I broke my pole in the semifinal, then I got really tired,” van der Graaff said in a post-race interview with the International Ski Federation (FIS). “But I still believed I can be with Maiken and Sophie, and that I could catch them in the final was just great.”
Norway and the U.S. both had two in the final, with Kathrine Rolsted Harsem of Norway placing fourth (+1.34), Sweden’s Linn Sömskar finishing fifth (+1.83) and American Sadie Bjornsen taking sixth (+2.26).
Falla had raced to first in the qualifying round with a time of 2:21.44, Italy’s Greta Laurent qualified second (+1.43), van der Graaff third (+1.66), Caldwell fourth (+1.84), and Bjornsen fifth (+2.01).
Van der Graaff then won her quarterfinal and placed third in the first semifinal, 0.77 second behind Caldwell, who won it. Falla was second in that semifinal (+0.16) and van der Graaff advanced as a lucky loser.
Caldwell and Falla went head to head in every heat, with Falla winning their first quarterfinal by 0.08 seconds over Caldwell in second.
Bjornsen won her quarterfinal and finished second to Harsem in the second semifinal.
A third American, Kikkan Randall also qualified for the heats, placing 18th in the qualifier then finishing third in her quarterfinal (1.33 seconds behind Sömskar in first) to end up 14th overall.
Canada’s Dahria Beatty placed 30th in the qualifier to nab the last spot in the rounds, then finished fourth in her quarterfinal (1.65 seconds behind Laurent in first) for 20th overall.
For the U.S., Ida Sargent missed qualifying by about half a second in 37th (+8.20), Rosie Brennan finished 42nd (+9.86) and Caitlin Patterson was 52nd (+13.0).
Also for Canada, Emily Nishikawa finished 51st (+12.68) and Cendrine Browne was 54th (+13.34).
The men’s 1.4 k freestyle sprint podium at the World Cup in Seefeld, Austria, with Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (c) in first, France’s Lucas Chanavat (l) in second and Sweden’s Calle Halfvarsson (r) in third. (Photo: FIS Cross Country/ Twitter)
The men raced 1.4 k, with Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo qualifying first in 2:46.89 then winning his quarterfinal and semifinal before putting the hammer down for one last time in the final, finishing first in 3:02.66.
France’s Lucas Chanavat placed second in the final, 0.48 seconds back, after qualifying sixth, winning his quarterfinal and placing second in the first semifinal (0.33 seconds behind Klæbo). Sweden’s Calle Halfvarsson took the third spot on the podium after finishing 0.97 seconds after Klæbo. Halfvarsson had previously qualified seventh, taken second in his quarterfinal and advanced as a lucky loser in third in the first semifinal (0.52 seconds behind Klæbo).
Italy’s Federico Pellegrino missed the podium in fourth (+1.06), Russia’s Gleb Retivykh placed fifth (+1.17), and Norway’s Emil Iversen was sixth (+5.57).
Canada’s Alex Harvey and American Simi Hamilton both made it to the semifinals, where they finished fourth and fifth, respectively, and did not advance to the finals. Harvey had qualified for the rounds in 22nd and won his quarterfinal, then raced in the second semifinal, where he finished fourth, 0.47 seconds behind Iversen in first. That put Harvey eighth overall on the day.
Hamilton clocked the fifth-fastest qualifying time, 6.46 seconds back from Klæbo’s top time. The U.S. Ski Team member then placed second to Pellegrino in his quarterfinal and was fifth in the first semifinal, 2.61 seconds behind Klæbo. Overall, Hamilton placed ninth.
Also for the U.S., Erik Bjornsen finished 37th in the qualifier, 0.89 seconds out of the top 30 and 11.99 second out of first, Logan Hanneman was 39th (+12.52), Andy Newell 42nd (+12.90), Reese Hanneman 65th (+17.91), and Ben Lustgarten 76th (+21.88).
Canada’s Len Valjas placed 40th (+12.72), Julien Locke 43rd (+13.31), Knute Johnsgaard 51st (+14.74), Bob Thompson 58th (+16.55), Graeme Killick 61st (+17.28), and Devon Kershaw 70th (+19.53).
France’s 22-year-old Chloé Chevalier racing to her second win and third podium of the week in as many individual races at 2018 IBU Open European Championships on Saturday in Ridnaun, Italy. (Photo: IBU/Biathlonworld)
IBU Open European Championships (Ridnaun-Val Ridanna, Italy): Men’s and women’s pursuits
France’s Chloé Chevalier picked up her second win and third podium of the week at the International Biathlon Union (IBU) Open European Championships on Saturday in Ridnaun, Italy, winning the women’s 10 k pursuit, while Russia’s Alexander Loginov rose to the top step of the podium in the men’s 12.5 k pursuit on Saturday.
Chevalier started the women’s pursuit in second, 13 seconds behind Ukraine’s Iryna Varvynets (who won Friday’s sprint and thus started first), and shot clean to take the lead after the third stage — where Varvynets missed one. Chevalier went on to clean the final stage for perfect 20-for-20 shooting and crossed the line first in 29:25.4. Varvynets finished second, 11.0 seconds back after missing a single target in the first standing (0+0+1+0), and France had two on the podium with Julia Simon in third (+43.2). Simon also shot 19-for-20, with her miss coming in the second prone stage (0+1+0+0).
“Three medals in three races is definitely more than I had expected,” Chevalier, 22, told the event’s organizers on Saturday. “Today I saw that Iryna shoots faster than I, and so I really gave my all in the track. Even if it might not look like it, after the many races in the last few days I am noticing that I am getting more and more tired.”
American Chloe Levins rose from 59th at the start to 42nd at the finish (+4:11.8), with three clean stages and two misses in the first standing (0+0+2+0). She had the 28th-fastest overall range time and 30th-ranked shooting time.
In the men’s pursuit, Loginov started first as Friday’s sprint winner Latvia’s Andrejs Rastorgujevs did not start. Loginov held the lead throughout the race despite two misses — one in the first stage and another in the last stage (1+0+0+1) — and secured the win in 32:22.1. Bulgaria’s Krasimir Anev started second, 19 seconds after Loginov, and held his place as well, shooting clean and finishing second, 27.6 second back.
“I am really happy here in Ridanna and the results reflect that,” Loginov, 25, told organizers. “Not to start in the individual event on Wednesday was the right decision because the last few days had been very demanding with six races in eight days. I am cross with my two errors in the shooting range, but very happy with my performance in the track.”
Russia had two on the podium with Evgeniy Garanichev in third (+1:10.7) after Garanichev started in bib 19 and overcame three penalties (1+0+2+0) with the fastest overall course time.
Canada’s Macx Davies started 27th and finished 35th (+4:33.9) with five misses (3+0+2+0), while American Alex Howe rose from 53rd at the start to 43rd (+5:53.5) with five penalties (2+2+1+0).
The 2018 Open European Championships conclude with the single mixed relay and mixed relay on Sunday. American Susan Dunklee and Lowell Bailey are on the start list for the single mixed relay, Canada’s Carsen Campbell and Sarah Beaudry. For the mixed relay, the U.S. has entered Levins, Maddie Phaneuf, Paul Schommer, and Alex Howe.
Via Facebook on Friday, U.S. Ski & Snowboard announced its 20-athlete roster for the U.S. Cross-Country team at upcoming Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
The U.S. Cross Country Ski Team will be one of the largest at the 2018 Olympics with a full squad of 20 athletes, with 11 women and nine men. Twelve of the 20 are U.S. Ski Team members.
According to a press release, “The team includes 20 athletes who qualified for the team through World Cup results as well as domestic racing results at the L.L.Bean U.S. Cross Country Championships.”
The release notes four discretionary picks: Annie Hart, Patrick Caldwell, Noah Hoffman, and Tyler Kornfield.
“The U.S. Ski Team is headed to PyeongChang with one of the most talented and decorated Olympic Teams of all time,” U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover said in the press release. “Never in our history have we fielded a team with so many podium-proven World Cup and World Championship athletes. We also have incredible momentum in this Olympic season with 10 World Cup podiums secured by early January. These USA Olympians have prepared extremely well for PyeongChang and are looking to rewrite U.S. cross country skiing history.”
2018 U.S. Olympic Cross Country Skiing Team
Erik Bjornsen (U.S. Ski Team/Alaska Pacific University)
Patrick Caldwell (USST/Stratton Mountain School T2)
Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo en route to another World Cup win in the men’s classic sprint on Saturday in Planica, Slovenia. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Sunny skies. Craggy Slovenian Alps. Fresh snow and firm classic tracks. The perfect backdrop for the coiffed hair and pink sunglasses. On Saturday in Planica, Slovenia, Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo again proved his form is on another level. Sometimes calm with tens of meters to spare, sometimes allowing others to draft momentarily on his ski tails, Klæbo won the World Cup men’s 1.6-kilometer classic sprint in 3:27.35 minutes.
In a final that featured three Norwegians, two Swedes and a Russian, Norway’s Emil Iversen placed second (+0.62) and Sweden’s Teodor Peterson third (+8.14). Yes, that’s a big gap to third place, and the gaps only bulged to the rest of the men in the final. Sweden’s Oskar Svensson finished fourth (+11.80), Norway’s Eirik Brandsdal fifth (+19.77), and Russia’s Gleb Retivykh sixth (+27.08).
Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo winning the men’s classic sprint final at the World Cup on Saturday in Planica, Slovenia, by 0.62 seconds over his teammate Emil Iversen. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
“I had a lot of fun out there today,” Klæbo said, according to an International Ski Federation (FIS) press release. “It was great to see so many people along the course and the stadium. I really liked the course with the long uphill sections.”
To say Klæbo is on a roll is an understatement. The 21 year old, in fact, seems to be skiing in total control and on a different level — his swing from top-end efforts to dialing it back for the “show” seems like a quid pro quo to keep competitors from discouragement. Not that another Klæbo win was ever in doubt, but great World Cups are sporting theater after all, and drama heightens the tension.
Klæbo was the first-place qualifier, rounding the 1.6 k course that featured two small climbs and a larger one lasting for nearly half a kilometer in 3:26.8 minutes. Dissecting some of Klæbo’s strategy from the qualification time splits, he skied the first 0.65 k of the course a full three full seconds faster than Sweden’s second-place qualifier, Calle Halfvarsson, who finished in 3:29.5. Klæbo then skied the next 1.59 k of course, which featured the major climb, with the second-fastest split. Halfvarsson skied that sector the fastest by only 0.3 seconds over Klæbo, who had the second-fastest split time on that section. The point is this: Klæbo won the qualifier in the first 0.65 k, and could then control his speed the remaining distance and still win the qualifier by 2.75 seconds.
Effortless? Not exactly. But at moments it appeared that way.
Klæbo skied in the first quarterfinal, which also featured American Andy Newell. Like in his qualifier, Klæbo torched his heat from the start. Off the front at around fifty seconds, Klæbo looked around and realized he’d broken away, then he appeared to literally let off the double-pole gas. Perhaps it was a small tease as Newell chased behind in second. On the long climb, Klæbo set tempo as the other places began to fall into order. On the descent, Klæbo streamed away as if on double secret wax. Twenty to thirty meters before the finish, he began taking his poles off. He won the heat by 1.55 seconds over Finland’s Iivo Niskanen in second place (+1.55). Germany’s Sebastian Eisenlauer followed in third (+2.34) and Newell fourth (+2.59) to miss advancing to the semifinals. Overall, Newell ended the day in 20th.
Klæbo’s semifinal again found him in total control. By the long climb, Klæbo was in his groove with teammate Iversen pegging his efforts to remain 5 then 10 meters back. But Iversen hung in, and by the final stretch, after Klæbo pulled up and chilled, Iversen took Klæbo at the line in what appeared to be a nonchalant gift.
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Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (4) and teammate Emil Iversen knock knuckles as they cross the line in Planica, Slovenia, on Saturday in the men’s classic sprint. Klæbo won the race while Iversen placed second overall. (Photo: Emil Iversen/Instagram)
The final began with Klæbo storming into the major climb with such speed that for a moment he became unbalanced. But in an instant, Klæbo’s stride was back in form as he strung out Petersen, Iversen and Svensson. With a quick skate into another lane followed by a killer double pole, Klæbo was gone up and over the climb. Iversen also made his move late on the climb, but by then, Klæbo was away.
With a tidy bow across the line, it was curtains for Klæbo.
After Saturday’s sprint, Klæbo is positioned first in the World Cup overall standings, despite skipping the entire Tour de Ski. He’s started a total of 10 individual races and has won eight, including Saturday’s sprint. In the other two, he placed second in last weekend’s freestyle sprint in Dresden, Germany, and was 10th on Dec. 16 in a 15 k skate in Toblach, Italy. Klæbo has won all three classic sprints this season.
No real prognostication here, it is too early. Yet, Klæbo has won every classic sprint this season and the upcoming Olympic individual sprint next month in PyeongChang, South Korea, is classic technique.
Two U.S. Men in Top 20
For the U.S., Simi Hamilton qualified 16th and ended his day in 19th after finishing fourth in the fifth quarterfinal, 2.35 behind the winner, Pål Golberg of Norway.
Simi Hamilton (U.S. Ski Team) racing to 16th in the men’s classic sprint qualifier on Saturday at the World Cup in Planica, Slovenia. He went on to finish the day in 19th overall. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
“I feel like a classic sprint is always up in the air for me how it’s going to go,” Hamilton told FasterSkier in person after the race. “Especially this season, the only other classic sprint I have done is in Ruka, and I was kind of getting really sick there, so I kind of had no idea how my body would respond.”
After skipping most of the Tour de Ski, leaving after the second stage on Jan. 1, Hamilton contested the sprints in Dresden last weekend and finished 10th in the individual skate sprint and eighth in the team sprint with Erik Bjornsen.
“I know that I am fit right now, and I have been feeling great so I kind of had that going into the day,” Hamilton said. “I had a really good interval workout here a couple days ago so it was awesome just to see the course and get a feel for doing that. I felt great in my qualifier, I felt like I stayed really relaxed. Sometimes I think classic sprinting, classic skiing in general, I have a tendency to get a little bit tight and I felt like in my qualifier I just stayed really loose the whole time, which kind of let me get pretty good glide on that really long gradual climb.
“In the quarter I just kind of focused on the same thing,” he continued. “Just started kind of conservatively so I had some energy for the long climb … I felt like I skied the climb really well, tried to make a move at the top, and when I was in third and then just needed to really pin it those last 200 meters, I just ran out a little bit of juice. But I think we were in a little slower heat anyways, so I wouldn’t have gone as a lucky loser, but it’s great … I love skiing heats obviously, and I think any day I can ski heats in a classic sprint with a pretty strong field, I think that is kind of a successful day for me.”
Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo leads Finland’s Iivo Niskanen (25) and American Andy Newell (23) in the first men’s quarterfinal of the World Cup classic sprint in Planica, Slovenia. Klæbo went on to win that heat, ahead of Niskanen in second and Newell in fourth. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Newell, who qualified in 23rd and finished the day in 20th, wrote in an email that he had been hoping for more.
“It was beautiful classic conditions out there and pretty straightforward waxing which made for really fun skiing,” he wrote. “The course had a little bit of a different feel because it basically just had one really long climb from the low point to the high point and, of course, some fast icy corners to keep things interesting. Especially in qualification, I felt semi out of control and scrubbed some speed. The courses actually skied a bit better in the heats I thought once they had less traffic.”
Matched with Klæbo in his quarterfinal, Newell clearly knew he’d have a speedster to chase.
“In the heats, I again chose heat one with the same strategy I’ve been using — choose the first heat and shoot for a final/podium rather than a top 15 etc.,” Newell added. “Not sure if that’s the right call … hard to tell sometimes. I skied the majority of the heat on the tails of Klæbo until the top of the climb he and Niskanen got a small gap. In the end, it wasn’t fast enough.”
Like Hamilton, Newell left the Tour de Ski early (after Stage 3) and contested last weekend’s skate sprints in Dresden. Needless to say, Newell is focused on PyeongChang.
“Although this wasn’t the pre-Olympic result I was looking for I still have a few weeks to fine tune classic skiing and fitness and think about what I need to do to have a top performance in PyeongChang,” Newell reflected.
A large contingent of U.S. men competed, with the Alaska Pacific University (APU) duo of Logan Hanneman and Tyler Kornfield narrowly missing the heats, finishing 35th (+13.55) and 38th (+13.96), respectively, in the qualifier. Teammate Reese Hanneman finished 51st in the qualifier (+17.99) and Ben Lustgarten of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project placed 59th (+19.41).
For both Logan Hanneman and Kornfield, this was their first career World Cup starts. Hanneman is 24 and Kornfield is 26.
Kornfield is coming off a stellar U.S. nationals in Anchorage, Alaska, where he won the 30 k classic mass start, and placed third overall in both the classic and skate sprints. Kornfield is slowly adjusting to Europe and said his body still feels the effects of his national 30 k win.
“I have had a little time, but ever since the 30 k, I haven’t slept past five hours,” Kornfield said on Saturday. “I’ve just been trying to calm the heart rate. The first night before the classic sprint [in Anchorage], I went to bed at 3 AM. I was in bed at 11 or 12, just laying there. Just trying to process that. I know I can be better, I am just super amped to be here.”
“I qualified for my first World Cup in 2010, but I decided not to go,” Kornfield said. “And ever since I have been just regretting that. But I think in the end, I’ve been working so much harder for this and it feels so much better. The harder you work the more struggle you go through, it’s feels so good.”
In an email exchange, Kornfield elaborated on his World Cup invitation decline back in 2010.
“After doing well in the 2010 US Nationals in Anchorage, I qualified for the sprint in Canmore, the final World Cups before the Vancouver Olympics,” Kornfield explained. “I went into US Nationals with the sole focus of making my first World Juniors. I hadn’t expected to do so well in the sprints and because I was a Freshman at UAF, I also wanted to make NCAAs.”
As for his turned-down 2010 World Cup starts in Canmore, those are “would haves” and “could haves”.
“I regretted not going for a long time because as I got older, I realized just how hard World Cup starts are to get and you cannot take them for granted,” Kornfield wrote. “When you are young and you get your first real breakthrough, you have so much confidence and belief that you are going to take over the world. It has been eight years and every now and then, that belief begins to wane. Eventually, I started to wonder if I would ever get that opportunity again. This is probably the first year in the last six years that my old confidence is starting to come back. I am also older and wiser and I know that the shape I am in now will not last forever, so I need to capitalize on this moment.”
The four Canadians that raced last weekend in Dresden also competed in Planica, with Julien Locke (Canadian National U25 Team) leading the way in 62nd on Saturday (+21.26), Dominique Moncion-Groulx (Alberta World Cup Academy) 65th (+22.70), Bob Thompson (NTDC Thunder Bay) 66th (+24.48), and Antoine Briand (Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre) 70th (+27.20).
Left to right: Tyler Kornfield (APU), Reese Hanneman (APU) and Ben Saxton (SMS) as the top three finishers in the men’s 1.6 k classic sprint final on Monday, the last day of 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — No two races are exactly alike, the saying goes, and there’s a lot of truth to this cliché. But if you step back just a little bit, two race days can start to look awfully similar to one another.
For example, for the second time this week, a Hanneman brother won the sprint qualifier, Reese Hanneman won the final, and Alaska Pacific University (APU) put three athletes in the final and two on the podium on a perfect day for sprinting at Kincaid Park. That was the story on Monday, when Reese Hanneman led teammate Tyler Kornfield and Ben Saxton of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team across the line in the men’s classic sprint at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships. But it was also the case on Friday, when Reese was first and Kornfield was third in the freestyle sprint. It’s been a good week for the Hanneman family.
The classic sprint, the final race of this year’s U.S. nationals, had a slightly more subdued feel than the three that preceded it.
The fields were 50 percent smaller; a combined 160 athletes skied in the qualifier on Monday compared to 337 on Friday, as many juniors opted out of a race whose results did not bear on qualification for international trips and championship teams, and some athletes had already left town. The spectator numbers were smaller, measuring in the dozens rather than the hundreds after three days of packed parking lots and raucous crowds, as the first day of school following winter break sent local students back to the classroom. And the athletes were tired, too, after a full week of racing.
“I was just running on fumes out there, especially after the 30 k yesterday,” fifth-place finisher Kevin Bolger, of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) told FasterSkier after the men’s final.
But cross-country skiers are nothing if not resilient, and so, just after 10 a.m., Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess (Bend Endurance Academy) once again led 95 men out onto the qualifying course at 15-second intervals. The temperature was 10 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the display on the stadium scoreboard. The sun had yet to rise and start burning off the morning’s dense fog. It felt cold.
“It’s a very quintessential Alaskan day,” women’s domestic podium bronze medalist Becca Rorabaugh (APU) said after. “It’s like an Alaska temperature, and I feel like a lot of the Alaskan teams have great skis, it’s hard-wax skiing, and it’s just a classic race day. It’s very Alaskan.”
Hanneman Brothers Headline Qualifier
https://www.instagram.com/p/BdsyQTkB945/
APU skiers did very well in the time-trial portion of the morning, which has added, if not exclusive, significance for Olympic qualifying purposes slightly a month before the 2018 Winter Olympics begin in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Reese Hanneman, 28, who grew up in Fairbanks, covered the brand-new, 1.6-kilometer sprint course in 3:21.93, a time good for the fastest qualifying mark on the day. And he did so by nearly three seconds. Next best was his APU teammate and younger brother, Logan Hanneman, 2.84 seconds back. Third was his APU teammate Tyler Kornfield, 4.23 seconds off Reese’s mark.
Alaska Pacific University’s Reese Hanneman during the men’s 1.6-kilometer classic sprint heats on Monday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska. Hanneman won the qualifier and eventually, the final for the national title.
In light of the bonus points awarded for U.S. nationals podium performances, FasterSkier’s unofficial calculations put Logan first on the 2018 Olympic Winter Games domestic sprint qualifying list, with 80 points (45 for first at U.S. nationals and 35 for second), and Reese second, with 71 points (45 for first and 26 for third).
In Monday’s classic sprint, Benjamin Ogden (SMS) was fourth in qualifying, 5.12 seconds back. Blackhorse-von Jess was fifth (+5.16), Zak Ketterson of Northern Michigan University sixth (+7.56), Cole Morgan (SVSEF) seventh (+7.61), David Norris of APU eighth (+7.85), Saxton ninth (+7.88), and Bolger tenth (+9.09).
Just like the skate sprint, Brian Gregg, of Central Cross Country (CXC), Loppet Nordic Racing (LNR) and Team Gregg, was the final athlete to make the heats, 16.53 seconds back in 30th.
“I would say all the top sprinting guys, everyone’s focusing kind of on the qualifier, more so than normal,” Reese said on Friday after he had qualified third in the skate sprint. “There’s no margin for error, and you just have to ski it absolutely as fast as possible. It’s definitely different tactics than in the heats… but if you’re fast, you’re fast.”
Reese Hanneman Wins Everything En Route to Final
On Monday, Reese was pretty darn fast. He won his quarterfinal, the first of the day, as well as his semifinal, the first of the day, to make the final with the maximum amount of rest possible. And then, of course, he won the final as well for his fourth national title — and second of 2018 nationals.
In the day’s first quarterfinal, Reese was in the lead by the first turn at 200 meters, followed closely by Bolger. The two of them had a big lead by the time they were coming off Gong Hill. The rest of the field caught up to them somewhat by the finish, but Reese and Bolger still took the top two spots with relative ease.
In the second quarterfinal, U18 skier Ogden led the field into the first turn, with Morgan and Bill Harmeyer, of the University of Vermont, right behind. Ogden was still into the lead coming back into the stadium, but Kris Freeman (Caldwell Sport) had caught up into third. Coming into the finish, Freeman won a four-way lunge for second over Thomas O’Harra (APU), Ben Lustgarten (CGRP), and Harmeyer. O’Harra’s third place in a fast heat was good enough to send him on to the semifinals with the day’s first lucky loser spot.
In the third quarterfinal, Andrew Egger (Colby College) took the lead out of the stadium, but it was Blackhorse-von Jess in the top spot by the time they came back. Blackhorse-von Jess entered the finishing stretch with a 10-meter lead. Ketterson took second, 1.2 seconds back, with Egger another second back by the finish.
From left to right: Logan Hanneman (APU), Like Jager (APU), Ben Saxton (SMS Elite Team) Nick Michaud (BSF), Scott Patterson (APU), and Jack Hegman (SVSEF) at the start of their quarterfinal in the men’s 1.6-kilometer classic sprint on Monday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
In the fourth quarterfinal, Saxton and Logan Hanneman left the stadium with the early lead, alongside a quick-starting Luke Jager (APU), one of three U18 skiers who made the senior heats. It was Saxton in the lead coming back to the stadium two minutes later, with Logan leading Jager. Saxton came into the finishing stretch with a healthy lead, but Logan made a powerful move to pull around him and come alongside. Saxton won the heat by 0.37 seconds over Logan. Yesterday’s medalist, Eric Packer (APU), was out in third.
The fifth quarterfinal was heavy on local pride, with three APU skiers and a fourth from University of Alaska Anchorage. Erik Axelsson (Montana State University) led Kornfield and Logan Diekmann (University of Utah) into the first uphill. But two minutes later it was all APU, with Kornfield, David Norris and Forrest Mahlen with a sizeable lead on the rest of the field. Kornfield took the win; Mahlen came around Norris for second, but Norris moved on with the day’s other lucky loser spot. Axelsson was nearly five seconds back of Norris in fourth.
In the first semifinal, Blackhorse-von Jess flashed his ski speed and momentum by dropping into a tuck within the first 200-meter straightaway in the stadium, then still led the field over the top of the first, smaller climb. Ogden and Reese Hanneman were nearby. When they returned to the stadium, Reese had a 20-meter lead over Ogden on the downhill. As happened throughout the day, though, that lead shrank to half that size by the time the skiers entered the finishing stretch. But Reese still had the lead, which he held to the finish. Bolger was second, 0.32 seconds back. Ogden was relegated for obstruction.
The second semifinal featured a predominantly blue color scheme, between four suits from APU and the blue accents on Saxton’s SMS suit. Saxton again led out of the stadium, with Ketterson and Kornfield close by. By the time they came off Gong Hill two minutes later, it was Kornfield in the lead, with Ketterson close behind him. Kornfield led into the finishing stretch, but Ketterson overtook him to place first in the heat.
Behind them, Logan Hanneman made a strong push for third. He closed down Saxton, edging him by 0.04 seconds for third behind Ketterson and Kornfield. In practice, both Logan and Saxton advanced to the final as lucky losers; Norris’s fifth place in this heat would have won the day’s first semifinal by nearly a second.
Reese Hanneman Wins Final, Again
Slightly after 2 p.m., six men lined up in the south end of the Kincaid Stadium. From racer’s left to right, it was Logan, Kornfield, Ketterson, Reese, Bolger, and Saxton in the starting blocks. The sun was out, the temperature was in the high teens, and the course was firm and fast. There was no wind. Conditions were once more basically perfect.
The field had a clean start at the sound of the starter’s pistol, double poling in six separate lanes over the first 200 meters slightly downhill through the stadium. As the racers turned right to go up the first hill it was the Hanneman brothers in the lead, with Kornfield immediately behind them and Ketterson to Kornfield’s right. The pack double poled up the first part of the climb, then strode up and over the top of the hill.
A quick descent followed, then a high-speed, double-pole section leading to the start of the course’s main hill. Reese pushed the pace going up the hill, and not everyone was able to respond.
“I basically started at the base of the big climb,” Reese recalled of the 24-meter vertical gain B-climb in the middle of the sprint course. “I just kind of led in the climb and then just threw down the hammer and just tried to drop everyone going up that thing, and just continue to pound it over the top and take it all the way home.”
The largest climb on the course is “tough for classic skiing,” Bolger explained. “That hill definitely adds a different dynamic to your whole approach to every heat you do. To be able to ski up that hill four times, strong, it’s a challenge.” (Bolger added that he didn’t think anyone would have attempted to double pole a hill of that size, saying that “it’s a challenging enough hill to where it’s going to rule out double poling for anyone.” But just to be sure, race organizers placed a no-double-pole technique zone up the entire length of the climb for both the qualifier and the heats.)
By the time the field descended the waterfall downhill back into the stadium, Reese had a substantial gap over Kornfield, who in turn had a sizeable lead over Ketterson.
Kornfield made up some of this gap going down and around the final 180-degree turn, but Reese still entered the final straightaway with a sizeable lead. Saxton had moved into third, ahead of Ketterson, by the time they reached the 100 meters to go mark.
Reese Hanneman (1) of Alaska Pacific University celebrates his second sprint title of the 2018 L.L.Bean U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships on Monday with a win in the classic sprint final, just ahead of teammate Tyler Kornfield (r) in Anchorage, Alaska. Ben Saxton (SMS Elite Team) rounded out the podium in third. (Photo: Michael Dinneen Photography)
Kornfield barreled down the slight uphill of the finishing straight with grace and fury, closing in on Reese with each extension of his lanky frame. But he was still in the same finishing lane as his APU teammate, getting closer to Reese, but still immediately behind him. With roughly 20 meters to go, Kornfield moved one lane to his left, then lunged as he approached the finish. But Reese’s lead was still too much, and he crossed the finish with his second sprint national title of the week.
Reese’s time for the final was 3:20.62. Kornfield was 0.2 seconds back in second.
Some distance behind them, Saxton crossed the finish line in third, 4.78 seconds back of Reese, with a slight lead over Logan and Bolger. Ketterson finished sixth, 6.83 seconds back, in his second sprint final of the week.
“He is obviously on super-good form right now,” Reese continued. “I just have to know that I have a little more speed than he does. … But he’s really cranking right now. He is skiing great, but it definitely motivated me to know to just drive that thing so hard in the final.”
The second national title in as many races was “an answer to a lot of prayers from this morning and in the heats,” Reese said. “I just feel really lucky and stoked that I could put it together and be in such good form right now in January. It was a great day, an amazing day.”
Tyler Kornfield leads his APU teammate Forrest Mahlen in the men’s 1..6 k classic sprint on Monday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
Although Kornfield was second today, he “probably got the all-around performance of the week for the men,” Reese said of his teammate. Kornfield reached the podium in every race this week save the opening 15 k freestyle individual start, where he was 14th.
Kornfield’s race series was “a dream come true a little bit,” Kornfield told FasterSkier, “a little unexpected, but I knew I had it in me. The start of the season didn’t go as planned, I got sick for a month before it started, I also sprained my wrist for another month and so I was pretty frustrated with the lack of performances, but I knew there was something there and it was just a matter of time.”
“In this sport there are a lot of ups and downs,” he continued, “and it’s really easy to get caught up in the downs and not realize that just because you have a few bad races doesn’t mean you lose your ability to succeed, so just have to keep your head up and keep trying and hoping for the doors to open.”
When it comes to possibilities for potential Olympic selection, “I don’t know anything,” Kornfield said. “I can let you know in a couple weeks.”
Mathematically speaking, Kornfield currently ranks second to APU teammate Scott Patterson on the most recent version of the Olympic selection distance points list, which reflects both distance races from U.S. nationals.
For now, Kornfield plans to leave Alaska on Tuesday (that is, today) for a previously planned trip to Austria. He plans to work out precisely what races he will contest soon; he had planned on racing a Ski Classics marathon, but is currently uncertain where he will be racing next.
While Kornfield’s week at U.S. nationals exceeded his expectations, Monday’s third-place finisher, Saxton, didn’t have the week he was hoping for.
“I came here, like many people, with goals of heading to Korea and representing the country racing in the Games,” Saxton said after the final. “I fell short of that this week and that’s nothing to be ashamed of, but I was really disappointed I wasn’t in the mix as much as I would have hoped to be. This week was difficult because I don’t feel like I put forth a representative effort.”
Saxton was quick to offer sincere congratulations to the skiers who had had more success this week.
“I am incredibly proud to know and am happy for Logan and Scott and Reese and all of the other champions from this week,” he said, “and incredibly happy that those are going to be the skiers going to over to represent us. I think it’s just, from a personal standpoint, people can understand I was disappointed not to feel like I had my absolutely best days out there, but I am really proud to end the day on a podium, representing the hard work that all my teammates and my coach and the program at Stratton have done all year, and to reward them for that work and that effort is a great feeling.”
Saxton also enjoyed the “playground mentality” of the sprint day.
“I think a lot of the times racing we can get lost in the technical aspects of it,” he mused, “but one of the reasons I love racing heats so much is, it just kind of reminds me of being back in elementary school and pointing to something in the far end of the playground, basketball hoop, or whatever it is, and just saying, ‘Let me race you there.’ And there’s no rules, there’s no anything, it’s just the feeling of you and the other person just going all out, and that’s a beautiful way to live and that’s a beautiful way to compete, and sprints are a wonderful thing like that.”
Strong Alaska Performances Throughout the Week
What a difference a year makes. One year ago this week, in the classic sprint at Soldier Hollow, APU didn’t put any athletes into the heats for the first time in at least a decade, done in by a combination of illness, seeding, weather conditions, and wax choice. This time around, head coach Erik Flora’s squad sent eight men through to the heats, six to the semifinal, three to the final, and two to the podium.*
The classic sprint capped a successful week for APU, and for Alaskan skiers more generally. Caitlin Patterson, who skis for CGRP, took all four gold medals for the women. Then APU skiers took all four golds on the men’s side, between Scott Patterson on Wednesday, Reese on Friday and Monday, and Kornfield on Sunday. Chelsea Holmes, Kornfield again, Hannah Halvorsen, Rosie Frankowski, Eric Packer, Becca Rorabaugh, and Kornfield again also stepped on the domestic podium for APU. All told, that’s 15 out of a possible 24 medals going to athletes who hail from or ski in Alaska.
(Although if you slice the data another way, there were also seven out of 12 possible medals in women’s races won by CGRP, between Patterson’s quadfecta and Kaitlynn Miller’s trifecta.)
This week’s results “just show the depth” of the team, Reese told FasterSkier after his race. “It speaks to the hard work of our coaches, especially Erik Flora. That guy will not be outworked, he just puts so much into us. I’m just really happy that we can have a week like this and go four for four in the men’s with APU, just to show that what he is doing works and how hard he works for us. … To get to this point that we can do that and crush all week and just give them a good show is really rewarding.”
“We’re all Alaska born-and-raised,” Reese added of the APU men. “Can’t beat that.”
*(Full disclosure, this reporter skis on the APU Masters team, and receives direct coaching from Flora roughly once a year at Masters Camp.)
Left to right: Tyler Kornfield (APU), Reese Hanneman (APU) and Ben Saxton (SMS) the top three Americans in the men’s 1.6 k classic sprint final on Monday, the last day of 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
U.S. Cross Country Championships (Anchorage, Alaska): Classic sprint
Caitlin Patterson did it. With a classic-sprint win on Monday, she successfully capped off an undefeated 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships, as the top American woman in all four races over the past week in Anchorage, Alaska.
Patterson, of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project, qualified seventh then won the women’s 1.5-kilometer final by more than 2 seconds in 3:39.58 minutes. Finland’s Jasmi Joensuu, a junior at the University of Denver (DU), won the qualifier and ultimately finished second in the final, 2.36 seconds behind Patterson.
Craftsbury once again had two on the podium with Kaitlynn Miller placing third overall (+3.9) as the second American. Becca Rorabaugh, of Alaska Pacific University (APU), was the top American in the qualifier in second overall, then placed fourth in the final (+9.92) and reached the U.S. podium in third.
Petra Hyncicova, a University of Colorado Boulder (CU) senior from the Czech Republic, placed fifth overall (+10.03), and Lydia Blanchet, a Dartmouth College U23 skier, finished sixth (+11.21) and was the fourth American woman.
Joensuu, 21, of Kuortane, Finland, started the day by winning the qualifier in 3:41.4, while Rorabaugh followed in second, 1.31 seconds back. Hyncicova qualified third (+1.85), CU’s Hedda Bångman (who won Sunday’s 20 k classic) qualified fourth (+2.92), and Miller qualified fifth (+2.93). Anne Hart of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team clocked the sixth-fastest qualifying time (+3.88), and Patterson followed in seventh (+4.77).
From there, Patterson won both her quarterfinal and semifinal, besting Miller and Joensuu in the latter by 0.66 seconds and 2.63 seconds, respectively. Blanchet placed fourth in that same semifinal (+5.15) and advanced to the final as a lucky loser with a fast-enough time, along with Joensuu (Patterson and Miller automatically advanced in first and second).
With her 4-for-4 record at 2018 nationals, Patterson is the most successful woman at U.S. Cross Country Championships since U.S. Ski Team member Jessie Diggins was the top American in all four races at 2012 nationals in Rumford, Maine.
In the men’s classic sprint final, Reese Hanneman (APU) captured his second title in as many sprints this week (after winning the freestyle sprint on Friday). He won the qualifying round by 2.84 seconds in 3:21.93, and later the final by a 0.2 seconds in 3:20.62. Kornfield placed second, and Ben Saxton (SMS Elite Team) rounded out the podium in third (+4.78).
Logan Hanneman, the winner of Friday’s freestyle-sprint qualifier, finished second to his older brother Reese in Monday’s classic-sprint qualifier, then went on to reach the final and place fourth overall (+5.42). Kevin Bolger (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation) placed fifth (+5.52), and Zak Ketterson (Northern Michigan University) was sixth (+6.83).
NorAm Trials (Mont Sainte-Anne, Quebec): 15/30 k skiathlons
The women’s 15 k skiathlon podium on Monday at NorAm trials at Mont Sainte-Anne, Quebec, with Cendrine Browne (c) of the Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre (CNEPH) and Canadian U25 Team in first, Anne-Marie Comeau (l) of Laval University in second, and Dahria Beatty (Alberta World Cup Academy/Canadian World Cup Team) in third. (Photo: Cross Country Canada/Instagram)
Cendrine Browne won the women’s 15-kilometre skiathlon in 43:01.9 minutes on Monday at the Mont Sainte-Anne (MSA) ski trails to put an exclamation point on her presumptive selection for the PyeongChang Olympics. Browne, of the Centre National d’Entraînement Pierre Harvey (CNEPH)/Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre, which is based in nearby Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges, broke away with Laval University’s Anne-Marie Comeau during the classic leg to take a 20-second lead that she held to the finish.
Comeau faded slightly to take second, 11.9 seconds back, qualifying for U23’s and putting her name in the hat for the upcoming 2018 Olympics. Either Comeau or the winner of Wednesday’s classic interval start should take that potential Olympic berth as Canada’s top female distance skier not already qualified. Browne has theoretically earned a spot as the top women’s sprinter, besides Dahria Beatty, who won the sprint and already met Canada’s Olympic qualifying criteria.
“It now has to go before the selection committee,” Cross Country Canada’s High Performance Director Thomas Holland wrote in an email on Friday.
After trials races were shuffled around due to extreme cold, with temperatures near -20 Celsius on Sunday at MSA, it warmed up to a balmy -8 degrees Celsius (17 Fahrenheit) by mid-afternoon on Monday. Both the women’s and men’s skiathlons were held, which not only served as one of two distance races for Olympic selection, but for Junior and U23 World Championships as well.
In the race for third place,Beatty outsprinted a group of four to take the final podium spot, 19.9 seconds behind Browne and 0.3 seconds ahead of their fellow Canadian National Team member Maya MacIsaac-Jones, of Rocky Mountain Racers (RMR) and U25 Team. Just 0.2 seconds out of fourth, Katherine Stewart-Jones, of the National Training Development Centre (NTDC) Thunder Bay and national U25 Team, placed fifth (+20.4) and CNEPH’s Laura Leclair was another second back in sixth (+21.4).
Almost 55 seconds passed before the seventh-place finisher came across the line, which was Zina Kocher (Foothills Nordic) skiing alone (+1:15.8). Another 49 seconds later, Jaqueline Mourao of Brazil’s national team placed eighth (+2:04.9), ahead of Zoë Williams (Carleton University) in ninth (+2:11.3), and Andrea Dupont (RMR) in 10th (+2:11.5).
In the junior women’s 10 k skiathlon, Whitehorse’s Natalie Hynes won in 30:19.8 to punch her ticket to Junior Worlds in Goms, Switzerland, from Jan. 28-Feb. 3. India McIsaac (RMR) finished 0.7 seconds back in second and Orford’s Alexandra Racine completed the podium in third (+32.8).
The men’s 30 k skiathlon podium at NorAm trials at Mont Sainte-Anne, Quebec, on Sunday, with Knute Johnsgaard (c) of Canada’s World Cup Team in first, Graham Nishikawa (r) of the Canadian Para-Nordic Team in second and Gareth Williams (Telemark Nordic/Canadian U25 Team) in third. (Photo: Cross Country Canada/Instagram)
On the men’s side, Canadian World Cup Team member Knute Johnsgaard, who met qualifying criteria for PyeongChang last season, shook off a slow start to the World Cup season with a win in the NorAm trials men’s 30 k skiathlon, finishing in 1:13:30.9.
Graham Nishikawa, who’s already destined for the PyeongChang Paralympics as a guide on the Canadian Para-Nordic Ski Team, finished 1 second back for second place. The 34-year-old Nishikawa edged out first-year senior national-team member Gareth Williams, 20, of Telemark Nordic and the national U25 Team, by 0.5 seconds. Williams was the top U23 athlete to qualify for this year’s U23 World Championships.
The top 6 finished within 41 seconds of the podium, with Jack Carlyle (AWCA) in fourth (+5.8), Philippe Boucher (CNEPH) in fifth (+13.9), and Scott Hill (BXC) in sixth (+40.7). World Cup Team member Len Valjas led the next group across the line in seventh (+1:28.6), followed by Bob Thompson (NTDC Thunder Bay) in eighth (+1:29.4), Alexis Dumas (CNEPH) in ninth (+1:35.5), and Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier (CNEPH) in 10th (+1:35.7)
CNEPH’s Antoine Cyr won the junior mens 15 k skiathlon in 50:13.1 to earn a spot at Junior Worlds. Félix Longpré, of the local M.S.A. ski club, finished second (+15.7) and Thomas Manktelow was third (+49.0), just ahead of his Alberta World Cup Academy teammate Étienne Hébert in fourth (+49.3).
After Sunday’s racing was postponed due to temperatures well below the legal race limit, the remaining trials schedule includes freestyle sprints on Tuesday (for Junior and U23 World Championships qualifying purposes only), and classic interval starts on Wednesday.
Reese Hanneman (c) of Alaska Pacific University celebrates his win in the men’s freestyle sprint final on Friday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships. He finished 0.08 seconds ahead of Kevin Bolger (r) of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation for the win at Kincaid Park in Anchorage, Alaska. (Photo: Michael Dinneen Photography)
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Friday was a good day for Team Hanneman and its friends. Younger brother Logan Hanneman won the qualifier, older brother Reese Hanneman won the final, and Alaska Pacific University (APU) put three skiers in the final and two on the podium in the men’s freestyle sprint on a bluebird day at Kincaid Park on Day 2 of racing at the 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships.
A long day of sprint racing got underway with the men’s qualifier at 10 a.m., precisely 10 minutes before the official sunrise. But it was already brighter then than at any point during the day on Wednesday, when a sodden snowfall blotted out most of the daylight and APU skier Rosie Frankowski openly mused about wearing a headlamp during her warmup.
Friday, by contrast, brought light fog in the morning, burning off to reveal full sunshine during the heart of the day and bring actual warmth to the hundreds of fans lining the sprint course around Kincaid Stadium and up and down the Gong Hill. Temperatures had reached as low as 14 degrees Fahrenheit during the night before, and were never much above 19 degrees during the day Friday. The course of mostly manmade snow, with a mixture of natural snow from the roughly three inches that fell on Wednesday, was firm and fast. There was no wind. In stark contrast to the slush racers experienced on Wednesday, conditions were essentially perfect.
Logan Hanneman Fastest in Qualifying
Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess (Bend Endurance Academy) led out the field of 191 men with bib No. 1 for the qualifier. Less than an hour later, APU skier Logan Hanneman had proven fastest in the individual time-trial portion of the day.
The Hanneman brothers after Friday’s skate sprint at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, where they live and train with Alaska Pacific University. Reese Hanneman (l) won the men’s final and younger brother Logan (r) won the men’s qualifier.
Logan’s time on the 1.6-kilometer course was 3:07.40. The 24 year old was followed, on the imaginary but meaningful “qualifier podium,” by Kevin Bolger, of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) in second, 0.48 seconds back, and Reese Hanneman in third, 1.13 seconds behind.
The rest of the qualifying top 10 were Nick Michaud (Bridger Ski Foundation) in fourth, Martin Bergström (University of Utah) in fifth, Dag Frode Trollebø of the University of Denver (DU) in sixth, Cole Morgan (SVSEF) in seventh, Tyler Kornfield (APU) in eighth, Eivind Romberg Kvaale (DU) in ninth, and Gus Schumacher (Alaska Winter Stars), Wednesday’s top junior in the distance race, in 10th.
Brian Gregg, representing Central Cross Country (CXC), Loppet Nordic Racing (LNR) and Team Gregg, took the coveted 30th and final qualifying spot, 8.82 seconds back from Logan. Nicholas Sweeney (DU) was another second-plus back in 31st.
This laundry list of results is of more than academic interest if you are a male sprinter trying to make the U.S. Olympic team for next month’s Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang. As FasterSkier recently explained, the points list for Olympic selection “will only consider qualification-round finish placing,” and not an athlete’s final position based on racing in the heats. Notably, while both Logan Hanneman (fifth in his semifinal) and the day’s fastest female qualifier, Anne Hart (third in her semifinal), did well, neither of them made their respective final.
APU’s Logan Hanneman (l) leading the University of Vermont’s Bill Harmeyer in the men’s 1.6-kilometer freestyle sprint quarterfinals on Friday at the 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska. After winning the qualifier, Hanneman was eliminated in the semifinals.
If there was one person who had seen Logan Hanneman’s speedy qualifying time coming, it was his older brother.
“He’s one of the best qualifiers,” Reese, 28, said of Logan before this season began. This was true on Friday even though Logan was racing with a dislocated rib, according to Kornfield.
“So the fact that he won the qualifier is unbelievable,” Kornfield said after.
The added significance of the qualifier result for U.S. Olympic selection purposes, coupled with the desire to still have enough energy left to ski well through three rounds of heats, was on the radar of all three eventual podium finishers.
“I would say all the top sprinting guys, everyone’s focusing kind of on the qualifier, more so than normal,” Reese said on Friday. “There’s no margin for error, and you just have to ski it absolutely as fast as possible. It’s definitely different tactics than in the heats… but if you’re fast, you’re fast.”
According to Bolger, who finished second in both qualifying and the final, the significance of the qualifier “absolutely” affected his approach to the day overall.
“Definitely wanted to go into the qualifier and have a strong result,” Bolger said. “I was happy with being second, just barely behind Logan, which I was bummed about but also super happy – there’s a lot weighing on it. So to be able to have a good qualifier, and then still be able to, I think, ski strong throughout the heats, and then into the final – I think that says just as much. So overall I’m really happy.”
“All the pressure was on the qualifier,” echoed Kornfield, who finished third in the final after qualifying in eighth. “I’m normally not very good at qualifying, so the chance of me making that [No. 1 qualifying] spot would have been a moonshot, but I was happy with how I qualified. I know that if I qualify well, then my heats go well, so I was just, after qualifying well, trying to get back and focus on the heats.”
Reese Takes First Throughout Heats
Of the three podium finishers, Reese and Bolger had the smoother paths throughout the day. Reese was first in his quarterfinal and first in his semifinal to automatically advance to the final, winning each heat by less than 0.2 seconds. Similarly, Bolger won his quarterfinal, then was second to Reese in a fast semifinal, 0.17 seconds back.
Left to right: Eivind Romberg Kvaale (University of Denver), Nick Michaud (Bridger Ski Foundation), Reese Hanneman (APU), Kevin Bolger (SVSEF) and Tyler Kornfield (APU) during their men’s 1.6 k freestyle sprint semifinal on Friday at the 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
Kornfield skied fast enough in his semifinal to earn a lucky loser bid for the final in fourth, after finishing second behind Reese in his quarterfinal. The top-four men in that second semifinal all finished within less than a second of Reese as the winner, and both lucky losers — Kvaale in third and Kornfield — came from that heat.
Throughout the rounds, Reese skied fairly close to the front throughout the day. In his quarterfinal, the men’s fifth of the day, he was one of three skiers near the lead as the pack took a righthand turn heading up and out of the stadium. He was second coming off the course’s largest downhill back into the stadium, then turned on Beast Mode, approaching the final straightaway to pull into the lead and take the win in 3:10.62. Kornfield was second, 0.19 seconds back.
In the semifinal, similarly, Reese skied in the top three throughout the race, ultimately leading the four-man group sprint to the line for first.
Reese Hanneman Holds Off Bolger
Nearly four hours into the day, six men lined up for the final, now under bright sunshine. From skier’s right to left, it was Eric Packer (APU), Zak Ketterson (Northern Michigan University), Bolger, Reese, Kvaale, and Kornfield lined up across the south end of the capacious Kincaid Stadium.
That’s three APU skiers with national titles to their name, last year’s classic sprint national champion in Bolger, one skier whose previous best at U.S. nationals was 15th (Kvaale), and a 20 year old whom the livestream announcers called a “surprise finalist” (Ketterson).
The field had a clean start off the line, and into the slight-downhill straightaway through the Kincaid Stadium. After approximately 200 meters, the racers took a righthand turn up to the base of a gradual, all-V2, two-stage uphill. At this point it was Ketterson in the lead, with Kvaale and Reese tucked in immediately behind him, and the other three athletes following no more than a ski length further back.
By the top of this climb, it was still Ketterson in front, with Reese following and Packer up into third position.
Roughly one minute later, it was Ketterson in front coming down the waterfall downhill back into the stadium at high speeds. There was a gap of five meters back to Kornfield and Reese, who jostled slightly on the descent but did not fall, and Bolger and Packer immediately behind them. Ketterson was technically still in front, but five meters’ separation at those speeds meant little, and the lead pack was effectively still five athletes strong.
By the time the racers had negotiated a broad 180-degree turn and climbed back up into the stadium, Hanneman was in the lead coming around the final curve. Bolger was second, with Ketterson and Kornfield just off to his left.
Reese Hanneman (c) takes first, roughly half a ski length ahead of Kevin Bolger (r), with Tyler Kornfield (l) third. Zak Ketterson (second from l) and Eric Packer (third from l) are immediately behind Kornfield, with Eivind Romberg Kvaale farther back. (Screenshot: U.S. Ski & Snowboard live stream)
Hanneman came into the final straightaway with a slight lead, and took the middle lane. He skied smoothly through the finish, but Bolger was coming on strong to his left in the outer lane.
Reese kept his slight lead all the way to the finish. Bolger lunged better, but Reese skied faster. Bolger’s lunge got him to within less than half a ski-length of Reese by the finish, but Reese took the victory.
To Reese’s right, Kornfield led Ketterson and Packer in the next lane to the inside. Kvaale skied in leisurely at the back after suffering an untimely broken pole.
Reese’s winning time was 3:11.33 for the 1.6 k course. Bolger was 0.08 seconds back, with Kornfield another 0.8 seconds behind him for third. There was a gap of over a second to Ketterson and Packer, then another 12 seconds back to Kvaale.
Reese aimed to continue his frontrunning ways in the final, he explained to FasterSkier in a post-race interview.
“Everyone’s fighting for the front half because you know that’s kind of where you’ve got to be,” he said. “Everyone’s too fast; you know you’re not going to come from sixth. So I just fought really hard to stay kind of in the front half, throw down the move on the last hill coming into the finish, and it paid off.”
The men’s freestyle sprint podium at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships, with Reese Hanneman (c) in first, Kevin Bolger (l) in second and Tyler Kornfield (r) in third on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska.The men’s freestyle sprint podium at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships, with Reese Hanneman (c) in first, Kevin Bolger (l) in second and Tyler Kornfield (r) in third on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska.
Reese said he was thrilled by a day in which he won the national title — his third — and Logan won the qualifier.
“He’s one of the best in the country,” Reese said of Logan, “and he and I have been going back and forth in the sprints for a while now. He’s the defending champion in this event from last season, so I knew he was a factor. He’s a powerful skier, and it’s awesome to see him do well. I think we’re both better because we’ve been fighting with each other for years.”
Bolger explained he approached the final differently than his other heats.
“Honestly, I just tried to stay relaxed,” the 24-year-old Wisconsin native said. “I tried to kind of keep an open mind and not put too much into it, overthink it. … I wanted to ski kind of my own race and let things unfold in front of me, and then take chances where I could.”
In practice, this put Bolger in fourth coming off the big downhill back into the stadium. But he trusted his skis, and his finishing skills, and was able to move back into second within just a few hundred meters.
“I kind of got, not pushed to the back a little bit, but kind of toward the back,” he recounted. “But coming toward those last few corners I was right in there. And I was confident in my skiing and I knew I was strong, I felt strong, so I was kind of able to push those corners hard.”
Kornfield, similarly, said, “This is a hard course, so you just had to keep pushing to the finish.”
“The way the course starts, it doesn’t start too hard, it’s pretty flat for the first part. And the uphill is so big that – for some reason you can’t break away on that,” Kornfield added of Kincaid’s brand-new sprint course. “You couldn’t gain that much time; I think people were just conserving until that last 200 meters. It always bunched up with about 200 meters to go, and it was only about who had the best kick and who got lucky with the hole shot. If you tried to get yourself in good position by the final, you would have a good go at the finish.”
Reflecting on the vagaries of sprint racing, he noted, “This is an incredibly fair course. It’s incredibly wide, and it was a lot of fun, but we don’t race those kind of back-and-forth heats that often. So I was just pretty relieved to make the podium, because anything could have happened. You could have snapped a pole easily, you could have fallen. It was kind of a relief just to make it to the final in the first place, and then to make it on the podium was unbelievable.”
Kornfield, 26, who was born and raised in Anchorage and has raced at Kincaid Park dozens of times, summoned the same adjective when asked if he had ever seen a crowd like this at Kincaid for a ski race before.
“This is unbelievable,” Kornfield said. “I remember back [at U.S. nationals at Kincaid] in 2010, and I felt like it was just a wave of noise coming in. This is even more. It’s incredible that people were here and out here. I’m so excited that Reese and I could make the podium and make ’em proud.”
(A sportswriter for the local Anchorage Daily News with 30 years’ experience called it “One of the biggest spectator crowds ever to gather at Kincaid Park.”)
Kornfield likely has fond memories of 2010 for many reasons; he won his first national title then. Friday’s third-place finish marked his seventh time on a U.S. nationals podium, including two national titles. Reese, similarly, took home his third national title (after the 2014 classic sprint at Soldier Hollow in Utah and 2016 skate sprint in Houghton, Michigan), and recorded his eighth national podium. And Bolger notched his second-career podium finish at U.S. nationals, after winning the classic sprint at Soldier Hollow last year.
New Sprint Course Meets with Rave Reviews
As FasterSkier recently explained, Friday marked the debut of the new sprint course at Kincaid. And the athletes approved.
“It was a great course,” Reese said. “Really hard – I would say probably the hardest sprint course we’ve had at nationals in a while. It rivals Fairbanks last year. But there’s a big hill, something you would see on a World Cup, or [World] Championships, so that made it hard. Super-fast downhills. … I think it’s one of the best courses we’ve had in a while. There’s some gradual terrain, there’s a hill, an A-climb, one of the biggest climbs I’ve seen on a sprint course in the U.S., probably ever. I think it’s a great course. It’s fair, everybody likes it, it’s fun. But it skis really well, it’s fast. You can’t get too much better than that.”
“It’s a good course,” concurred Bolger. “It’s really fun. Good hills, good downhills, good cornering. I think it kind of gets at, you’ve kind of got to be a good all-around skier to kind of be able to go from the qualifier to the final.”
“This is an incredibly fair course, it’s incredibly wide, and it was a lot of fun,” said Kornfield.
Athletes will get another shot at it on the final race day of U.S. nationals, the classic sprint on Monday. Classic distance races (20/30 k mass starts) are the next races up, starting at 10 a.m. Sunday morning.
The Hanneman brothers after Friday’s skate sprint at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, where they live and train with Alaska Pacific University. Reese Hanneman (l) won the men’s final and younger brother Logan (r) won the men’s qualifying round.
U.S. Cross Country Championships (Anchorage, Alaska): Freestyle sprints
Caitlin Patterson racked up her second-straight national title at this year’s 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships and Reese Hanneman topped the men’s freestyle sprint final on Friday at Kincaid Park in Anchorage, Alaska.
In the first of two sprints at 2018 U.S. nationals, Patterson, the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) skier who won the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle on Wednesday, posted a 3.56-second win in the women’s 1.5 k freestyle sprint final on Friday.
After qualifying 12th, 5.76 seconds back from Anne Hart of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team, who won the qualifier in 3:22.10, Patterson won both her quarterfinal and semifinal, both times ahead of University of Denver (DU) junior Jasmi Joensuu in second.
The two advanced to the final, where Patterson reached the finish line first once more in 3:20.93, about 3 1/2 seconds ahead of Joensuu in second and 4.19 seconds ahead of Petra Hyncicova, a senior at the University of Colorado Boulder, in third. Craftsbury had two in the final with Kaitlynn Miller placing fourth (+4.35). U20 skier Hannah Halvorsen of Alaska Pacific University (APU) and the U.S. Ski Team (USST) finished fifth (+7.66), and Kelsey Phinney of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) placed sixth (+9.78).
Hart won her quarterfinal then placed third in the first semifinal, behind Miller, who won that heat, and Hyncicova in second, to miss advancing to the final. Hart had won the qualifier by 1.78 seconds over Joensuu in second.
In the men’s 1.6 k skate sprint, Logan Hanneman (APU) won the qualifier in 3:07.4. Kevin Bolger (SVSEF) qualified in second (+0.48), and older brother Reese Hanneman (APU) was third (+1.13).
In the quarterfinals, Reese won his heat by 0.19 seconds ahead of his teammate Tyler Kornfield, and Logan finished second, 0.42 seconds behind U18 skier Gus Schumacher (Alaska Winter Stars), as the winner of the first quarterfinal. Bolger won the fourth quarterfinal.
Reese raced to another win in the second semifinal, 0.17 seconds ahead of Bolger in second. APU’s Eric Packer won the first semi, 1.66 seconds clear of Zak Ketterson of Northern Michigan University (NMU) in second. Logan finished fifth in that semifinal, 4.48 seconds out of first, trailing Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess (Bend Endurance Academy) in third and Schumacher in fourth.
In the final, which included three APU athletes out of six total, Reese nipped Bolger by just eight-hundredths of a second for the win in 3:11.33. APU had two on the podium with Kornfield in third (+0.88). Ketterson finished fourth (+1.92), Packer was fifth (+2.34), and DU sophomore Eivind Romberg Kvaale was sixth (+14.08).
U.S. nationals racing continues Sunday with the 20/30 k classic mass starts.
The men’s classic sprint podium at 2018 Canadian NorAm Trials on Friday at Mont Sainte-Anne, Quebec, with Julien Locke (second from r) in first, Russell Kennedy (r) in second, Bob Thompson (c) in third, Evan Palmer-Charrette (second from l) in fourth, and Dominique Moncion-Groulx (l) in fifth. (Photo: Canmore Nordic Ski Club/Instagram)
Canada’s NorAm Olympic trials opened Friday at Mont Sainte-Anne in Beaupré, Quebec, with Dahria Beatty (Canadian World Cup Team/Alberta World Cup Academy) winning the women’s 1.35-kilometer classic sprint and Julien Locke (Canadian U25 Team/Black Jack) topping the men’s 1.35 k classic sprint final. While Beatty has already secured her spot at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, Locke has not — but the win didn’t ensure he’ll be selected to the team. In a tiebreaker, it looks like he is second on the men’s sprint list at trials to Russell Kennedy, of Canmore Nordic/Team R.A.D.
Based on its published nomination procedures for the 2018 Olympic Games, Cross Country Canada (CCC) will consider both qualifying and final results in its “sprint selection ranking process”. In the men’s qualifying round on Friday, Kennedy qualified first (in 3:02.81 minutes) and Locke followed in second (3.06 seconds back). Kennedy later placed second to Locke in the men’s final. Effectively, that meant they were tied, should CCC select another male sprinter to its Olympic team. But the tiebreaker is the qualifying round, which Kennedy won.
To reach the final, Kennedy placed second in his quarterfinal, behind Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier of the Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre (CNEPH), and Locke was second in his quarterfinal as well, behind Andy Shields of Lappe Nordic. All four automatically advanced to the semifinals, where Kennedy posted a 1.12-second win over Bob Thompson, of the National Team Development Centre (NTDC) Thunder Bay, and Locke edged Jess Cockney (of the Canadian World Cup Team, who prequalified for PyeongChang) by 0.34 seconds.
In the final, Locke notched a 1.17-second win over Kennedy, crossing the line first in 3:04.16. Thompson took third (+2.49), Evan Palmer-Charrette (NTDC Thunder Bay) was fourth (+5.74), Dominique Moncion-Groulx (AWCA) was fifth (+7.2) and Cockney sixth (+55.97). Len Valjas, who is recovering from a shoulder injury and is prequalified for PyeongChang, won the men’s B-final for seventh overall.
In the women’s race, Beatty qualified first in 3:41.55, then won both her quarterfinal and semifinal before topping the final as well in 3:45.02, 0.64 seconds ahead of Maya MacIsaac-Jones (U25 Team/Rocky Mountain Racers) in second. Katherine Stewart-Jones (U25 Team/NTDC Thunder Bay) finished third (+1.2) in the final, Cendrine Browne (U25 Team/CNEPH) was fourth (+4.58), Annika Hicks (AWCA) fifth (+10.21), and Andrea Dupont (RMR) sixth (+12.18).
Browne posted the second-fastest qualifying time, 3.13 seconds back from Beatty. Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (RMR) qualified third (+8.08), but was disqualified in her quarterfinal. MacIsaac-Jones qualified fourth (+8.49), putting her total points for the day — based on CCC’s selection ranking — at 6. Browne scored 6 points as well (for qualifying second then finishing fourth overall), but with the better qualifier, Browne is expected to be deemed the winner of that Olympic sprint spot. Laura Leclair (CNEPH) qualified fifth (+10.57), and Stewart-Jones ranked fifth (+13.8) in the qualifying round.
NTDC Thunder Bay’s Katherine Stewart-Jones (l) and CNEPH’s Cendrine Browne, both the Canadian U25 Team, after the NorAm Trials classic sprint at Mont Sainte-Anne, Quebec. (Photo: Mario Walker/NorAm MSA 2018 Facebook)
Browne won her quarterfinal by 1.5 seconds over Hicks, and the two met again in the semifinal, which Browne also won, this time by 2.81 seconds over Hicks. MacIsaac-Jones posted a 0.25-second quarterfinal win over Dupont, then finished second in her semifinal, 0.22 seconds behind Beatty.
Fresh off racing Period 1 of the World Cup, Browne, 24, is best known as a distance skier, but she’s been on the NorAm sprint podium before. She last won a sprint qualifier and finished second overall at two years ago at the Canmore NorAm in December 2015.
In an email, CCC High Performance Director Thomas Holland confirmed Browne and Kennedy were the sprint-selection winners next in line for Olympic quota spots.
“Cendrine has officially been named the winner of the Olympic sprint selection event.
The only catch is that Cross Country Canada’s official selection cannot be announced until FIS (the international ski federation) announces its final quota re-allocation at the end of January.
The most recent version of the FIS quotas, dated yesterday morning (Friday) allocates only eight quotas for Canada. IN THEORY, that quota could be lowered further still, in which case certain named athletes could be left out.
Which is why Cendrine will have to wait until late January to shout her news from the rooftops!
Her victory in the sprint selection is doubly important as it puts her in the Number 3 spot on the women’s team, behind Dahria Beatty and Emily Nishikawa, according to Amendment #2 of Cross Country Canada’s Olympic selection criteria.
If the FIS quota were to be lowered to 7, for example, it would be the women’s distance winner who would lose out.”
The NorAm trials for Olympics as well as Junior and U23 World Championships resume Monday with skiathlons, followed by skate sprints on Tuesday. Sunday’s 10/15 k classic individual starts were postponed to Wednesday.
Tim Burke shooting clean in standing for his second-straight stage en route to a fourth-place finish in the men’s 10 k sprint on Friday at the IBU World Cup in Oberhof, Germany. (Screenshot: ARD broadcast)
In his first race of the new year, Tim Burke raced to fourth — his best result in four years — in the men’s 10-kilometer sprint at the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup in Oberhof, Germany.
The 35-year-old American started 22nd out of 103 and shot clean to cross the finish line in third, 20.1 seconds behind France’s Martin Fourcade, who also shot clean and finished in 25:03.3 minutes — a time that would hold up against the entire field as the fastest and give the Frenchman his second win of the season.
Fourcade had bumped early race leader Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø to second, after Bø missed two targets on his initial prone stage then cleaned standing (2+0), but skied the fastest overall course time to reach the podium. Burke’s time was 9.9 short of Bø’s.
Ultimately, Norway’s Emil Hegle Svendsen as the 58th starter bumped Bø to third and Burke off the podium, finishing second, 8.1 seconds behind Fourcade, also with clean shooting.
Canada was led by Scott Gow in 32nd (+1:48.7), who had a single standing penalty (0+1), and his brother Christian Gow finished 36th (+1:50.3) with one standing miss as well (0+1). Brendan Green was 57th (+2:30.4) with three penalties (1+2), and in his first European World Cup race, Carsen Campbell finished finished 94th (+4:05.3) with two misses (2+0).
The U.S. started two men on Friday, with Sean Doherty finishing 84th (+3:24.4) with four penalties (3+1).
The Oberhof IBU World Cup continues Saturday with the men’s and women’s pursuits.
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