Position: Assistant Head Nordic Ski Coach Employer: Black Jack Cross Country Ski Club Location: Rossland, British Columbia, Canada Reports To: Head Coach & Director of Skier Development Program FTE: Negotiable Start Date: Flexible Compensation: $40,000–$50,000 inclusive of benefits, commensurate with qualifications, and adjusted for agreed-upon FTE Term: One-year contract from start date, potentially leading to a permanent position Application Deadline: Open until filled
About the Position
Black Jack Cross Country Ski Club (BJSC) is looking to welcome a motivated and energetic individual to fill the position of Assistant Head Nordic Ski Coach. In collaboration with the Head Coach and other team members, the position will lead and/or oversee programming for all levels of the program as aligned with Nordiq Canada’s Long Term Athlete Development model.
About Black Jack Cross Country Ski Club
BJSC is a registered non-profit organization functioning to support and grow the sport of Nordic skiing since 1983. With a history of producing skiers at the international and national levels, the club is looking to promote cross-country skiing at all levels of the sport.
BJSC offers athlete development programs for ages 3 to adult, including:
Bunnies
Jack Rabbits
Track Attack
School Outreach
Community lessons
Private and group lessons
Race Team
Programming is delivered under the leadership of the Director of Skier Development, the BJSC Board, and a part-time Head Coach. BJSC has a dedicated and skilled set of volunteer coaches who are committed to delivering high-quality, fun programming. The BJSC Board is an avid and responsive supporter of the Skier Development program and actively collaborates on initiatives to enhance the sport of Nordic skiing for all members of the community. The Head Coach is committed to mentoring as needed.
Facilities and Community
BJSC has over 50 km of groomed trails for both skate and classic, including 2.5 km of daily lit night skiing. The main trailhead is five minutes from town and has professional groomers on staff supported by a robust group of volunteers to keep trails in great shape. Two connected ski areas extend the ski season from November to April. In 2025–26, club membership was over 1,000 strong, and the club successfully built a new day lodge. A dedicated GM supports club operations from September through April.
Black Jack Ski Club and Rossland offer an ideal location to live and train both summer and winter, with backyard access to roller-skiing, running, hiking, road and mountain biking, climbing, alpine and backcountry skiing. Rossland has an outdoor summer pool, tennis courts, a bike park, multiple fields, and a local gym. Trail, a 15-minute drive away, has indoor training facilities. An active, young community, Rossland is a desirable destination for both vacationers and those seeking to be locals.
Qualifications
Education
Minimum post-secondary education, including coaching, athlete development, and leadership
Occupational Certification
Canada National Coaching Certification Program: minimum Training to Train (T2T) or international equivalent as related to Nordic skiing
Valid Standard First Aid (minimum), Wilderness First Aid (preferred)
Class 4 driving license, or ability to obtain within 3 months, and access to a reliable personal vehicle
Criminal Record Check with Vulnerable Sector Screen
Experience
Previous coaching experience
Athlete training plan design and monitoring, including Training Peaks
Managing and leading a team of volunteer coaches (beginner through experienced)
Wax and race support operations
Planning and executing training camps
Administration
Personal Suitability
Demonstrates good decision-making skills
Enjoys collaborating with others, including volunteers, parent groups, and other coaches
Personable, enjoys connecting with people
Able to initiate and complete projects
Communicates effectively and proactively, including when resolving sticky situations
Considers conflict an opportunity for growth and focuses on win-win resolutions
Takes responsibility for self
Strives for excellence
High degree of fitness, with ability to demonstrate and give feedback on skate and classic ski techniques
Commits to professional development, including ongoing coaching training and connection with provincial and national programs
Responsibilities
Reporting to the Head Coach & Director of Skier Development, the successful applicant will support the club’s Racers, Junior Racer, and Track Attack programs. They will work in collaboration with volunteer coaches for the Bunnies and Jack Rabbits programs and the School Outreach program. Adult clinics, lessons, and programs will be coordinated with the GM.
Specific responsibilities include:
Support BJSC’s Head Coach with Racer program delivery, including session facilitation
Collaborate on the delivery of year-round athlete programming for Junior Racers and Track Attack that aligns with Nordiq Canada’s Long Term Athlete Development Model, including working with volunteer coaching staff to ensure appropriate dryland and on-snow programming
Provide technical feedback to athletes to ensure physical competency of all cross-country ski techniques as appropriate for the athlete’s development
Support volunteer coaches’ ongoing development
Facilitate mentorship opportunities between athletes at various stages of development
Uphold a safe, inclusive, and positive training environment, with Safe Sport practices, BJSC policies, appropriate supervision standards, and risk management
Support the organization of camps, races, and other events
Attend races as negotiated with the Head Coach, providing leadership, coaching support, wax selection, logistics, direction to parent and coach volunteers, and other tasks as needed
Maintain familiarity with BJSC Board activities, contribute to ongoing improvement of club operations, and assist in planning and execution of club events as necessary
Collaborate with the Bunnies and Jack Rabbits Program Coaches as directed by the Director of Skier Development
Collaborate effectively with the BJSC Skier Development Director
Collaborate with the BJSC Race Hosting Committee
Attend monthly Skier Development Program (SDP) Committee meetings
Other duties as directed by the Director of Skier Development
The position will require travel as well as working in the evenings and on weekends.
Cover letter outlining how you meet the Education and Experience criteria listed in the Statement of Qualifications, with concrete examples (2,000 words maximum)
The position will remain open until filled. All applicants are thanked in advance; only those considered for an interview will be contacted.
Black Jack Ski Team members (left to right): Daniel Merlo, Julien Locke, Remi Drolet, Michaela McLean, Abbey McLean and Molly Millar. (Photo: Julien Locke)
In Rossland, British Colombia, most residents can reach the town’s lone alpine hill by car in five minutes, the cross-country trails in seven. Tucked high in the Monashee Mountains, hemlock and fir outnumber some 3,500 locals, most of whom know each other by name. And over the past two decades, Rossland, which was featured three years ago in The New York Times travel section, has shown that a small town can produce nordic talent, repeatedly.
Thanks in part to snow that covers the ground an average of five months each year and roadways that provide 25 kilometers of continuous rollerski climbing, the area is one that Dave Wood — Cross Country Canada’s national-team coach from 1998 to 2010 and the current head coach of Rossland’s Black Jack Ski Team since 2010 — says has “everything you need to make great skiers.”
George Grey was one of them. The two-time Olympian grew up in Rossland after moving there from Great Britain, where he was born, with his parents at the age of 2. He spent much of his childhood skiing and racing for Black Jack before being selected to Canada’s national team in 2001. Grey then moved to Canmore, Alberta, the home of Cross Country Canada (CCC) since 1995.
Black Jack and national U25 Team member Julien Locke (3) leads Canadian World Cup Team member Le Valjas (1) in a Frozen Thunder classic sprint heat on Nov. 1 in Canmore, Alberta. (Photo: Angus Cockney)
Despite living more than six hours away, Grey returned to Rossland often enough to join his old club team for training camps. When he was in town, “George Grey Days” were occasionally held for local youths interested in testing their skill against anyone else willing, including skiers from a relatively nearby town, Nelson.
Racers received race bibs and a chance to learn the course by following Grey around the trails beforehand. While many young skiers participated, one Nelson native saw the events as more than just a chance to race against friends.
“Before I joined Team Black Jack, when I was still racing for Nelson, he’d have George Grey Days where we’d put on a race and we’d all meet him and ski with him,” 24-year-old Julien Locke recalled on the phone earlier this month. “I think to have someone like that in the regional ski community was huge in impressing upon me that it is possible to come from a small place and get somewhere in sport.”
Born in Nelson, a town with a population of about 10,000, Locke grew up participating in the Nelson Nordic Ski Club’s Jackrabbits program until he was 14. He then moved an hour away to Rossland, where he joined Black Jack in 2006.
“Rossland became an adopted hometown,” he said. “I consider the Rossland club my home club.”
Locke’s first year with Black Jack was also his first year completing a full, yearlong training program. Though he had been skiing since he could put boots on his feet and click into skis, that season gave him new insight into his sport and what he wanted to do with it. In 2009, Locke competed at Canadian nationals in Duntroon, Ontario, and finished fourth in the juvenile boy’s classic sprint.
“That sat heavily with me all summer because I knew, I believed that I was capable of being on the podium in a sprint at nationals,” Locke said.
“I think that was a pivotal moment in understanding that training and preparation makes the difference at the end of the day,” he said. “Coming from a small town … I’ve always had a belief that I can rise to the top, but that was the first moment it really cemented into my mind.”
From then on, skiing became Locke’s primary athletic focus. He placed second in the classic sprint at the 2015 nationals and third in the freestyle sprint at the 2016 U.S nationals. Later that season, he racked up another third place in the freestyle sprint at 2016 Canadian nationals, and the following spring, he was nominated to CCC’s national U25 Team for 2016/2017. Last season, before making his World Cup debut in PyeongChang, South Korea, Locke won two races at South Korea’s national championships: the classic sprint and 10 k classic. At the subsequent PyeongChang World Cup, he finished 36th in the classic sprint.
This season, Locke has his sights set on the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics in February. After what he called his “best summer of training” yet, which included two national-team training camps in Park City, Utah, and a few camps with Black Jack, he put his fitness to the test on Nov. 1 at Frozen Thunder’s opening races in Canmore.
This year, the first race, the Frozen Thunder classic-sprint qualifier held big implications for those vying for the final spot on the Canadian men’s World Cup Team for Period 1. The winner of the men’s qualifier would earn a trip to Europe to race the first four weekends of the World Cup, from late November through December. And World Cup results were what Locke needed if he wanted to qualify for the Olympic team.
Julien Locke (center), of the Canadian U25 Team and Black Jack Ski Team, during a bounding training session with the Canadian national team in Park City, Utah, this fall. (Courtesy photo)
“[My coach Dave Wood and I] made the decision this summer to put a pretty high priority on the Frozen Thunder race because, with the way the Canadian selection process works this year with the Olympics, World Cup results are the most important thing, and there’s not a lot of opportunities to get on the World Cup, with these trials being the first and the most straightforward way to get there,” Locke said.
But Locke understands he’s not the only one with Olympic aspirations this season. A number other top domestic skiers are also gunning for a spot on the team.
“Start of every year in the spring, you sit down and look at what the goals are going to be and of course, this year it’s the same for everybody,” he said. “The Olympics are the big focus, across the board, everybody is going for the same thing.”
Despite the pressure to perform in the Frozen Thunder sprint prelim, he was able to push aside any nerves.
“I knew my season would look drastically different if I didn’t perform,” Locke said. “And I was quite confident in my preparation. I think with any race, that’s what I build my confidence from is knowing that I prepared well.”
Locke won the qualifier in a time of 3:37.81 to secure that spot on the World Cup team. He flew to Sweden on Nov. 11 for the opening International Ski Federation (FIS) races in Gällivare, Sweden, this past weekend. This week, Locke and the rest of the Canadian World Cup team is headed to Kuusamo, Finland, where the World Cup opens on Friday with the Ruka Triple mini tour.
While his coach, Wood, will remain in Rossland, he’ll continue to keep in touch with Locke by phone to help guide him through the start of the season.
“It’s a step along the road for the season,” Wood told FasterSkier. “Lots of athletes you see, their focus is like a funnel. In May, they’re looking at the funnel through the small end instead of the big end, and by the time the fall comes, now they’re through the big end and for whatever reason they can’t maintain or refine the things they have to do. In May, they’re doing everything right and in the fall they’re doing not very many things right. Julien is one of those athletes that understands that and as the season gets closer, his focus intensifies.”
This past Friday through Sunday in Gällivare, Locke raced to 72nd in the opening 10 k freestyle, skipped Saturday’s 15 k classic, and then placed 39th in Sunday’s classic sprint qualifier. He missed the top 30 needed to qualify for the heats by 2.36 seconds.
“This weekend was a great chance to do some good race efforts ahead of the World Cup,” Locke wrote in an email on Sunday. “With such large fields, it was a good reminder that the margin for error is very small. Leading into the World Cup next weekend, it will only become ever more important to focus on the details. I’m looking forward to the upcoming three weeks, particularly the Ruka sprint as it has always been a favourite race of mine to watch. It’s such a tactical course with so much potential for excitement in the last 45 seconds.”
While Locke previously referred to his win at Frozen Thunder a “relief”, it is just the beginning of a several-monthlong journey.
“Of course I’m excited, but it felt to me sort of as the first step in the broader plan for the season,” Locke said. “Just one box being checked off.”
Julien Locke (Canadian U25 Team/Black Jack) training on Haig Glacier near Canmore this summer. (Courtesy photo)
Canada’s Remi Drolet (r) skiing a downhill with eventual third-place finisher Norway’s Harald Østberg Amundsen during the men’s 20 k skiathlon at 2017 Junior World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. On Amundsen’s seventh lap, he lapped Drolet, who went on to finish 49th. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)
In an effort to showcase the North Americans competing at this past week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2017 USANA Nordic Junior World Championships and U23 Cross Country World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 16-year-old Rémi Drolet, of Team Black Jack, representing Canada at his first Junior Worlds.
On Feb. 1, Drolet competed in the men’s 10 k freestyle, where he finished 50th, and two days later, he placed 49th in the 20 k skiathlon.
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“My full name is Rémi Drolet, but you can call me Sir Remington Danger Drolet III. I was born in Trail, B.C., raised in Rossland, B.C., and one thing you should know about my hometown is it is a super-awesome ski town.
Canada’s Rémi Drolet (Team Black Jack) racing to 50th in the men’s 10 k freestyle, his first race of 2017 Junior Worlds Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)
I started cross-country skiing when I was four, thanks to my dad. I currently train in Rossland with Team Black Jack.
If I’m not skiing, you might find me mountain biking or hiking. If I had to pick a favorite book, it would be ‘The Lord of The Rings‘.
One of the things I’m most excited about for Junior Worlds at Soldier Hollow is racing against the best juniors in the world and representing Canada. One race I’m especially targeting there is the 20 km skiathlon.
The best advice anyone ever gave me about skiing or racing was eat until it hurts. One of the best race memories I have is qualifying for the World Junior Championships.
If I could meet one World Cup skier, it would be Martin Johnsrud Sundby.
If I don’t end up being a professional skier, I’ll probably be a physicist.
I’m missing 11 days of school to be here, and my teachers are probably thinking, ‘Rémi had better be doing homework right now.’
The start of the men’s freestyle sprint A-final on Day 2 of of the NorAm mini tour in at Black Jack Ski Club in Rossland, B.C. American Andy Newell (301) leads Julien Locke (304, tallest) with Russel Kennedy nearest. (Photo: Dafné Theroux Izquierdo)
The Black Jack mini tour represented the final chance for Canadians to earn World Cup Period 2 starts. A timely week of snow and colder weather delivered great skiing conditions after an unusually warm November wreaked havoc on most of the western ski areas. That same warm weather canceled the Bozeman combined SuperTour/NorAm, which reduced the selection races from seven days to five.
Chelsea Holmes of Alaska Pacific University (APU) continued her winning ways in Canada, destroying the field in the 10-kilometre freestyle on Friday, placing fourth in the Saturday freestyle sprints, and holding off the field in the 15 k classic pursuit on Sunday with the second-fastest race time to complete the weekend with an aggregate time of 1:08:04.4.
Erika Flowers of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite team finished the weekend in second, 2:23.9 behind. Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt of the Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA) and Canadian National U25 Team took third, 0.2 seconds ahead of Katherine Stewart-Jones of the Thunder Bay National Team Development Centre (NTDC TBay). Bouffard-Nesbitt and Stewart-Jones will also be very close on the NorAm leaderboard, and one of them has earned a quota spot for World Cup Period 2.
In the men’s overall, Evan Palmer-Charrette (NTDC TBay) started the pursuit with a 37-second lead after winning the 15 k freestyle and placing third in the freestyle sprints. Palmer-Charrette held off the chasers to take the overall title and, most likely, the Continental Cup (COC) leader’s spot for World Cup Period 2.
Alexis Dumas of the Pierre Harvey National Training Centre (CNEPH) charged up from a sixth-place start to grab second overall with the fastest time of the day, 52.2 seconds behind Palmer-Charrette. AWCA’s Jack Carlyle used the second fastest time of the day to take third overall, 1:10.1 back.
Friday: Freestyle Interval Start
In a reprise of the the previous Sunday’s event at Sovereign Lake, Holmes won the 10 k by an even larger margin, 1:49.4 minutes, finishing in 29:37.8.
“I love the courses here,” Holmes wrote in an email to FasterSkier. “Lots of steep climbing followed by technical downhills … very fun!”
She learned from her 31-second victory five days earlier: “Last week in the 10k I exploded into a million pieces at 5km, so I tried very hard to control myself in the first lap today.”
Flowers, who caught a ride with Holmes the previous week, moved up one place to second despite the larger time gap.
“I felt decent skiing (albeit a bit cold!) but definitely have some work to do on the downhills and keeping my tempo up on the hills,” Flowers wrote. “I tend to ski with a lot of glide so I am learning to turn it over a bit more when is cold like this and good glide is harder to come by.”
This would be the warmest day of the three, with a high of -12 degrees Celsius.
Bouffard-Nesbitt placed third (+2:27.2), and was already missing the deeper field of the previous weekend.
“When you have 2:27 separating the top 3, that’s not something you really want to see at the highest level of domestic racing,” Bouffard-Nesbitt wrote.
In the men’s 15 k, Palmer-Charrette made up for his head cold-induced DNF the previous weekend with the winning time of 40:36.7.
“Until today I had not had a strong distance race this year, so it was great to see the form come around.”
Palmer-Charrette was also missing the deeper SuperTour field.
“This weekend definitely is not as competitive […] as we had last weekend with the Americans in Sovereign Lake,” he wrote. “I’m disappointed [that] I was under the weather when we had the chance to race with them.”
Russell Kennedy (Team R.A.D.) was leading after 5 k before fading to second, 31.1 seconds back.
“I really wanted the win after the first lap but my body was feeling a little fatigued,” he explained in an email. “It was cold and the snow wasn’t very fast, but the weather was nice.”
Erik Carleton, of Rocky Mountain Racers and the Canadian Para-Nordic Ski Team,was happy with his third place, 56 seconds back, especially after a late arrival on Thursday.
“My teammate [and fellow Para-Nordic guide] Graham [Nishikawa] and I waxed our own skis, with the help of some good advice, and the outcome was positive,” Carleton wrote.
Carleton and Nishikawa have raced at a lot of venues, while guiding paralympian Brian McKeever and in their own domestic and World Cup careers, and are a good source for course comparisons.
“It was a fun and challenging course, with steeper climbs and slightly more technical downhills than most courses,” Carleton wrote of the Black Jack trails. “At -18C this morning, the snow was quite slow, especially on the steep uphills. If you had decent skis, the course was more of factor than the conditions. Climbing steep uphills with no glide was a key to a good race.”
SMS Elite’s Andy Newell, freshly arrived from the World Cup circuit, placed fourth (+1:08.9).
“It’s my goal to use these races to help get back into the feeling of racing again after such a rocky start to the season,” Newell wrote after Friday’s race. “I was happy with the way today went and they way my body felt.”
Newell is another athlete with wide experience of race courses: “Having just come off the world cup I can tell you that these courses here are top notch,” he wrote.
Saturday: Freestyle Sprint
Saturday brought a romantic result to a chilly day, with the affianced Flowers and Newell winning the women’s and men’s sprints, respectively.
Bouffard-Nesbitt won the qualifier and easily moved through to the A-final, but Flowers was first at the line.
“Olivia skied really well off the line and up the entire first half of the course-super smooth and strong,” Flowers wrote. “I was able to jump in behind her in second and tried to chase her down leading up to the high point of the course. By the top of the first big climb we had a sizable gap on the rest of the field but she was still a few meters ahead of me so I tried to ski hard over the top of the hill and free skate the downhill in order to chase her down. I was able to get right behind her going into the last little uphill and felt good coming off the downhill into the finish stretch for a drag race finish.”
The sprint course has some tricky descending which didn’t affect the top racers or Flowers’s enjoyment of the day.
“I did get to see a few epic crashes on the S-turns and I thought it was fun to join my fiance Andy on the top of the podium!” she wrote.
Bouffard-Nesbitt was also positive about her race, despite coming up 0.44 seconds short of the win.
“I’m pretty happy with my race today!” she wrote. “Definitely happy with my qualifier. I skied the final just like I skied the final in Silver Star — I left it all out on the course.”
Stewart-Jones placed third (+7.89), edging Holmes by four-hundredths of a second.
“Olivia and Erika skied impressively well, all day today!” Holmes wrote. “Olivia took the final out hard and Erika followed… I didn’t see much after that but the results tell the story!”
Maya MacIsaac-Jones (AWCA/NST U25 Team),who is recovering from a more-recent foot injury than Bouffard-Nesbitt, held off her NTDC TBay’s Annika Richardson by nearly 2 seconds for fifth (+10.65).
Newell won the men’s qualifier and every heat before topping the A-final in 2:44.81.
Another view of the men’s A-final. Newell (far right) and Lapointe (black suit hidden by Newell) take the lead out early, with Kennedy (nearest) Locke, and the Thunder Bay NTDC skiers in light blue. (Photo: Dafné Theroux Izquierdo)
“I was happy with the race today,” he wrote. “The cold temperatures felt a little more manageable today and it was a great opportunity to race 4 hard rounds on a fun sprint course.
“It was my strategy to be in a front position to be able to charge up the second hill and gap the field, which was the strategy I used in all the heats,” he added
Former Black Jack racer Julian Locke (AWCA) was 1.05 back, outreaching Palmer-Charrette by 0.05 seconds.
“[CNEPH’s] Simon Lapointe was pushing pretty hard with Newell and Russell Kennedy with him,” Locke wrote. “I had to put on the gas halfway up [the first long hill] to get back with the leaders and stay in the race. I made contact with the group going over the top and then got behind Newell going over the small hill in the middle of the course, following him down through the twists and into the finish. Evan Palmer-Charrette had some good speed coming into the lanes and we had a fun lunge to the line.”
Kennedy was on the wrong side of the gap for fourth. Lapointe and NTDC TBay’s Angus Foster, who with Palmer-Charrette crashed out of the previous weekend’s sprint, rounded out the A-final in fifth (+6.26) and sixth (+6.97), respectively.
Sunday: Classic Pursuit
Sunday brought slightly warmer conditions for the 10/15 k classic pursuits, but the waxing was still straightforward with -13-degree Celsius air and colder snow.
Holmes started the 10 k pursuit with a 1:42 head start and kept the lead, finishing in 35:35.4, which stood as the second-fastest time of the day. Her race plan was simple.
“I think the expression is to go out ‘like a bat out of hell.’ ”she wrote on Saturday night.
On Sunday, she was feeling more contemplative after the race: “I have never started off the front in a pursuit and quite honestly it made for some different feelings out there… surprisingly lonely.”
Flowers was third on Sunday, 48.1 seconds back, but it was enough to maintain her second overall (+2:23.9).
“I wasn’t thrilled with my race today but it was a good mental challenge to get out there and play around with some classic skiing,” Flowers wrote. “I have some work to do there technically for sure and while I wasn’t pleased with how I skied, I now know where to focus some training energy over the next few weeks so that’s a good thing!”
Bouffard-Nesbitt was fifth-fastest on the day, 1:04.7 back, but was able to finish ahead of a flying Stewart-Jones by a scant 0.6 seconds for third on the mini-tour podium (+3:25.2).
Stewart-Jones was the fastest in the 10 k classic, 6.2 seconds ahead of Holmes, for fourth overall (+3:25.7).
“I was able to stay relaxed and set into a good pace on the first lap and really dig deep on the second,” Stewart-Jones wrote. “It took awhile to get into race shape but every race I have felt stronger. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the season!”
Richardson was fourth-fastest of the day after starting fourth, dropping one place to Stewart-Jones who started 8 seconds behind her for fifth overall (+4:08.7).
Palmer-Charrette started the men’s 15 k classic pursuit with a 38-second lead over Kennedy.
“I skied smooth and relaxed at the front of the race,” Palmer-Charrette wrote. “I kept the pace quite conservative until the second half of the last lap just to ensure I had an extra gear in the tank in case someone started to bring back major time.”
Palmer-Charrette was very happy with his first time leading a pursuit and first mini-tour win. He finished 52.2 seconds clear of runner-up despite Dumas, who posted the fastest time of the day. (Palmer-Charrette’s time ranked fourth, 1:14.7 behind Dumas.)
“I was really happy with my weekend, mostly with how consistent I was able to ski all three days. Today I was pretty far off the win [for time of day], but skiing out front racing for the mini tour overall I didn’t quite leave it all out there,” Palmer-Charrette wrote.
Dumas started in sixth, 2:08 back, but was able to ski through to second after catching Kennedy, Newell, Carleton and Carlyle, all of whom started ahead of him. Carlyle had the second-best time of the day, 29.9 seconds slower than Dumas, to move from fifth to third overall (+1:10.1).
Carleton was third on the day, 1:01.2 back, and came within 0.8 seconds of catching Kennedy, who finished the mini tour in fourth overall (+1:20.8) after starting second.
“It was a good weekend,” Kennedy summarized. “I just couldn’t seem to hold it together in the classic but learned a lot and have some stuff to work on over Christmas!”
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At the end of the three days of racing, there were a lot of positive comments, but as Holmes put it:
“I am very glad that I chose to come to Rossland to finish off my early season racing — all the girls were super great, Canmore Nordic (who helped me with wax for the weekend) and the venue, organizers and volunteers were top notch!”
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Results:Day 1 | Day 2 (Qualifier, Heats) | Day 3 (click “overall results” and “aggregate results” tabs on top of page)
Eric Frenzel (r) leads German teammates Vinzenz Geiger (c) and Fabian Rießle (l) toward a sweep of the podium in the Nordic Combined World Cup individual normal hill/10 k on Sunday in Ramsau, Austria. (Photo: FIS Nordic Combined/Facebook)
Welcome to The Rundown, your quick primer of need-to-know information about the day’s racing. We’ll be updating this digest as the day goes on with additional results, photos and quotes. The Rundown is NOT a race report; stay tuned for complete race reports later today with interviews from the day’s top racers.
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FIS Nordic Combined Continental Cup in Klingenthal
[UPDATE] Ben Loomis tallied two top 10’s and his U.S. Nordic Combined teammate Ben Berend notched eighth place this past weekend at the Continental Cup in Klingenthal, Germany.
Loomis ended the three-day series on Sunday by placing fifth in the large hill/10 k for his second-best result at the Continental Cup level (he finished fourth last year in the normal hill/10 k competition in Park City, Utah). Loomis put himself in position by jumping to sixth then racing to fifth, 49.9 seconds behind Japan’s winner Go Yamamoto, who finished in 24:06.4.
Florian Dagn of Austria placed second (+6.0) after jumping to first. Yamamoto jumped to second and headed out on the course seven seconds behind him.
Norway’s Sindre Ure Soetvik placed third (+28.8), after starting the 10 k in third. Germany’s David Welde finished fourth (+36.0), moving up after jumping to eighth.
Also on Sunday, Berend placed 15th (+2:25.3) and Jasper Good was 35th (+3:07).
Berend started the long weekend out with an eighth-place finish in the large hill/5 k on Friday. He jumped to fourth and finished the ski race in eighth, 1:09.2 minutes behind Germany’s Maximilian Pfordte, who won in 10:58.9.
Pfordte posted the best jump to start the 5 k first, then held his lead for a 16.4-second victory over Yamamoto in second. Dagn placed third (+18.3) after jumping to second, and Yamamoto’s jump ranked third.
Also for the U.S., Good finished 21st (+2:05.8) for his best result of the weekend, Loomis was 28th (+2:50.5) and Stephen Schumann 29th (+2:52.1).
On Saturday, it was Loomis who tallied another eighth place for the U.S. in the large hill/10 k. He jumped to 10th then improved to eighth, finishing 58 seconds behind German winner Tobias Simon. While Simon dominated the jump as well as the race, winning by 10.1 seconds, Yamamoto repeated in second place and Austria’s Thomas Joebstl reached the podium in third (+38.3).
Berend finished 25th (+1:45.9) and Good 45th (+3:24.9) on Day 2.
The Nordic Combined World Cup resumed this weekend in Ramsau, Austria, with Germany not only topping but sweeping the podium in both individual normal hill/10 k competitions.
On Saturday, Team Germany swept the top four, with Johannes Rydzek notching his third individual win of the season, ahead of teammates Fabian Rießle (+1.5) and Eric Frenzel (+8.7). Vinzenz Geiger completed the sweep in fourth (+15.0), a career best for the 19 year old after placing seventh earlier this month in Lillehammer, Norway.
Frenzel led after the jump on the 98-meter hill, which put him 2 seconds ahead of the second-best jumper, Austria’s Mario Seidl, in the 10 k Gundersen start. (Seidl went on to place seventh.)
Rydzek posted the third-best jump and started 10 seconds back, while Rießle started another 10 seconds later in seventh. Rydzek went on to ski the fifth-fastest course time and Rießle was third fastest en route to first and second at the finish.
Americans Taylor Fletcher and Bryan Fletcher finished 27th (+1:17.6) and 29th (+1:18.4), respectively, and Adam Loomis was 47th (+3:16.2).
Taylor started 41st, 1:18 back, and Bryan started five seconds later in 43rd. Bryan posted the seventh-fastest course time and ended with a photo finish with Finland’s Arttu Maekiaho, which Maekiaho took by 0.1 seconds for 28th. Loomis started 50th.
Day 2 in Ramsau went to Frenzel, who won the normal hill/10 k in 22:49.4. Rießle repeated in second (+0.8) and Geiger improved on his career best for his first podium in third (+23.4). Seidl again jumped to first and this time ended up fourth (+24.3).
Frenzel started third and raced to first, Rießle moved up from fourth in the jump to second, and Geiger made the most of his second-best jump.
Taylor Fletcher skied the third-fastest course time to move up from 46th after the jump to 22nd at the finish (+1:20.2). Bryan Fletcher finished 32nd (+1:33.5), losing one place after starting 31st.
The Nordic Combined World Cup goes on holiday break until resuming Jan. 7-8 in Lahti, Finland.
The NorAm mini tour in Rossland, British Columbia, wrapped up with a classic pursuit race on Sunday.
In the women’s 10 k classic, APU’s Chelsea Holmes continued her strong form, winning the mini tour with an aggregate time of 1:08:04.4. Holmes finished the 10 k in 35:35.4 minutes, 6.2 seconds behind fastest woman of the day, Katherine Stewart-Jones (NTDC Thunder Bay).
SMS Elite’s Erika Flowers continued her podium-filled visit to Canada with the third-fastest ski of the day, 48.1 seconds behind Stewart-Jones, to take second overall, 2:23.9 behind Holmes. AWCA’s Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt was the fifth fastest in the 10 k to hold on to third overall (+3:25.2), while Stewart-Jones was just 0.5 seconds back in fourth overall.
NTDC Thunder Bay’s Evan Palmer-Charrette used a fourth-fastest ski in the 15 k to keep the overall title, with an aggregate time of 1:28:54.0. Alexis Dumas (CNEPH) skied 1:14.7 faster than Palmer-Charrette to climb from sixth at the start to second overall (+52.2). AWCA’s Jack Carlyle had the second-fastest time of the day, 29.9 seconds behind Dumas, to climb into third overall (+1:10.1).
National Para-Nordic guide Erik Carleton had the third-fastest 15 k time, 1:01.3 back, but it wasn’t enough to catch Team R.A.D.’s Russell Kennedy, who placedfourth overall (+1:20.8).
Full results (with tabs for the overall and time of the day)
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FIS Cross-Country World Cup in La Clusaz: Men’s and women’s relays
Team Norway I emerged victorious in Sunday’s men’s 4 x 8 k mixed relay event in La Clusaz, France, with Didrik Tønseth leading the winning group’s first classic leg.
After crossing in seventh, Tønseth handed off to Martin Johnsrud Sundby for a second classic leg. Sundby dropped a spot, finishing his classic leg in eighth. Sundby tagged off to Anders Gløersen for the first freestyle leg.
Gløersen rocketed the team to first, and held the position straight through his 7.5 k. The final leg for Norway’s winning team went to Finn Hågen Krogh. The Norwegian men’s team completed the relay event in a total time of 1:11:25.7
Second place overall, two-tenths of a second behind, was team Russia, led by Evgeniy Belov for the first classic leg. Belov handed off to Alexander Legkov for the second classic leg, with Legkov putting down the third fastest time by the time he returned to the exchange zone.
The third and first freestyle leg for Russia went to Alexey Chervotkin, who maintained the team’s third place position. Anchoring the team was Sergey Ustiugov, who managed to maneuver the team from third place to second during his final freestyle leg.
The men’s 4 x 8 k relay podium on Sunday in La Clusaz, France, with Russia in second (left four) Norway first (center four) and France third overall. (Photo: FIS Cross-Country/twitter)
Rounding out the men’s mixed relay podium on Sunday was France I (+7.7).
Jean-Marc Gaillard led team France’s first classic leg, racing in a sixth position into the exchange zone. Gaillard handed off to Alexis Jeannerod, who moved up to fifth place by the end of his classic leg.
Skiing the third and first freestyle leg was Clement Parisse who held onto fifth place and tagged off to Maurice Manificat for the final freestyle leg. Manificat managed to move around Sweden’s Axel Ekstrløm and Germany’s Lucas Bøgl for third place overall.
Neither Canada or the U.S. entered a men’s relay team due to illness.
In the women’s 4 x 4 k relay event, it was another Norwegian team who stood atop the podium.
Ingvild Flugstad Østberg led the women’s first classic leg, skiing in first place until her hand-off to Marit Bjørgen. Bjørgen maintained the first place position during her classic leg, tagging off to Ragnhild Haga.
Haga completed the first freestyle leg for Norway, handing off to Heidi Weng, who anchored the team’s last freestyle leg. The Norwegian women finished in a total time of 39:23.3.
In second was team Finland, 50.2 seconds behind Norway’s winning time. Aino-Kaisa Saarinen started the first classic leg for Finland, passing off to Anne Kyllønen.
The women’s 4 x 4 k mixed relay podium on Sunday in La Clusaz, France. Norway (c) took the win ahead of team Finland in second (l) and Sweden in third. (Photo: FIC Cross-Country/Twitter)
Taking on the first freestyle leg for Finland was Riitta-Liisa Roponen, who tagged off to Laura Mononen for the final freestyle leg.
Rounding out the relay podium in third overall was team Sweden (+1:08.9). Emma Wiken raced the first classic leg, who tagged off to Stina Nilsson for the second classic leg. Maria Rydqvist raced the first freestyle leg and handed off to Anna Dyvik, who anchored the team to third.
Only one U.S. women’s relay team was entered on Sunday, with both Jessie Diggins and Sadie Bjornsen out due to illness. Sophie Caldwell led the U.S.’s first classic leg, followed by Rosie Brennan. Liz Stephen followed Brennan, taking on the first freestyle leg. Anchoring the team was Kikkan Randall in the final freestyle leg. The Americans finished in seventh overall (+2:26.0).
Canada also entered a women’s team in Sunday’s relay. Emily Nishikawa led the first classic leg, and handed off to Cendrine Browne for the second classic leg. Dahria Beatty raced the first freestyle leg and tagged off to Sophie Carrier-Laforte, who anchored the team to 12th overall (+4:07.9).
IBU World Cup in Nove Mesto: Men’s and women’s mass starts
Gabriela Koukalová of the Czech Republic looks to her home crowd as she wins the women’s 12.5 k mass start on Sunday at the IBU World Cup in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. She fended off Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier (r), who took second. (Photo: IBU)
Despite skiing in 14th at one point in the men’s 15 k mass start on Sunday, France’s Martin Fourcade came back to win the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic.
That makes him seven for eight in individual races so far this season.
Fourcade started with bib 1 as the overall World Cup leader and finished first in 36:18.9 minutes, despite a penalty on his second prone that put him in 14th and 22 seconds back heading out on his third loop.
He rebounded with a clean third shooting to move into third, 2.5 seconds behind Ukraine’s Dmytro Pidruchnyi in first and 1.3 seconds behind Russia’s Anton Babikov in second.
By the final shooting stage, Fourcade was back in first with clean shooting (0+1+0+0), 28 seconds clear of Babikov in second. Babikov had his first penalty of the day on the final stage (0+0+0+1) to drop out of contention.
Germany’s Simon Schempp (1+1+0+0) came out on top of an eight-way battle for second place on the final loop. Schempp took it, 8.3 seconds after Fourcade and 1.1 seconds ahead of Babikov in third (+9.4).
The Czech Republic’s Ondrej Moravec was 0.3 seconds off the podium in fourth (+9.7), Pidruchnyi placed fifth (+10.2), Russia’s Matvey Eliseev finished sixth (+11.0), Norway’s Ole Einar Bjørndalen was back in the top 10 in seventh (+11.3), France’s Quentin Fillon Maillet notched his second-straight top 10 in eighth (+13.7), and Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø finished at the back of that pack in ninth (+19.8).
American Lowell Bailey missed the top 20 by 10 seconds in 21st (+1:17.1). He had three penalties, two of which came on the last stage (0+1+0+2) to drop him from ninth to 20th at the start of the final loop.
Bailey retained his spot in ninth in the overall World Cup standings, while Fourcade continues to lead, 158 points ahead of Shipulin in second.
In the women’s 12.5 k mass start, Gabriela Koukalová delivered to her home fans in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, racing to her second win of the season in 34:42.1.
“I was so nervous before the race so it was amazing,” Koukalová said, according to an IBU press release. “I have so many emotions; it’s even more emotional than at the Olympics. I would like to say thanks to all the spectators and I hope I was able to make a nice Christmas present to all of them.”
The defending World Cup champion beat the current World Cup leader, Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier, by 3.1 seconds after shooting a single penalty and cleaning the last two stages (0+1+0+0) to move into first. Dahlmeier missed two on the first stage to drop 23rd, but cleaned her last three stages (2+0+0+0) to capture second at the finish. She passed three athletes on the last lap, including Italy’s Dorothea Wierer, who ended up third (+9.7) with one miss (1+0+0+0).
“I don’t really know what happened with those two misses,” she told German broadcaster ARD. “But in terms of skiing I had a great day on the course, and I had skis that were the bomb. It’s just a lot of fun when you can make the podium reaching the second place despite a large deficit in the beginning. I am overjoyed.”
Germany’s Vanessa Hinz rebounded from Friday’s sprint (where she placed 73rd) to end up fourth (+15.5) with a single penalty (0+0+1+0). None of the 29 finishers hit every target, and American Susan Dunklee did not start.
Dahlmeier leads the overall World Cup standings by 98 points over Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen, and Koukalova is third, just seven points behind Mäkäräinen. Dunklee is 11th.
The IBU World Cup now goes on holiday break until resuming Jan. 5 in Oberhof, Germany.
The third IBU Cup was held on Dec. 16-17 in Obertilliach, Austria. In the men’s 20 k individual on Friday, the top three finishers were France’s Antonin Guigonnat, with a winning time of 49:58.6, Russia’s Yury Shopin in second (+32.2), and Germany’s Florian Graf in third (+35.6). Each of the top three had one miss, and Canada’s Matthew Hudec was the top North American in 34th (+4:11.3) with two penalties (0+2+0+0). Also for Canada, Carsen Campbell finished 38th with three penalties (1+2+0+0), Matthew Neumann was 53rd with three penalties (0+2+0+1) out of 118 finishers.
In the women’s 15 k individual on Friday, Germany’s Karolin Horchler took the win with clean shooting (0+0+0+0) in 44:54.7. France’s Coline Varcin was 1.1 seconds back in second with one penalty (1+0+0+0), and third went to Russia’s Daria Virolaynen (+30.2), who had one miss as well (0+1+0+0). Canada’s Nadia Moser was the top North American in 35th (+5:10.8) with two penalties (0+1+1+0). Also for Canada, Erin Yungblut placed 66th with five penalties (0+3+0+2).
In the men’s 10 k sprint on Saturday, two Norwegians took first and second with Henrik L’Abee-Lund winning in 23:29.9, and Vetle Sjastad Christiansen 13.9 seconds back in second. Third was claimed by Germany’s Phillipp Nawrath (+29.5) and all of the top three shot clean. Neumann led Canada in 47th (+2:20) with one miss (1+0). Campbell missed two (1+1) and finished 59th (+2:47.4), and Hudec was 64th (+2:58.9) with two penalties as well (1+1). Canada’s Pearce Hanna finished 87th, with two misses (2+0), out of 125 finishers.
In the women’s 7.5 k sprint, Russia swept the podium with Virolaynen winning in 20:31.5, followed closely by Uliana Kaisheva (+3.7), and then Anna Nikulina (+23.1). Virolaynen missed one (0+1), Kaisheva cleaned (0+0) and Nikulina had a standing miss as well (0+1). The top North American was Canada’s Megan Bankes in 30th (+2:08.1), with one prone penalty (1+0). Also for Canada, Sarah Beaudry finished 34th (+2:18.1), with two standing misses (0+2), Yungblut was 45th (+2:40.6) with clean shooting (0+0), and Moser finished 49th (+2:45.5) with two misses (1+1), out of 85 women.
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) after crossing the finish first through 23 finishers in the women’s 7.5 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. She went on to place third for her first podium of the season and the third of her career.
(Note: This is not a race report but rather a digest of the day’s events. Check back for complete race reports.)
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IBU World Cup in Nove Mesto: Women’s 7.5 k sprint
Susan Dunkleecame close last week, and now she’s there. The 30-year-old US Biathlon skier rocketed to third in the first women’s race of the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, on Friday: the 7.5-kilometer sprint.
She finished 5.1 seconds behind Russia’s Tatiana Akimova, who not only achieved her first win, but her first World Cup top 10 as well, with clean shooting (0+0) in 21:58.9 minutes. France’s Anaïs Chevalier placed second, 4.3 seconds back, with perfect shooting as well (0+0), and Dunklee was the third woman in the top three to hit all 10 targets.
Dunklee started 23rd and displaced Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier, who started 30 seconds ahead of her in bib 22, from first place by 11.4 seconds. Dunklee then had to wait for nearly 75 other finishers to secure her podium, bumped out of first by Akimova in bib 37 and finally to third place by Chevalier in bib 68. Dahlmeier ultimately placed fourth (+16.5) after two standing penalties (0+2).
Overall, Dunklee posted the fifth-fastest range time, ninth-fastest shooting, and 15th-fastest course time en route to the third podium of her career.
“I am very happy,” Dunklee said in a post-race press conference. “Last week I crossed the line in first and slipped back all the way to 11th with clean shooting, and this is quite an improvement over that. You never know with biathlon whether you are gonna hold a position when you cross the finish line. It’s just too unpredictable.”
Asked how she was feeling about Saturday’s pursuit, she said she was in a great position.
“The important thing is not to think too much about it and keep executing a good performance plan, like every other race,” she said.
Canada’s top finisher was Julia Ransom, who cracked the top 30 for the first time this year in 26th (+1:06.5) with a single standing penalty (0+1). Rosanna Crawford placed 37th (+1:30) with two misses (1+1), Megan Tandy was 44th (+1:34.8) with one prone penalty (1+0), and American Joanne Reid placed 52nd (+1:46.5) with one standing miss (0+1) to also qualify for Saturday’s pursuit.
The third U.S. woman racing on Friday, Clare Egan placed 62nd (+1:59.4) with three misses (2+1), missing the pursuit by 1.6 seconds.
The fourth Canadian woman, Emma Lunder finished 82nd (+3:02.2) with two penalties (2+0).
[UPDATE] The NorAm series kicked off its second stop on Friday with a three-race mini tour in Rossland, B.C.
The men’s 15 k freestyle had a more traditional result, with Canadians retaking the podium. Evan Palmer-Charrette of the Thunder Bay National Team Development Centre (NTDC) won in 40:36.7 minutes, 31.1 seconds ahead of Team R.A.D.’s Russell Kennedy. Erik Carleton of Rocky Mountain Racers and the Canadian Para-Nordic Ski Team edged out U.S. Ski Team and SMS Elite skier Andy Newell for third (+56.6).
Chelsea Holmes of Alaska Pacific University (APU) continued her dominating ways in the women’s 10 k freestyle, finishing in 29.37.8. Fellow American Erika Flowers (SMS Elite) was second, 1:49.2 behind with Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt of the Alberta World Cup Academy and Canadian U25 Team in third (+2:27.2).
FasterSkier is seeking photos from this weekend’s NorAm. Submit yours with caption and credit info to info@fasterskier.com.
Julien Locke (right) rollerskiing up Mount Norquay in Banff, Alberta, with Canadian National Ski Team teammate Lenny Valjas. (Courtesy photo)
Welcome to “17 Questions for 2017″, where we are catching up with American and Canadian national-team members before the beginning of the winter season.
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Julien Locke had an unusual distinction last year: he was the only athlete to podium at both Canadian and U.S. national championships, taking third in the skate sprints at both events.
The British Columbian also snagged NorAm wins and a 16th-place performance in the U23 World Championships sprint. Locke, now 23 years old, was named to Canada’s national team for the first time in May and has since relocated to Canmore, Alberta.
1. Biggest change in your life in the last five or so months since the ski season ended?
Locke getting some glacier time. (Courtesy photo)
This season is my first year on the Canadian National Ski Team. After 9 years skiing with the Black Jack Ski Team in Rossland, BC, I am now living in Canmore, AB.
2. Biggest change in your training?
Training this year has been quite consistent with what I’ve done previously with some small differences. There was a bit more travel this year with a NST camp in Quebec in late June. With World Cup sprint opportunities on the line on November 1/3, the training season has been adjusted in order to be in race shape a good month earlier than usual. Aside from that, not much has changed.
3. Major areas of improvement you’ve seen so far?
I am happy with where how my double pole has been this year. Last year I double poled nearly half of the classic races on the calendar and I feel quite solid as we get close to the upcoming season.
4. Whom you’ve been working closest with this offseason (coaches or training partners)?
I’ve been training a lot this year with the Canmore NST group of Len Valjas, Jess Cockney, Graeme Killick and Knute Johnsgaard.
5. Best trip in the last five months (and why)?
I just returned from a fantastic training camp in Park City. The NST guys all stayed up in Deer Valley at 2600m. Great roads for roller skiing, wonderful fall colours and nice weather (plus a few snowy days!) for training.
6. Favorite cross-training?
Julien Locke (r, Team Black Jack) challenges APU’s Eric Packer at around 400-meters to the finish of the semi-final for the men’s 1.5 k freestyle sprint at 2016 U.S. National Championships in Houghton, Mich. Locke went on to finish third overall.
I’m a big fan of everything we do for training: roller skiing, trail running, paddling and cycling.
7. Favorite non-athletic activity or pastime this summer?
I had a busy and productive summer with work (I am a web developer) and have recently launched a couple new sites. Check out the new Sovereign Lake Nordic website: www.sovereignlake.com
8. Song that was your jam this summer?
Josh Ritter’s Hello Starling album.
9. All time favorite race moment?
That is a difficult question! The highlight of last season was racing the Keski (Gatineau Loppet) and competing against Alex and Lenny in the Canadian Nationals sprint.
10. First thing you pack in your bag when you leave for Europe?
Race boots are the first priority when I am traveling. Everything else can be borrowed if needed, but it’s difficult to ski if you don’t have boots that fit. I always travel with either both my skate and classic, or just pursuit boots in my carry-on.
11. Venue/event you’re most excited to visit this season?
My main focus for the winter is the World Championships in Lahti, Finland. The pre-Olympic World Cups in Pyeongchang are the second priority.
12. Who will win the men’s and women’s World Cup titles this year?
Well… given the recent news from Norway, the start lists may look a bit different this year. I would bet on Sundby for the mens overall with Alex Harvey up there as well. For the women, Heidi Weng.
13. Biggest sacrifice you feel you’ve made choosing this career path?
I don’t feel that I have to make sacrifices in order to ski. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to train and compete full time.
14. If you could change one thing about your sport, what would it be?
It would be amazing for our sport in North America if we could bring skiing to the masses. Cross country skiing is such a great sport for all ages and the more excitement we can generate for young skiers, new recruits and the general public, the more we can grow our sport. It was fantastic to see the atmosphere at the Tour de Ski city sprints in Quebec last year and hopefully we can continue to have similar events in North America. Additionally, bring back the 50km Individual!
15. What did you have for breakfast this morning?
Bowl of oatmeal with yoghurt, fruit and honey and 2 poached eggs.
16. In 5 years, I’ll be ____?
… training hard at altitude for the last fall camp before the 2021/22 Olympic season begins.
Kris Freeman on his way to winning the 30 k freestyle interval start by more than a minute and a half on Dec. 20 at the Sovereign Lake NorAm in Vernon, B.C. (Photo: Frances Weeks)
Canada’s NorAm circuit is what the International Ski Federation (FIS) calls a Continental Cup series, similar to the U.S. SuperTour. The name NorAm is short for North American, a hold-over from when Canada and the U.S. had a combined race series. These races are critical to the elite racers, with guaranteed World Cup starts, national-team positions, and trips to Junior/U23 World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on the line.
Or to put it another way, it would take a major event to cancel a NorAm race — like perhaps a record-breaking storm in a unusually snowless early season.
As organizing committees secured the final details for the first two NorAm weekends, a major storm was expected to bring heavy rain to most of southern British Columbia.
By the end of the four-day storm, a Vancouver suburb had declared a state of emergency, heavy rain at 12-degree Celsius (54 Fahrenheit) had closed numerous ski resorts across B.C. (including Whistler Blackcomb). Seattle set weather records, and 220,000 people were without power in California.
While all this was going on, organizers in La Clusaz, France, canceled their World Cup and later moved it to Davos, Switzerland, a venue which had previously avoided canceling its original race weekend because of a huge snow-moving effort largely funded by a retired alpine skier.
The first NorAm weekend this year was scheduled for Dec. 13-14, hosted by the Black Jack Ski Club in Rossland, B.C. Outside the province, Black Jack is best known as the club that produced George Grey (top-10 finisher at the 2010 Olympics) and the current home of long-time national team coach Dave Wood.
When low snow, warm weather and predicted rain made the club’s homologated courses unsuitable for skiing, the club decided to move the opening races up to the biathlon trails, more than 200 meters (650 feet) higher in elevation. As the four-day storm progressed, the freezing level was up to 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) in the area, well above the 1400-meter(4,590-foot) elevation of the biathlon trails.
When rain made the sprint loop unskiable two days before the race, the organizing committee didn’t give up. Club members, neighbours and team coaches spent hours shoveling snow onto the course. When another wave of rain destroyed the sprint course overnight, the organizing committee switched to two individual-start classic distance races and volunteers headed out again to shovel more snow onto the distance course.
After four days of rain and a move to a higher venue without electricity or a timing building, the races were held. Generators provided power, live results were available on the internet and the event was generally agreed to be up to the Continental Cup standard. Some 140 official volunteers plus an unknown number of shovelers made this possible.
“We estimate we did about 130 man-hours of shovelling this week,” Chief of Competition Ian Sibbald wrote in an email.
Unsolicited athlete quotes from the Black Jack NorAm
“The volunteer base is incredible. That is an astounding number [of volunteers] since only 3,500 people live in Rossland. Given the lack of snow, the conditions were great.” — Kris Freeman (Team Freebird)
“Conditions were good! A few twigs poking through here and there, but tracks were fast and hard. Big thanks to the volunteers and organizing committee for working hard to run these races!” — Michael Somppi (Alberta World Cup Academy/Canadian Development Team)
“Conditions were remarkable, especially considering the challenging weather the Black Jack Ski Club has been dealt. One would hardly know that though skiing the course, unless you look closely and notice all the shoveling marks on the side of the trail.” — Brian Gregg (Team Gregg/Madshus)
“Conditions were much better than I expected, the organizers and groomers did an amazing job making the race happen with tough conditions and the tracks today were great!” — Alysson Marshall (AWCA/National Development Team)
“Conditions today were amazing considering the weather … The race organizers and many volunteers from the town have worked hard to get a good track to make these races happen.” — Andrea Dupont (Rocky Mountain Racers)
“The crew at Black Jack did an amazing job on the course, it was close to perfect considering what they had to work with. The tracks were great, I was very impressed.” — Dahria Beatty (AWCA/National U23 Team)
“The course held together exceptionally well, due to the work of the volunteers and the slightly colder weather that appeared day of.” — Jennie Bender (Bridger Ski Foundation)
Callaghan Valley Cross-Country
Callaghan Valley Cross-Country (CVXC), the host of the second NorAm weekend, isn’t so much a ski club as it is a consortium of four clubs based in the Vancouver/Whistler area: Nordic Racers, Whistler Nordics, Hollyburn Jackrabbits, and Spud Valley Nordic. Squamish Nordic contributes, as do a number of other clubs from the province. For higher-level events, volunteers from other clubs commonly join in, either to add expertise to help the host club earn the event, or gain experience and knowledge so their own club can host similar events in the future.
Scheduled the weekend before the holiday break, CVXC was on track with 85 volunteers with two weeks to go. Snow is rarely a problem at Whistler Olympic Park. In 2010, no provision for snow making was made and the Olympics were held on natural snow despite a seven-week block of rain that ended a week before the Olympics started.
With very little snow and the forecast of the storm earlier this month, the organizing committee had to make a decision to commit, cancel or move the NorAm races with 12 days to go. On decision day, 100 millimetres (4 inches) of rain was forecast for the race venue.
At this point, much of the sponsorship money had been spent, hundreds of volunteer hours had been invested, and teams had booked lodging and flights well in advance.
With heavy rain falling at the venue, few people were surprised when organizers announced they were moving the races to Sovereign Lake in Vernon, B.C.
Once the decision was made, the logistical headache began. The new venue is more than 400-kilometers away, which meant the existing volunteers wouldn’t be sleeping at home. Many of the teams had booked flights leaving Vancouver on Sunday night. With two mountain passes and six-driving hours separating Sovereign from the airport, there wouldn’t be time to hold the planned events on Sunday. Moving the races to Friday and Saturday solved the travel problem, but made the volunteer issue more difficult.
At this level of competition, there are strict rules about roles and responsibilities. The assistant technical delegate, Sharon Clarke, was no longer eligible, as the new host was her home club. Clarke and the chief of competition, Sherryl Yeager, swapped roles before tackling the rest of the changes.
“Having to change the event at such a late date due to weather is heartbreaking,” Yeager, also the CVXC vice chair, explained in an email. “All the work that went into planning, arranging sponsors, maps, courses, setting up run sheets, the race notice, registration, accommodation, food, the website and more is largely of no use.”
Andrew Pohl of the New Zealand Ski Team crossing the line in 15th in the men’s NorAm 30 k freestyle interval start on Dec. 20 at Sovereign Lake, B.C. (Photo: Frances Weeks)
Sovereign Lake Nordic Club
Sovereign Lake is a perennial NorAm host, using trails built for a World Cup event in 2005. The trail system is interconnected with Silver Star Mountain Resort, which leaves most visitors a bit confused. In recent years, the division is simple: race at Sovereign, sleep at Silver Star, ski at both.
Sovereign was hosting a CPL race (one level below Continental Cup) when the possibility of moving the NorAm was raised. With 80 volunteers on site, it was easy for the organizers to quickly find out how many might be available for a potential NorAm and make the commitment to offer the venue.
The shift from Saturday/Sunday to Friday/Saturday was essential for the teams, but difficult for the organizers. More of the CVXC volunteers were unable to help and many of the Sovereign volunteers were unable to get a day off work at short notice.
Without a sprint in the first NorAm weekend of racing, Sovereign’s first day became a classic sprint, requiring another rewrite of the race notice. Ultimately, the merged organizing committee was able to get about 100 volunteers over the two days, including some from neighboring clubs.
Several racers generally viewed the event as a typical NorAm, with more comments on the challenges of heavily falling snow than the logistical obstacles of the event move.
While athletes, coaches, families, and race-day volunteers have moved on, the two organizing committees are sorting out how to share the entry fees and sponsorship money to cover their extra expenses.
The Result
After two weekends and four races, more individuals volunteered than raced. Athletes got crucial early season race time into their legs. Several athletes have positioned themselves to race in Europe later this season.
Was it all worth it? Dahria Beatty, Raphaël Couturier, Annah Hanthorn, and Philippe Boucher pre-qualified for Junior/U23 World Championships in early February in Almaty, and based on his NorAm results, Patrick Stewart-Jones earned his spot at the World Cup sprint in Otepää, Estonia, from Jan. 17-18.
Matt Liebsch (XC United/Team StrongHeart) enjoying the view from the chartered flight he shared with friend Brian Gregg (Team Gregg/Madshus) from Oroville, Wash., to Bozeman, Mont., on Dec. 7. (Courtesy photo)
We know, you’ve been on the edge of your seat since the release of “The Adventures of Gregg and Liebsch: Part I,” and you can’t wait to find out what happened to the two Midwest pals in their quest to qualify for the Olympics. While the rest of the story has yet to be written, we’re happy to pick up where we left off: the plane ride from Washington state to Bozeman, Mont.
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Three hours later, they made it. Aside from an unpaved runway in Oroville, Wash., Matt Liebsch and Brian Gregg described their six-seat chartered flight as the smoothest plane ride they had ever been on. But Gregg’s wife, Caitlin, wasn’t so sure as she waited up for them the night before their SuperTour races.
“Our ground speed was only about 150 knots, but it’s amazing what you can do when you take out the ups and downs and curves in the roads,” Liebsch said on the phone earlier this month.
Had the weather been unfavorable – too windy or altogether too risky to fly – the two would’ve had to drive 575 miles east to Bozeman, a trek they made less than a week earlier in the opposite direction. In an effort to better their FIS profiles, Liebsch and Gregg competed in the first NorAm distance race of the season at Sovereign Lake, British Columbia, 2 ½ hours north of Oroville. They had raced the SuperTour season-openers the week before in West Yellowstone just south of Bozeman.
Brian Gregg in the co-pilot’s seat of a six-seat chartered plane. (Courtesy photo)
Now they were on their way back to Montana to race the next day.
With the plane’s passenger seats pushed down in to fit their skis and oversized duffel bags, Liebsch sprawled out in the back and Gregg sat up front with pilot and friend Monte Catlin as they took off shortly after 8 p.m.
Flying about 9,000 feet above the ground, Liebsch said they could see the mile-high Mount Spokane in the distance. All the while, he had cell service. Knowing that they were going to touch down in Bozeman around 12:30 p.m. – too late for anyone to pick them up – Liebsch called a taxi.
“I had 4G the whole time,” he said. “I didn’t know how we were gonna race the next day. When we landed in Bozeman it was like -17 [degrees].”
Dropped off at the hotel at 1 a.m., Gregg greeted his wife with a knock on her door. She handed them their dinner – Walmart rotisserie chicken, Jasmine rice and homemade applesauce – and nodded off while they ate in the lobby.
“We told her she should try to sleep, but the challenge is, there’s sort of a lot of excitement and I think Caitlin was nervous about the small plane,” Gregg said on the phone.
The next morning on Sunday, Dec. 8, Gregg woke up at 8:30 a.m., “bouncing around,” Liebsch said.
“I was kind of mad,” Liebsch recalled.
With temperatures well below zero, the men’s 15-kilometer classic mass start was delayed until 1 p.m. The women were scheduled to race at noon.
“There was so much adrenaline from the excitement of the flight and having a good race in Silver Star,” Gregg recalled after he placed first and Liebsch was second in the Sovereign Lake 15 k freestyle individual start.
The chartered plane Brian Gregg and Matt Liebsch took to Bozeman, Mont., on Dec. 7. (Courtesy photo)
The two had made the last-minute trip to Bozeman because of their results. They agreed if they went 1-2 in the NorAm, they’d splurge for the $2,100-dollar chartered flight that same day.
The morning after, Gregg said he suffered a bit of an energy crash. The fatigue starting to set in, Liebsch skipped warming up and tested his skis at noon. With two skate races in West Yellowstone followed by another in Canada, he didn’t pack any classic race skis.
“I was going to race in my rock skis,” Liebsch said.
Fortunately, Liebsch is the race services director at Gear West in Long Lake, Minn., and he had his coworkers wax and overnight two of his best classic skis to Bozeman. Once there, Montana State University (MSU) helped Liebsch and the Greggs with race wax.
“It was just crazy that it all worked out,” Liebsch said. “Thinking back, that was nuts.”
To satisfy the legal-racing limit of -4 degrees Fahrenheit, organizers delayed the women’s start delayed to 1:30 p.m., and the men didn’t go off until 2:30. Liebsh couldn’t believe they were actually going to race until he saw the women head out. Frostbitten from similarly cold temperatures the day before, he stayed inside until eight minutes before his race.
Three months ago, Liebsch rolled his ankle in a half-marathon trail run and had relied on Level-1 classic training since. With low expectations for his first classic distance race of the season, he said the first couple kilometers were rough.
“I felt pretty in control the whole classic race and I was pretty content to sit a row or two back from whoever was in the front,” he said. “I didn’t know if the travel or the race before would catch up with me … it was good to sit behind some really good classic skiers, too.”
Frigid temperatures canceled the Bozeman classic sprint the day before, putting Gregg ahead in the overall SuperTour standings. Doing well enough in the classic distance race would solidify his lead for Period 1, which Caitlin led as well on the women’s side.
“Brian was really like, ‘Hey, this opens the door for me to get that overall SuperTour World Cup leader and I’ll get to travel with Caitlin overseas,’ ” Liebsch recalled.
Patrick Johnson (Far West) leads Brian Gregg in the 15 k classic mass start on Dec. 8 in Bozeman, Mont. (Photo: Anya Caldwell Bean)
“We went in with pretty low pressure,” Gregg said. “Our main goal was to be in the main pack, the lead pack.”
“It was nice that we had the fundraiser going, like, ‘Oh man we cant go down there and suck!’ ” Liebsch said. “Even during the race Brian and I would look at each other like, ‘We gotta stay in here.’ It was kind of funny. You just think of all those people that were donating to help you get there.”
With two hills left in the race, Dmitriy Ozerskiy of Central Cross Country (CXC) attacked ahead of Miles Havlik (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation) and Patrick Johnson (Far West) up front. Liebsch searched for an opportunity to pass Johnson on the narrow-and-twisty trail, but without much luck.
“There wasn’t a lot of space to move up and Dmitriy was gone by that point,” he said. “A lot of herringboning the last two big hills and I actually kind of liked that.”
Liebsch finished fourth and Gregg took fifth, 12.8 and 13.5 seconds back from Ozerskiy, who won in 44:47.7. Gregg ended up beating Ozerskiy by 1 point for the overall SuperTour lead and accompanying Period 2 World Cup starts in January.
“We’re both very happy with fourth and fifth, and we’re really lucky MSU stepped up helped us wax both of our skis and Caitlin’s skis,” Gregg said. “It’s kind of a cool story, but it depends on a lot of different clubs that made it possible.”
The Ongoing Journey
A week later, the Greggs were back in British Columbia – this time for the Rossland NorAm – and Liebsch was home in Minnesota with his two kids and wife, who’s expecting their third child in late March/early April.
Liebsch had considered racing the Davos World Cup in Switzerland that weekend, but decided to take a breather and rest up for U.S. nationals Jan. 4-10. He had spoken to the US Ski Team (USST) coaches in October about it, and there was a possibility that as many as three World Cup starts would be open for the men’s distance race in Davos.
“It just got tight on turnaround time and do that international travel right before Christmas and leading up to nationals it didn’t make sense; it was going to cost a lot of money,” Liebsch said.
He reasoned that an international flight with 11 to 13 hours of air-travel time plus another 4 ½ hours on a train would’ve left him “basically worthless” when he arrived three days before the race.
“I’d also be trying to get the body used to that time change,” he said. “It just wasn’t going to set me up or Brian up for a successful result there. If we had really crushed it was West Yellowstone we might have skipped Silver Star and gone over.”
In West Yellowstone, Gregg was second in the 15 k skate race (the first American), and 16th in the skate sprint. Liebsch placed fourth in the 15 k after sitting out the sprint.
“My opportunity for a better FIS point result was going to be in Bozeman,” he explained. “We kind of knew after doing that crazy weekend travel we were going to be blown out. Racing right at that legal [temperature] cutoff, it takes a lot out of the body.”
Team Gregg, with Caitlin (second from l) and Brian (r), and Matt Liebsch (l) in Bozeman, Mont. (Courtesy photo)
And so the two continue the Olympic-qualification dance and weigh their options in the next month leading up to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. In early January, the Greggs will take advantage of World Cup starts immediately after the U.S. nationals 20/30 k distance races on Jan. 8.
“Right now, the plan is that Caitlin will take a 5 o’clock flight after the 20 k … to Prague,” Gregg said. “I’ll stay in Utah and help wrap up things here. I would probably fly the next day or two while we’re trying to work out logistics. I probably won’t do that first weekend in Nove Mesto [Czech Republic].”
The goal is experience and racing overseas as much as possible this season, he said.
“I think you learn so much just being over there,” he said. “Caitlin’s only had five World Cup starts; I got a bunch of starts in 2010 as the Period 4 World Cup leader. I think the more starts, you can get the better. If nationals go well, we’re staying over in Europe as the Period 3 and 4 World Cup leaders. There’s still a lot of work [ahead] … but it’s cool to know that that possible.”
While the Greggs try to turn some heads on the World Cup circuit with top-50 results or better, Liebsch said he’d need to notch a top 15 at a race like Davos in order to crack the top-50 overall World Cup criteria.
“The number one criteria is you’ve got to be ranked in the top 50 overall in the World Cup rankings,” he said of the U.S. Olympic standards. “A lot of women are going to make that criteria.”
The men’s side is a bit more open, he said.
“If I had gotten top 15 at Davos, I would’ve liked to think that would’ve been enough to get discretion done … that’s the number two criteria,” Liebsch explained. “And then the third criteria is looking at the FIS distance and sprint list. They’re gonna name up to a maximum of four sprinters and look at the distance list and fill in the rest of the team with distance guys.”
That’s where he’s hoping his low FIS points, boosted by recent races in Montana and British Columbia, will help. At nationals, Liebsch will focus on the 30 k – just like Gregg – in order to be one of the top picks on the non-USST men’s distance list. That’s why he hasn’t focused on sprinting.
“I didn’t do any sprint racing this year because historically I don’t have that genetic gift of tiger spring,” Liebsch said with a laugh. “If I could win the 30 k skate at nationals, that would be huge. I’ve never really had a bad 50 k skate result … Hopefully [I’m] skating well enough to get the nod for the 4 by 10 [relay at the Olympics].”
With a World Cup top 30 under his belt (in Canmore 2010), he said the USST might consider that. They’ve also waved the discretion limitation; last season only 25 percent of the World Championships picks could be based on discretion. “This year, there’s no such clause,” Liebsch said.
“Last year for world champs, they took five men; I was number six on the list,” he added.
“They’re gonna name the people that make the hard criteria, then they’re going to look at the FIS distance list,” Liebsch explained. “They have that discretionary card in there to see if somebody’s trending upward very rapidly that gives them leeway to put them on the team, or if somebody’s tanking, they can take them off as well, that’s what I think.”
“Brian and I have pretty good FIS profiles,” he continued. “The point opportunities at nationals will be pretty good, so the guys that have a good nationals have a good potential to move up.”
Because of the rolling 12-month FIS profile, Liebsch said he can rely on his best races from last season, which came in the spring.
“If I have a bad [nationals], I’m not going to move backward,” he said. “I want to stay healthy and make sure I have some good solid results. Ideally I’d like to be able to train and peak for February, but if you’re not on the Olympic team, you don’t get that luxury.”
But for now, he was happy to be home.
“It was super special to surprise my kids and get them off the bus,” he said after returning from Bozeman. “It’ll be nice to be at home for the holidays.”
Some of the best photos from last weekend’s NorAm at the Black Jack Ski Club in Rossland, B.C, with freestyle sprints on Dec. 14 followed by 10- and 15-kilometre classic individual starts on Dec. 15. All photos by Shelley Peachell/Peachell Photography.
Heidi Widmer (AWCA/NST) racing in the women’s 1.4 k freestyle sprint at the Black Jack NorAm on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C. Widmer went on to place second overall.
Anne-Marie Comeau of the Pierre-Harvey Training Centre/Canadian National Junior Team racing to second in the junior women’s qualifier.
Graham Nishikawa (NST) on his way to qualifying in 14th at the Black Jack NorAm 1.6 k skate sprint on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C.
Knute Johnsgaard (Yukon Elite) in the men’s 1.6 k freestyle sprint qualifier at the Black Jack NorAm on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C. Johnsgaard qualified in seventh and went on to place sixth overall.
Heidi Widmer (second from r) goes head-to-head with Caitlin Patterson of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (l) and Emily Nishikawa (r). Jennie Bender (not shown) won the heat.
Emily Nishikawa (313) leads Heidi Widmer and Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (301) in the senior women’s A-final 1.4 k skate sprint on Dec. 14 at the Black Jack NorAm in Rossland, B.C.
Emily Nishikawa (l) edges Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (c) and Heidi Widmer (r) in the women’s 1.4 k skate sprint final at the Black Jack NorAm on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C. Widmer was second and Bouffard-Nesbitt placed third. (Photo: Shelley Peachell/Peachell Photography, http://peachellphotography.com/)
NorAm action in Rossland, B.C., last winter: with Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess of the Bend Endurance Academy (101) rounding a corner with Sun Valley’s Miles Havlik (110) and Graeme Killick (121) of the Alberta World Cup Academy/CNST in the Black Jack NorAm 1.6 k skate sprint semifinals on Dec. 15. Blackhorse-von Jess won the semifinal and went on to place fifth in the A-final. Fourth in the semi, Havlick ended up second overall, and Killick placed 12th. (Photo: Shelley Peachell/Peachell Photography, http://peachellphotography.com/)
Peter Kling (APU), Phil Widmer of the AWCA/Canadian National Sr. Team (r) and Ryan Scott of SSCV/Team HomeGrown (l) racing in the quarterfinals of the Black Jack NorAm skate sprint on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C.
Peter Kling (APU), Phil Widmer of the AWCA/Canadian National Sr. Team (r) and Ryan Scott of SSCV/Team HomeGrown (l) racing in the quarterfinals of the Black Jack NorAm skate sprint on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C.
Erik Bjornsen (APU/USST) leads fellow American Sylvan Ellefson of SSCV/Team HomeGrown (r) in the semifinal of the Black Jack NorAm 1.6 k skate sprint on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C. Both advanced to the A-final, where Bjornsen won and Ellefson took fourth.
Junior women’s 1.4 k freestyle sprint at the Black Jack NorAm in Rossland, B.C.
The Black Jack NorAm junior men’s 1.6 k freestyle sprint, including Evan Palmer-Charrette of NDC Thunder Bay (6).
The Black Jack NorAm junior men’s A-final, including Colin Foley of Callaghan Valley and (4) Benjamin Wilkinson-Zan of NDC Thunder Bay (2). Foley ended up fifth behind winner Matthew Saurette (not shown) and Wilkinson-Zan finished sixth.
Emily Nishikawa (c), Heidi Widmer (l) and Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (r) placed first, second and third, respectively, in the Black Jack NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C.
Erik Bjornsen (c), Miles Havlik (second from l), and Graham Nishikawa (second from r) atop the podium in first, second and third, respectively, at the Black Jack NorAm freestyle sprints on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C.
The junior 1.4 women’s podium at the Black Jack NorAm 1 k skate sprint on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C.: (from left to right) runner-up Dahria Beatty (AWCA), winner Katherine Stewart-Jones (Nakkertok), and Anne-Marie Comeau (CNEPH).
U23 podium, with Heidi Widmer (AWCA/CNST) and Erik Bjornsen (APU/USST) after the Black Jack NorAm freestyle sprints on Dec. 14 in Rossland, B.C.
Kate Fitzgerald (APU) striding to a victory in the Black Jack NorAm 10 k classic individual start on Dec. 15 in Rossland, B.C.
Kevin Sandau (AWCA/NST) racing to victory in the NorAm 15 k classic individual start on Dec. 15 in Rossland, B.C.
KateFitzgerald (APU) leads Caitlin Gregg (Team Gregg/Madshus) in the Black Jack NorAm 10 k classic individual start on Dec. 15 in Rossland, B.C. )
Russell Kennedy of the AWCA (177) and Knute Johnsgaard (l) racing in the NorAm 15 k classic on Dec. 15 in Rossland, B.C. Johnsgaard finished 14th and Kennedy placed 31st.
Kevin Sandau (AWCA/NST), racing to a winning time of 42:08.4 in the NorAm 15 k classic individual start on Dec. 15 in Rossland, B.C.
Amanda Ammar (Team Ninja) racing to third in the Black Jack NorAm 10 k classic individual start on Dec. 15 in Rossland, B.C. (Photo: Shelley Peachell/Peachell Photography, http://peachellphotography.com/)
Zoe Roy (Team Ninja) on her way to a fifth-place finish in the Black Jack NorAm 10 k classic on Dec. 15.
Heidi Widmer (AWCA/NST) racing to ninth in the Black Jack NorAm 10 k classic on Dec. 15.
Men’s 15 k classic individual start podium at Black Jack NorAm on Dec. 15 (from l to r): Runner-up Sylvan Ellefson (SSCV/Team HomeGrown), winner Kevin Sandau (AWCA/CNST), Graham Nishikawa (CNST) in third, Erik Bjornsen (APU/USST) in fourth, and Andy Shields (NDC Thunder Bay) in fifth.
Women’s 10 k classic individual start podium at Black Jack NorAm on Dec. 15 (from l to r): Runner-up Emily Nishikawa (AWCA/CNST), winner Kate Fitzgerald (APU), Amanda Ammar (Team Ninja) in third, Caitlin Gregg (Team Gregg/Madshus) in fourth), and Zoe Roy (Team Ninja) in fifth.
Frederique Vezina (CNEPH) was the second junior woman and 11th overall in the Black Jack NorAm 10 k classic on Dec. 15.
Amanda Ammar (Team Ninja) racing to third in the 10 k classic individual start on Dec. 15 in Rossland, B.C. (Photo: Shelley Peachell/Peachell Photography)
In the last big North American races before the holiday break, Kevin Sandau of the Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA) and Canadian National Senior Development Team (NST) and American Kate Fitzgerald of Alaska Pacific University (APU) took top honors on Sunday in the Black Jack NorAm 15- and 10-kilometre classic individual starts in Rossland, B.C.
Kate Fitzgerald (APU) racing to third in the SuperTour 10 k freestyle individual start on Nov. 30 in West Yellowstone, Mont. She won the Black Jack NorAm 10 k classic individual start on Sunday in Rossland, B.C.
On a day marked by warmer temperatures, tough waxing conditions and even tougher race courses, racers had only positive things to say about the quality of the race course and the depth of talented racers in the combined Canadian-American field.
In the women’s 10 k, Fitzgerald gritted out the win in 31:53.7 after feeling “super strong.” In an email, she wrote that her coaches nailed the tricky waxing, and it helped to have a strong skier to race against.
“Caitlin Gregg [Team Gregg/Madshus] started right in front of me and I caught up to her and we skied together the whole race after that,” Fitzgerald wrote. “She was awesome! We pushed each other and it was so much fun to have someone to ski with and work together!”
The women’s SuperTour leader, Gregg ended up fourth, and Canadians Emily Nishikawa (AWCA/NST) and Amanda Ammar (Team Ninja) squeezed in for second and third, respectively. After leading the first of two laps by nearly seven seconds over Fitzgerald, Nishikawa finished 13.9 seconds back in second, and Ammar was another 9.9 seconds back in third. Gregg was 30.3 seconds back in fourth, and Zoe Roy finished 47.1 seconds off the winning pace in fifth.
“There was an extremely strong field of women here this weekend, all of which I highly respect, and who are also in great shape,” Ammar wrote in an email. “I have been consistently getting stronger and stronger in each race. I’m right where I want to be.”
Ammar added that the courses were hard, but doable. “These were the kind of trails I was brought up on,” she explained. “Hard steep climbs, and fun windy technical downhills. I had an absolute blast out there!”
Sandau Edges Ellefson
In the men’s 15 k, Sandau echoed the sentiments of the women, adding that it was nice to have warmer-racing temperatures compared to the frigidity of last weekend’s opening NorAm at Sovereign Lake. Although he dealt with some icing on his skis, Sandau did his best to maintain efficiency and came out on top in 42:08.4.
Kevin Sandau (AWCA/NST) racing to victory in the NorAm 15 k classic individual start on Dec. 15 in Rossland, B.C. (Photo: Shelley Peachell/Peachell Photography)
“I’m pretty happy with [Sunday’s] result,” he wrote. “It’s just how I wanted [to] end things going into the holiday break before Olympic trials.”
Sylvan Ellefson (Ski & Snowboard Club Vail/Team HomeGrown) ended up second, just 3.2 seconds behind Sandau, and Graham Nishikawa rounded out the podium in third (+33.2), for his third top-three in over just two NorAm weekends. US Ski Team member Erik Bjornsen (APU) placed fourth (+44.3) and Andy Shields (NDC Thunder Bay) was fifth (+56.0).
Ellefson was also satisfied with his race. In an email, he explained that despite feeling pretty tired midway through the race, he was able to dig deep to pull out a solid race.
“The last 2k had to be the fastest 2k of my life,” Ellefson wrote. “I’m very happy with my results from the weekend and these results definitely help the confidence going into US Nationals in 3 weeks.
“The courses here are amazing,” he added. “Amazingly hard, amazing beautiful. Whoever crafted them was a genius because any kids coming out of that Black Jack program can probably ski anywhere after running those courses. Technical and fun, almost seems like a downhill biker designed them. Up there with the hardest course I have ever skied without a doubt.”
He was right on.
Ethan Meginnes, co-owner of Joyride Bike Parks, wrote in an email that he helped construct the Black Jack course.
“We build the course for the Red Bull Joyride slope style comp at Whistler as well as many other downhill bike trails,” he explained. “Dave Wood, Al Fisher and myself were the primary volunteer supervising the course build with a local contractor, Ed Mayer.”
After this weekend, most of the racers on the circuit are dispersing for the holidays, quality time with friends and family, and local citizens’ races until the recommencement of racing January 8-12 in Canmore, Alberta.
Kikkan Randall and Marit Bjørgen’s photo finish in Sunday’s Sprint in Davos, Switzerland. Bjørgen won it by a hair. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
Extraordinary performances are becoming ordinary for the North American contingent this year as new stars emerge, historic results accumulate, and expectations continue to grow.
FasterSkier was on site in Davos, Switzerland, where five USST members raced to the top 30 in Saturday’s distance races. Kikkan Randall placed 18th in the women’s 15 k, followed by Liz Stephen in 20th, Holly Brooks in 25th, and Jessie Diggins in 30th. Noah Hoffman was 25th in the men’s 30 k.
Sunday’s Skate sprints brought even more excitement for the U.S. team with Randall skiing to a hard fought second place against powerhouse Marit Bjørgen. Sophie Caldwell, in a breakout performance, reached the World Cup semifinals and cracked the top ten with her ninth place finish. Diggins and Sadie Bjornsen, who both suffered falls, were 12th and 27th.
On the men’s side Simi Hamilton and Andy Newel advanced to the quarterfinals and finished in 14th and 17th.
The Canadian women jumping for joy after notching Biathlon Canada’s best-ever relay result of fourth. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/Matthias Ahrens)
North America shined in the IBU World Cup with the Canadian women’s relay team taking a historic fourth-place finish in the 4 x 6 k relay. The success continued throughout the weekend with four Canadian women qualifying for the pursuit, and Rosanna Crawford ultimately finishing 19th.
On the men’s side Canadian Nathan Smith finished 16th in the 10 k sprint and was followed by Americans Tim Burke in 28th and Lowell Bailey in 35th. In the 12.5 k pursuit Smith impressed again with an eighth-place finish. He was followed by Bailey and Burke in 15th and 16th.
The action didn’t stop there with historic results from U.S. Nordic Combined. In Ramsau, Austria, Bryan Fletcher and Todd Lodwick skied the fastest combined time in the 2 x 7.5 k team sprint to place fourth, the best-ever result for the U.S. in the two-man event.
In Sunday’s individual 10 k competition, Fletcher and Billy Demong cracked the top ten by placing seventh and ninth.
With all the success happening across the pond it’s easy to forget that North America had some races of its own this weekend. Rossland, B.C. hosted the second set of NorAm races where Erik Bjornsen and Emily Nishikawa triumphed in the sprint, and Kate Fitzgerald and Kevin Sandau won Sunday’s 10 and 15 k.
The IPC World Cup also took place in Canmore, Alberta, with several North American standouts. Canadian Brian McKeever won the 10 k on the opening day and churned out another winning performance in the 20 k classic race. American Oksana Masters placed third in the women’s sit-ski 5 k and fourth in the 0.75 k sprint.
Norway’s Anders Gløersen celebrates his sprint win as he crosses the finish line in Davos. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
Cross-Country World Cup, Davos, Switzerland (Results)
Emily Nishikawa (AWCA/NST) halfway through her 10 k freestyle race on Dec. 7, in which she placed fifth at the NorAm opener at Sovereign Lake, B.C. The next day, she was third in the classic sprint there.
Saturday’s NorAm freestyle sprints at the Black Jack Ski Club delivered an exciting day of racing, with crashes, tactic changes between rounds, and photo finishes in Rossland, B.C.
Emily Nishikawa of the Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA) and Canadian National Senior Team (NST) won the women’s 1.4-kilometre A-final by 0.22 seconds in 3:21.29, and teammate Heidi Widmer edged Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (Laurentides) in a photo finish for second.
The Americans rounded out the rest of the A-final with Caitlin Patterson (Craftsbury Green Racing Project) in fourth, Jennie Bender (Bridger Ski Foundation) in fifth and Caitlin Gregg (Team Gregg/Madshus) in sixth. After crossing the line in fourth, a jury decision bumped Gregg to sixth after she collided with Bender in the finishing straight. Bender went down; Gregg did not.
“I was relegated to 6th place and I deserved it,” Gregg wrote in an email.
The women’s final was considerably faster than qualification, with qualifier winner Bouffard-Nesbitt taking five seconds off her qualification time of 3:26.26.
In an email, Nishikawa wrote that she “got off to a slower start in the qualifier, but I felt much better throughout the heats.”
She was happy with her day and the way the season is starting, a noticeable upgrade from one week earlier when she said she was “looking forward to some more races” to show what her training had accomplished.
The women’s heats were closer and more tactical than the previous NorAm at Sovereign Lake.
“Most of the heats were really tight,” Nishikawa wrote. “With a fast finish stretch I barely squeaked into the final!”
American Caitlin Gregg (Team Gregg/Madshus) kicked off the final the same way she won both her heats, trying to drop the group on the opening climb. “This [tactic] worked well until the final when Emily and the other ladies could stay with me,” Gregg wrote. “Emily had an incredible surge up the steepest hill on the course and took the lead from there on out. It was impressive!”
Widmer used the same tactics as Gregg to win her quarter, but “barely squeaked into the final because the others came up so quickly in the finish” of her semifinal.
Widmer and Nishikawa finished 0.04 seconds apart in their semifinal to take the lucky loser spots, relegating Alysson Marshall to the B-final by 0.2 seconds.
Bouffard-Nesbitt tried to hang back in the final.
“After the ‘S’ turn I was carrying a lot more speed than the person ahead of me,” she wrote in an email. “But had Emily and Heidi coming up on my right so I had no choice but try to squeeze by on the left.”
She pushed the last corner to work her way up to the photo finish for second. She was happy with her result and first qualification win.
“I learned a lot today though!” she added.
Bjornsen Nabs First Win of the Season
Erik Bjornsen (APU/USST) leads Peter Hegman (Craftsbury) during the SuperTour 15 k skate on Dec. 1 in West Yellowstone, Mont. Bjornsen went on to place 11th in the event.
In the men’s 1.6 k skate sprint, Erik Bjornsen of Alaska Pacific University (APU) and the US Ski Team (USST) changed his tactics to come out on top in the A-final in 3:37.53, 0.19 seconds ahead of fellow American Miles Havlick of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) in second.
Only two Canadians advanced to the final, including Graham Nishikawa (NST), who placed third. Sylvan Ellefson (SSCV/Team HomeGrown) finished fourth, Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess (Bend Endurance Academy) was fifth, and Knute Johnsgaard (Yukon Elite) placed sixth.
“In the quarters I thought I could go out and control the race,” Bjornsen wrote. “But I quickly learned my lesson when I got out sprinted by two people in the finishing lanes.”
After getting “lucky” in the semi “when two Canadians went down,” Bjornsen advanced to the final.
“I stayed comfortable, kicked hard over the tops of hills, and prepared myself for the final sprint,” he explained. “When I made the move past Dakota and Miles in the finish I could see the win, I was just a happy little bear.”
In his first year with the SVSEF Gold Team, Havlick was “psyched” by his second place.
“As a junior, I used to be a pretty strong sprinter but after 4 years of NCAA skiing (without sprinting), it has been tricky finding that next gear again,” he wrote. “But today, it felt like it was back.
“The courses today were tough and like 2 weeks ago [at the SuperTour] in West Yellowstone, offered few opportunities to pass after the start,” Havlick added. “I wanted to be aggressive and get out early and keep the pedal down from there.”
Nishikawa was happy with third. “I felt better throughout the heats so that was positive and the main goal of the day,” he wrote.
Like a number of the more experienced Canadians who have been describing the NorAm races in terms of process rather than results, his focus appears to be locked on Sochi.
Johnsgaard was frustrated by the tactical choices that put him sixth in the A-final. Coming into the final 100 metres, he “tucked in behind Miles and Dakota, but the guys behind us really worked the downhill and swallowed us up.
“I was mad at myself for letting up on the last downhill because I thought I could get on the podium today for the first time,” he wrote.
At 21, he is determined to get to U23 World Championships and needed more to break AWCA member Patrick Stewart-Jones’ grip on the top spot. Based on the first two NorAm weekends, one Canadian male and one female will be pre-selected for U23s.
After winning his quarterfinal, Michael Somppi (AWCA/NST) crashed in the semifinal, which didn’t remedy his frustrations with his early season races. He ended up eighth overall behind Stewart-Jones in seventh.
“I tried to start strong in my heats and set a hard pace on the first climb,” Somppi wrote. “It’s really the only place on the course you could make people’s legs burn. The rest of the course was fast and twisty so passing was difficult.”
This tactic “worked for me in my quarter-final heat and was working in my semi-final as I was skiing in second place before I crashed,” he explained.
“You often need a little luck on your side in sprint racing and today I didn’t have a horseshoe,” Somppi concluded.
There are a number of racers who might agree with that.
Dave Wood, Alison and their two Cocker Spaniels (Courtesy photo)
Several weeks ago, I received an email from Dave Wood, a longtime head coach of the Canadian National Ski Team. He had just arrived in my hometown of Mammoth Lakes, Calif., with a small group of athletes from Black Jack Ski Club in Rossland, B.C. We planned a rendezvous to catch up and to chat about the local training hot spots.
It had been a few years since Wood had been in Mammoth with skiers. Back around 2003 or 2004, during his tenure as Canada’s national-team head coach, he had discovered this high-altitude training location through an online search and some U.S. distance running links. A reconnaissance to the area gave him all the information he needed: a “live high and train high or low” scenario with great fall weather and miles of trails and open roads.
Dave Wood during a recent altitude dryland camp in Mammoth Lakes, Calif.
For several subsequent falls, Wood and his national team left their home base in Canmore, Alberta, for three weeks of high-altitude sunshine in the Eastern Sierra. Now, Wood was back, this time with a few dedicated athletes from Black Jack, of which he had been the head coach since 2010.
The Black Jack camp format was similar to the national-team camps he ran in Mammoth years before. Condominium living at just over 8,000 feet gave athletes rollerskiing options right out the door, with single-track running trails not too far away. Proximity to the town of Mammoth Lakes offered a fitness club, grocery store, and some rest day “in-town” opportunities were just a short bike ride away.
As Wood explained over coffee, the beauty of coming to Mammoth was the convenience of being able to stay in town and drive 40 minutes down to 4,000 feet for intensity training. He raved about the “exceptional rollerskiing,” where on one lonely road leading to Nevada, his athletes saw only a handful of cars during an over-distance rollerski workout.
I had hoped to join Wood and his Black Jack skiers for several workouts, but managed just one: a long run in Lower Rock Creek. Wood had to leave town for a couple of days, so he enlisted me to take the athletes to a nearby trailhead for their run over Duck Pass. Several inches of snow overnight jammed up that idea, so I drove down the hill with the guys and Chisa Obayashi, a Japanese skier who has been training under Wood’s supervision the past few months. I had in mind beginning the run out of the snow zone at the Paradise trailhead, just north of Bishop, Calif.
The Black Jack Ski Club, with head coach Dave Wood, while hiking Mount Assiniboine on the Great Divide on the British Columbia/Alberta border in August 2011. (Photo: Dave Wood)
Tagging along on the run through towering Jeffrey pines and golden aspens, I was able to learn a little bit about the Black Jack athletes. David Palmer and Colin Ferrie, accomplished junior skiers, are heading into their first year as seniors. They, along with teammate Julien Locke, who missed the trip due to an injury, are among the best in their age group in Canada. They have had solid training all summer including a trip to get on snow at the Haig Glacier. Following their Mammoth camp, they will be heading to Canmore for some time on Frozen Thunder.
An adopted Black Jack skier, Obayashi made the trip down to Mammoth with the men’s team and was also planning to join them after in Canmore, where she would get some snow kilometers before going to Finland for the start of the racing season. Obayashi connected with Wood through her manager in Japan and had only positive things to say about her training experience in North America, she told me as we ran on the Lower Rock Creek trail.
The kind of individualized coaching she was receiving from Wood was hard to come by in Japan. She had no regular training group in Japan, so the opportunity to train with Black Jack was setting her up well for her quest to make the Japanese Olympic Team.
Chief, Cook and Bottle Washer
A few days later, I met up with Wood again for lunch. He pulled up in the team van on time, but appeared a bit flustered. Dressed in running clothes, he explained that he had dropped off his group over in June Lake to do a three-hour, point-to-point run. He then drove to the termination of the run, parked and began to run the trail in to meet the athletes. They ended up missing a key turn and added nearly an hour to their run. Wood shook his head, muttering something about knuckleheads, but it was hard for Wood to disguise his pride in his skiers.
The soft-spoken 58-year-old Wood is unflappable, handling his role as “chief, cook and bottle washer” for Black Jack in his customary professional manner. He uses the same thorough and systematic system to train his club skiers as he did to build a solid Canadian team. Wood uses the Mammoth camp as an altitude block is based on science, experience and much thought. There is even a short recovery phase when the athletes pack up and go down to 4,000 feet to sleep.
Dave Wood at the 2010 Olympics in Callaghan Valley, British Columbia. (Courtesy photo)
Four years after resigning from his position at Cross Country Canada following the 2010 Olympics, Wood seems to have landed on his feet. As he explained it, after 18 years with CCC, holding positions as head wax technician, head coach and team leader, it was time to move on. He described his transition without a trace of rancor. In fact, the move to Rossland seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
After eight years of commuting from Canmore to Rossland to see his girlfriend (about a 6 ½-hour drive in good weather), Wood saw his exit from CCC as the perfect opportunity to move in with Alison, an operating-room nurse at a local hospital. At the same time, Black Jack was looking for a head coach, so Wood felt the timing was perfect.
Black Jack is a well-established nordic club with over 700 members. It offers programs for 4 year olds to masters, with a small, but active racing program. Ski Academy opportunities are available for Black Jack skiers, as well as for the local alpine program, Red Mountain Racers.
With about 3,500 residents, Rossland is nestled in the Monashee Mountains of the West Kootenay region at an elevation of 3,410 feet. Winter sports are a big deal there, which usually has skiing from early November through late April. Red Mountain Resort boasts an average 300 inches of snowfall per year and the Black Jack trail system features 40 kilometers of groomed track, a lighted loop, a kids terrain park, and a biathlon range. An extensive mountain-bike park offers single track riding and running during the summer, making Rossland an ideal home for a nordic skier.
Wood’s approach to ski racing is simple. He believes the bottom line is using the training to become faster.
“You can’t improve by just going to Europe to race,” he said. “You have to figure out a way to cut 45 seconds over 15 kilometers before going.”
He likes to keep travel to a minimum during the training phase in order to accomplish goals. There are so many training and racing opportunities out there for skiers, but it’s easy to lose sight of what you are really after, which can boil down to those 45 seconds.
Thoughts from a Former Coach
While Wood has been busy with Black Jack the past several years, he’s kept an eye on what is happening at the national level in Canada. Coaching the nation’s top skiers through CCC gave him perspective on his job as a club coach, which notably has different viewpoints and team structure than the nation’s four training centres. There is a lot of training, racing and experience necessary to bridge the gap from club to national-team skier and even more to move into the international realm.
Wood’s approach to ski racing is simple. He believes the bottom line is using the training to become faster.
On the state of skiing in Canada, Wood has definite concerns. He recognizes the success of the women’s team in recent years, with medal performances by Beckie Scott, Sara Renner and Chandra Crawford, and a men’s team highlighted by Devon Kershaw’s overall second place in the 2012 World Cup, and Kershaw and Alex Harvey’s sprint championship title at the 2011 World Championships. The problem CCC faces is a lack of depth in its program, he said.
Wood sees the potential for Canadian success at Sochi in the sprint and team sprint. On the Canada’s stated goal of winning two medals, Wood said, “You have to ski the race before you win the medal.”
While Harvey is a proven racer, Kershaw has to have a better year than last year for any of this to happen, he said. Wood sees lack of depth on the women’s side as a liability, as well as problems with the Olympic qualification system. It’s difficult to compete against teams like Russia, Norway and Sweden that have large pools of athletes racing at a high level. Those countries can play with putting athletes with fresh legs out in every race.
One of the underlying problems he sees within the Canadian system is that all of the funding is at the World Cup level. He estimates that what was CCC’s $180,000 dollar budget in 1999 is probably now close to a $2-million dollar budget. Development is left up to the four training centres. While these centres are nationally funded, Wood said there’s a lack of a coaching system, resulting in inexperienced coaches.
In his opinion, the biggest hurdle for athletes taking part in the training centres is the cost. At a given training centre, he estimated $12,000 Canadian dollars covers a year of coaching and four weekends of racing, but by the time the racing season is over, participants doll out $20,000 to $30,000 annually. Sponsorships are difficult to come by and jobs are low-paying in the training centre locales. Wood isn’t sure enough athletes are going through the system to build the kind of depth CCC needs to become an international power.
Adding to the situation is the lack of skier development opportunity through the Canadian universities, he said. Lots of junior athletes are dropping out of the sport at 18 years old to get an education.
Wood is confident that what he is providing at Black Jack is an affordable, high-quality program for juniors and seniors to help make the jump to the international level. A lot of money is spent on Integrated Sports Teams at the national training centres, he said. Besides the expense of these doctors, trainers, massage therapists, etc., is the cost of waxing and equipment.
“Cut down on this nonsense, and it would be affordable,” Wood said.
Wood keeps expenses down for his athletes by, once again, keeping things simple. He keeps his wax box stocked with a minimum of wax brands, and while not denying that wax technology is a major element of ski racing, he said it helps to remember what the race really comes down to.
“Cut down on this nonsense, and it would be affordable.”
After the Mammoth camp, Wood and the Black Jack skiers planned to head back to Rossland for a short break. Wood had a few days of downtime with Alison and their two Cocker Spaniels, then was due in Canmore for an on-snow camp at Frozen Thunder.
The schedule in November is dedicated to snow camps in Vernon and Rossland, with racing kicking off at December NorAms in the same locations. Things ramp up in January for the Black Jack skiers, with a NorAm in Canmore, the qualifier for Olympics, U23, and Junior World competitions. The remainder of the season sees the team criss-crossing Canada attending Eastern and Western Canadian Championships, and Canadian Championships in Newfoundland in March. The season concludes with March BC provincial events.
Sam Tarling on the Slickrock Trail in Moab, Utah, in mid October, where he went to "unwind" after training with APU, CXC and the U.S. Ski Team in Park City. "It ended up not being as good a recovery because I was so excited," Tarling said. "(I) just started hammering around on my bike. I'm not a good biker, but I was trying really hard to keep up with Chelsea Holmes (SVSEF), so I got pretty banged up." Photo by Evan Martell.
Note: This article has been updated.
Peering up at a sign inside a pizza joint in Colville, Wash., Sam Tarling saw an opportunity. Like so many other spontaneous offers 21-year-old Dartmouth College racer seized to get out West, Tarling jumped at the chance to eat for money.
With an evening to kill and a stomach of steel, Tarling reasoned he couldn’t lose. The defending NCAA 10-k champion trumped similar challenges in the past.
Three quarters of the way through the seven-pound pizza less than an hour later, Tarling rethought his decision.
“I sort of did it on a full stomach,” he said almost two weeks after during an interview in Rossland, British Columbia.
He had already ordered a different meal when several Bridger Ski Foundation (BSF) juniors dared him to get the pizza. If he finished the seven-pounder, the restaurant would eat the cost and give him $100 dollars and another pizza for free.
“I’m a total sucker for eating challenges,” the 6-foot-2 college junior said. “I was probably a little too confident going in.”
The pizza proved too mighty. Tarling got sick and paid for the pie.
“It had every topping on it and was a little undercooked and … was a little too doughy and sloppy for me,” he said. “Instead of paying for half of the cost of the trip to Canada, I ended up losing like a quarter of it.”
That was Tarling’s life in a nutshell — at least for the last three or so months.
Tarling’s Fall Travels:
1. Middlebury (late August/early September, stayed with Chase Marston, trained in Craftsbury)
2. Lake Placid, N.Y. ( 10 days in mid September for U.S. Ski Team camp, also trained with CGRP)
3. Sun Valley, Idaho (11 days with Burke Mountain Academy, also trained with SVSEF)
4. Park City, Utah (14 days in October for USST camp, trained with APU and CXC)
5. Moab, Utah (3 days, mountain biking with SVSEF)
6. Vail, Colo. (1 month with Ski Club Vail and Team Homegrown)
7. West Yellowstone, Mont. (10 days, SuperTour opener)
8. Bozeman, Mont. (1 week with Green Mountain Valley School and BSF)
9. Silver Star, British Columbia (1 week, BSF)
10. Rossland, B.C. (5 days, BSF)
11. Bozeman (1 night then flew home to Portland, Maine)
Since late August when he wrapped up finals and left Hanover, N.H., Tarling had been on the road training and racing independently for Dartmouth. While he chose a similar route last year as a sophomore, taking the fall semester off and attending classes in winter and spring, Tarling has been more places and slept on more couches than expected.
His travel-intense schedule — starting in Middlebury, Vt., and ending in Canada — wasn’t entirely unplanned, Tarling said. It wasn’t exactly organized, either.
“I haven’t really told many people about my plans because I know what’s going to be good for me,” he said. “On paper, it might not look like the best plan to be traveling around, but most of this sport, to me, is mental.
“As long as I’m happy and eager to go training, I’m going to train my best,” he added.
While watching football with friends during his last night in Bozeman, Mont., Tarling considered extending his trip. Sun Valley racer Mike Sinnott, Team Homegrown’s Sylvan Ellefson and the Bridger crew were all headed to Silver Star, British Columbia. They suggested Tarling come, too.
Tarling called up his Dartmouth coach, Ruff Patterson, who said the team would rollerski in Hanover rather than travel to Mont-Sainte-Anne, Quebec, for its annual camp. There was no natural snow back east.
“That was kind of a deal breaker right there,” Tarling said. “I called up the airline and luckily there was another flight that mimicked my flight pattern exactly two weeks later, same flight and no extra fees or anything, so that was an easy decision.”
The next day, he hopped in one of the BSF vans and started chatting with head coach Dragan Danevski. They decided to work out the financial details later and chatted about the Bridger program in the meantime.
After two nights on the road — one of which the pizza scarred — Tarling found himself in western Canada without a place to stay a few days before the NorAm races at Sovereign Lake. Upon hastily planning the trip, BSF athlete Leif Zimmermann suggested his friends in Silver Star might have an extra room, Tarling said. They didn’t.
“I found a nice little couch in the BSF house that I could put my stuff down and sleep on,” Tarling said. “But it was kind of like my head up on the arm and my feet were up on the end.”
He slept in his first bed in nearly a month in Rossland, where Tarling ended up by default when there wasn’t enough room in the BSF van back to Bozeman.
Since September, Tarling had bounced around seven states and provinces, joining the U.S. Ski Team in Lake Placid, N.Y., and Park City, Utah, and working out with teams like the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) in Idaho and Team Homegrown in Vail, Colo.
He spent three days mountain biking in Moab, Utah, camping in the dirt outside a friend’s house because there wasn’t enough room inside, and lived at 8,000 feet (nearly 2,500 meters) in Vail for a month before first racing in West Yellowstone, Mont.
Conor Wallace (l) and Sam Tarling (r) during bounding intervals in Vail, Colo., in November. Photo by Sylvan Ellefson
The idea was to get in as much training as possible before his college season started at U.S. Nationals in Rumford, Maine, Jan. 2-8. With about two years left before he graduates college — most likely with a degree in environmental studies and/or geography — Tarling figured it was a good time to check out ski programs as well.
“I didn’t really plan this to be like a review of all the clubs, but it just sort of worked out that way,” he said.
Most were extremely accommodating, he said. While staying with a friend in Middlebury, Tarling trained with the Craftsbury Green Racing Project in northern Vermont. His next stop was Lake Placid, after USST development coach Pete Vordenberg invited him to join as many national team camps as he could.
Tarling looked at his school schedule and training goals, and found a way to make two of them. He worked the rest of his fall travel around that.
Based mostly out of the east last year, Tarling rode around with the Maine Winter Sports Center. He similarly spent most of the preseason on the road, but occasionally stopped to visit his parents in Maine.
This year, he made it home to Cumberland for one night after Lake Placid. He spent the summer at school and went to Maine once in August for a few nights while sick with a stress- and sinusitis-induced migraine. That was an isolated incident, he said, which hadn’t happened since.
Asked about the wear of nearly four months of travel and several nights on futons, Tarling responded, “My neck kind of hurts.”
“This is definitely the first time that I’ve been on the road and not had a definitive plan of where I’m going to be sleeping that night or what I’m going to be eating,” he said. “It’s kind of like an adventure.”
For Tarling, that’s what made the fall so fun. Sure, he ran out of money in Canada after only budgeting through the West Yellowstone races in late November. But he valued experiences like training with the Alaska Pacific University (APU) and Central Cross Country (CXC) teams while in Park City. He learned more about a rival of his alma mater (Burke Mountain Academy) when the Green Mountain Valley School let him sleep on its couch in Bozeman.
“Things fell into place and I was really fortunate,” Tarling said. “I wouldn’t have been able to do any of my fall without support from friends and coaches.”
He also credited his parents and the New England Nordic Ski Association for helping support him financially. Last summer, he saved as much as possible while instructing sailing in Enfield, N.H., and tutoring for his main classes and French on the side. He acknowledged his work wasn’t the most profitable.
“I made as much money as I could without impacting my training at all,” Tarling said, explaining his goal to increase training hours by 10 percent yearly. By the time he graduates college, he hopes to be at the competitive range of 800-900 hours.
“Obviously, my biggest sponsor is my parents,” he added. “I’m totally dependent on whatever they’re willing to support me with.”
Upon leaving the east for Sun Valley in late September, he brought the emergency credit card his parents gave him in case of emergency. That could entail anything from a much-needed meal to a flight change, Tarling said.
On his last night in Rossland, where Tarling did not race but rather helped the BSF support its lone racer there in Zimmermann, Tarling said he was out of money and ready to get home. He hadn’t anticipated the costs of NorAm race fees in Silver Star and the race support, lodging and food that came with it.
He had kept receipts and hoped Dartmouth would have something left in its budget at the end of the season to pay some of his race fees. If nothing else, Tarling would know how much to anticipate spending in the future.
Ready for some rest before giving his all at nationals, Tarling said his fall had gone as well as he could have imagined.
“I have nine starts already and usually by this time, I have two or six if I’m lucky,” he said. “I definitely have a little bit more of a restless personality so when I get into a program where I’m just stuck in the same place for a long time, I really want to mix it up and get out of it and do something else. This fall has been really easy that way for me.”
For that, he was grateful for Patterson’s flexibility and Dartmouth’s academic D-plan that allowed him to take the fall off. His parents as skiers also understood what he was doing, but tried not to get overly involved, Tarling said.
“I really appreciate that they’ve sort of been able to step back a bit and let me develop as a skier in my own way,” he said.
Six days before Christmas, Tarling took a series of three flights to get to Portland, Maine. There, his mother picked saw him for the first time since September, one bag lighter. On his second stopover, he discovered the airline lost his gate-checked bag and the four pairs of ski boots, two pairs of running shoes, wax kit and training jackets in it.
He went home for the night, and two days later, left for Craftsbury to get on snow. Back with his parents for the holiday weekend, Tarling wrote in an email that the airline returned his bag on Christmas Eve.
Happy to have his hats, gloves, headbands and Buffs in place, Tarling went back to Craftsbury on Monday for a time trial on Tuesday.
“I gotta find snow,” Tarling said. “It’s not that I hate Christmas or anything, it comes at the total wrong time. I want to be focused on tapering and prepping for nationals and getting on snow as much as possible, and then I have to, like, go home and eat cookies and … go to all these dinner parties and stuff like that, be social.
Photos from the NorAm Teck freestyle sprints in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011.
The men’s podium at the Haywood NorAm Teck Sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. From left to right: Michael Somppi (fourth place), Brent McMurtry (second), Jesse Cockney (first), Kevin Sandau (third), Harry Seaton (fifth).
The women’s podium from the Haywood NorAm Teck Sprints on Dec. 17, 2011, in Rossland, British Columbia. From left to right: Heidi Widmer (fifth place), Alysson Marshall (second), Jessie Diggins (first), Jennie Bender (third), Andrea Dupont (fourth).
Jessie Diggins (CXC) in the NorAm leader’s jersey during the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifiers at Black Jack Ski Club in Rossland, British Columbia, Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Andrea Dupont (RMR) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Alysson Marshall (AWCA) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Rebecca Reid (AWCA) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Janelle Greer (AWCA) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Kate Brennan (AWCA) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Dahria Beatty (Yukon Ski Team) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Alana Thomas (Nakkertok) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Camille Pepin (CNEPH) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Sara Hewitt (CXC) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Cynthia Clark (RMR) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Zoe Roy (Stella Racing) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Annika Hicks (AWCA) racing last December; today, she led the Canadian team at U23 World Championships by placing 32nd in the 15 k skiathlon. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Jesse Cockney (AWCA) followed by Raphael Couturier (CNEPH) and Thomsen D Hont (RMR) in the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint quarterfinal in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Jesse Cockney (AWCA) followed by Raphael Couturier (CNEPH) and Thomsen D Hont (RMR) in the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint quarterfinal in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Joey Burton (AWCA) in the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint quarterfinal in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Kevin Sandau in bib No. 4 (AWCA) followed by No. 7 Kurtis Wenzel (RMR) and No. 14 Sam Naney (Methow) in the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint quarterfinal in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Kevin Sandau in bib No. 4 (AWCA) followed closely by No. 7 Kurtis Wenzel (RMR) and No. 14 Sam Naney (Methow) in the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint quarterfinal in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Brent McMurtry (CNEPH) in the NorAm leader’s bib followed by No. 6 Harry Seaton (NDC) and No. 15 Russell Kennedy (Canmore) in the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint quarterfinal in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Michael Somppi (NDC) skates alone after escaping a crash in the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint quarterfinal in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
No. 8 Graeme Killick (AWCA) leads a pack of racers including No. 3 Frederic Touchette (CNEPH), No. 13 Andy Shields (NDC) and No. 18 Gerrard Garnier (AWCA) in the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint quarterfinal in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Jessie Diggins (CXC) ahead of the pack in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint heats in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Jessie Diggins (CXC) ahead of the pack in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint heats in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Kate Brennan (AWCA) leads a pack in a NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint heat in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Alysson Marshall (AWCA) followed by Evelyn Dong (Stella Racing) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint heats in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Heidi Widmer (AWCA) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint heats in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Sara Hewitt (CXC) followed by Isabella Smith (Bend) in a NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint heat in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Cynthia Clark (RMR) in a NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint heat in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Alana Thomas (Nakkertok) followed by Marlis Kromm (AWCA) in a NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint heat in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. Thomas went on to place 10th overall. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Jesse Cockney (AWCA) leads Brent McMurtry (CNEPH) in a NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint heat in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Kevin Sandau rounds a sharp corner in a NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint heat in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Frederic Touchette (CNEPH) in a NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint heat in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Michael Somppi (NDC) in a NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint heat in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Alysson Marshall (AWCA) in a NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint heat in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Jesse Cockey (AWCA) looks back during the final stretch to the finish of the men’s ‘A’ final of the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. Directly behind in green, Brent McMurtry (CNEPH) was second, Kevin Sandau (right, AWCA) was third and Michael Somppi (left, NDC) was fourth. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Jesse Cockey leads the men’s ‘A’ final to the finish in the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. At left, Michael Somppi (NDC) was fourth, Brent McMurtry (behind, AWCA) was second, and Kevin Sandau (right, AWCA) was third. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Kevin Sandau (AWCA) after finishing a career-best third in the men’s ‘A’ final of the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Micheal Somppi (NDC) after finishing fourth in the men’s ‘A’ final of the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Winner Jesse Cockney (r) congratulates AWCA teammate Kevin Sandau, who placed third in the men’s ‘A’ final of the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Winner Jesse Cockney (r) hugs AWCA teammate Kevin Sandau, who placed third in the men’s ‘A’ final of the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Winner Jesse Cockney (r) congratulates Brent McMurtry (CNEPH), who placed second in the men’s ‘A’ final of the NorAm 1.6 k freestyle sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Jessie Diggins (CXC) en route to winning the women’s ‘A’ final of the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
Jennie Bender (CXC) at the finish line places third to Alysson Marshall (left, not pictured, AWCA) in the NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint ‘A’ final in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. Andrea Dupont (right, RMR) was fourth. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
AWCA teammates Heidi Widmer (l) and Marlis Kromm (r) place a respective fifth and sixth in the women’s NorAm 1.4 k freestyle sprint ‘A’ final in Rossland, British Columbia, on Dec. 17, 2011. (Photo by Dan Roycroft/AWCA)
After completing the second weekend of NorAm Cup series in Canada, some of Sunday’s top racers talked about their start to the season and what they’re looking forward to in the new year.
From Rossland, British Columbia, where the Black Jack Ski Club hosted two days of freestyle events with sprints on Saturday and a 10/15 k mass start on Sunday.
Head coach Eric Bailey consults with Thunder Bay National Development Centre skiers while they test skis on Friday at Black Jack Ski Club in Rossland, British Columbia.
ROSSLAND, British Columbia — The thing about competitive ski racing is, one has to be prepared for the unexpected.
It’s not as if Jack Carlyle, a junior racer for Thunder Bay’s national development center (NDC), could have anticipated his bags would be stolen in the 15 minutes they were outside his house, but he dealt with it.
NDC head coach Eric Bailey, who was supposed to drive him to the airport, told Carlyle to sit tight and work with former NDC skiers to round up equipment. Two days after he was scheduled to leave, Carlyle flew out of Thunder Bay, Ontario, to compete in the first set of NorAm races in British Columbia.
A week later, the 18-year-old was still using a borrowed fleet of skis, clothing and gear, and feeling good about racing in Saturday’s NorAm freestyle sprints at the Black Jack Ski Club in Rossland.
“I just had to put it behind me and just focus on the races,” Carlyle said.
An official sponsor of the Canadian National Ski Team, Fresh Air Experience helped him find equipment. Salomon did the same, and the Alberta World Cup Academy lent him skis.
“It wasn’t just Thunder Bay that was supporting me, it was all of Canada,” he said.
In his two days at home, Carlyle filed a police report, asked local pawn shops and nordic retailers to keep an eye out, and scanned Ebay for his stuff. While in British Columbia, he said the Thunder Bay police and Crime Stoppers were searching for his missing duffle and ski bags.
“It’s a weird situation, and it’s in the hands of whoever took it,” Carlyle said. “So there’s nothing I could do about it.”
Bailey said the team rallied to support Carlyle, and the first-year NDC athlete remained calm and collected in the meantime.
“I think part of being a good ski racer is to be adaptable,” Bailey said. “Even the whole organization, to be able to deal with challenges as they happen. I’ve been really quite impressed with the way Jack has dealt with it.”
Earlier this week, two members of the Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre found themselves in a ditch after sliding on black ice and crashing into a cement guardrail. Brent McMurtry, the driver, and David Greer were fine, and they hopped into one of Thunder Bay’s team vans and continued on to Rossland.
After watching his totaled car fade away in the rearview mirror, McMurtry said he was training as usual and preparing for the second weekend of NorAm races.
Rossland NorAms
Saturday kicks off the all-freestyle weekend (in contrast to Sovereign Lake’s two days of classic races) with the NorAm Teck Sprints. The senior women will complete a 1.4-k loop and the men will race 1.6 k on the same sprint courses as last year.
Sunday’s distance mass starts (10 and 15 k) will be done on newly homologated 3.3- and 3.75-k loops, for the women and men respectively. Chief of Competition Ian Sibbald said this made for a slightly harder course compared to the previous 5 k loop.
“Our course last year was a little bit easy, whereas this year, it’s going to be a good test for the better athletes,” Sibbald said.
Last year, Black Jack hosted a NorAm mini-tour with a freestyle sprint, mid-distance skate race and classic pursuit. After those races, organizers resolved to plan a more challenging course, Sibbald said.
They also had to comply with FIS standards if they wanted their races to count toward points. That meant homologating their trails, so they chose to widen two shorter loops.
On Friday, some coaches felt the course was still too narrow for Sunday’s mass start, after a thin base made it difficult to groom wider. Bailey initially proposed to make the distance race an individual start after he skied the course with a group.
He said the strong field, particularly on the men’s side with about 80 seniors and juniors racing, should be considered.
“(There are) lots of people with really close points so everyone knows that (it) would go guns-a-blazing,” Bailey said. “That’s good for racing, but at the same time … for a fair competition, that’s why I proposed the change.”
Organizers decided on the matter Friday evening, keeping it a mass start but changing the men’s course slightly, Cross Country Canada delegate James Cunningham said.
Central Cross Country (CXC) Head Coach Jason Cork said the course’s narrowness was a slight problem in last year’s pursuit. Fortunately, one of his athletes, Jessie Diggins, won the event.
“Even with it being classic and even with 20 people in the wave, it jammed up,” Cork said. “I think that’s part of the concern; skate’s wider and 80 (racers at once) is more than 20.”
Regardless, Cork said he was “pretty ambivalent” to the final decision. A mass start would simply be less work without a need for timing splits.
Four of his athletes traveled to Rossland — Diggins, Jennie Bender, Karl Nygren and Sara Hewitt — in their fifth week on the road. Caitlin and Brian Gregg opted to train near Brian’s parents’ home in Methow Valley, Wash.
“To be honest, I think everyone’s getting a little tired,” Cork said, explaining that he scheduled in Rossland for the second-straight year because it was cost effective. He added that his athletes were looking forward to the races.
“No one’s dreading them at all,” he said.
Hewitt has a unique reason to race as her father, Ken, is the FIS technical delegate for the event.
Another American, Leif Zimmermann was the only member of the Bridger Ski Foundation testing his skis on Friday’s freshly groomed snow. While the rest of his teammates opted to return home to Bozeman, Mont., Zimmermann enjoyed racing in Canada and didn’t mind the nearly nine-hour drive.
“I like the hills and always like to skate,” Zimmermann wrote in an email. With at least four inches of new snow in the last two days, he expected the conditions to be soft, yet was hoping to make the top three on Sunday.
Rossland native and Alberta World Cup Academy coach George Grey said athletes shouldn’t take Rossland lightly.
“It’s going to be hard,” said Grey, who made the podium there last year. “It’s a working course: lots of flat sections where you have to keep your speed up.”
“The sprint there is a very tactical sprint,” said his former World Cup teammate, Stefan Kuhn, the academy’s sprint coach.
Race Favorites
He pointed to Phil Widmer and Jesse Cockney as AWCA men to watch in Saturday’s sprint. Widmer won last weekend’s sprint qualifier and was second in Rossland’s sprint last year. Strong in both the sprints and distance races, Cockney will be looking to podium as well.
On the women’s side, Alysson Marshall (AWCA) will be a race favorite, especially in the sprint. Her teammates, Heidi Widmer, Emily Nishikawa and Marlis Kromm will also be gunning for top performances on Saturday.
Andrea Dupont of the Rocky Mountain Racers was third in last weekend’s sprint, and she has historically done even better at NorAms. Nakkertok’s Alana Thomas will also be vying for a spot in the sprint final.
Of the American women in Saturday’s sprint, Diggins and Bender will be aiming for similar success.
On the men’s side, Harry Seton (NDC) will be looking for his first NorAm podium after several top-10 performances. McMurtry, now a few days removed from his car accident, will try to win in both races.
An American sprinter, Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess (Bend Endurance Academy) was included on Monday’s entry list, but could not be reached to confirm he would be racing at Black Jack for the first time.
On Sunday, Kevin Sandau (AWCA) is a race favorite after claiming his first NorAm victory last weekend in the 15 k classic. He had previously raced at the World Cup in Europe. His teammate, Drew Goldsack, is still on the mend after catching a bug on the flight home from Dusseldorf, Germany.
Another academy racer, Graeme Killick will look to top his distance competitors, as will Thunder Bay’s Mike Somppi. Typically a podium contender in longer races, Somppi is looking for a better performance after placing 12th in last weekend’s 15 k. Coming down in elevation after spending 12 days at altitude in Silver Star should help, said Bailey, his coach.
“Any perceived disadvantage from last weekend I think will become our advantage this weekend,” Bailey said, including Andrea Lee and Erin Tribe as athletes to watch in both races.
AWCA head coach Chris Jeffries said that besides Marshall and Nishikawa, keep an eye on Annika Hicks, who was 11th last Sunday.
Like Diggins and Bender, American Evelyn Dong (Stella Racing) should also be in the mix. Amanda Ammar (Canmore) made the top 10 last weekend in her first NorAm distance race in two years.
Brent McMurtry (CNEPH) took a photo of his totaled Toyota Corolla on Monday after he and passenger (and teammate) David Greer were involved in a car accident. McMurtry's vehicle slid on black ice into a cement barrier and stopped in a ditch. The two were just over halfway to Rossland after leaving Silver Star, British Columbia, for the second set of NorAm races. Courtesy photo.
Brent McMurtry of the Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre and Foothills Nordic Ski Club said he and teammate David Greer were unhurt after his car slid off the road while driving from Silver Star to Rossland, British Columbia.
Brent McMurtry races to a second-place finish in the NorAm 15 k classic individual start on Sunday. He was second in the 1.4 k classic sprint on Saturday. (Photo by Jesse Winter/JesseWinterPhotography.com)
The accident happened near the town of Midway, slightly more than halfway into the 370-kilometer (230-mile) trip. Several cross-country skiers and teams traveled the same route to prepare for the second set of NorAm races in Rossland this weekend.
The roads had been dry throughout the afternoon, said McMurtry, the two-time runner-up from the first set of NorAm races in Sovereign Lake.
While driving about 100 kilometers an hour in his personal vehicle, a Toyota Corolla, McMurtry said he drove over a depression in the road where it went over a creek. The car hit black ice and began sliding into oncoming traffic.
McMurtry said he overcorrected and swerved into a cement guardrail. His car slid along the barrier and into a ditch.
“I was just hoping it wouldn’t flip over,” he said. “Luckily we came to a stop in the ditch.”
A little shaken up but uninjured, McMurtry and Greer stepped out of the car and removed their luggage. Without collision on the vehicle, McMurtry knew it was a loss. He had no cell service but police came within minutes.
Three people stopped and told McMurtry they slid on the same spot earlier that day. Five minutes after his accident, a gravel truck drove up to take care of that exact section.
David Greer of the Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre in Sunday's 15 k classic, in which he was 10th. (Photo by Jesse Winter/JesseWinterPhotography.com)
“Kind of bad luck,” McMurtry said. “I guess locals know.”
About 10 minutes behind them on the road, the Thunder Bay National Development Centre team came to their rescue. With two 15-passenger vans, its members made room for McMurtry, Greer and all their belongings.
“It’s kind of surreal to crash my car and 30 minutes later never see my car again,” McMurtry said. “(But it) did enough damage to my ’99 Corolla that it wasn’t worth getting it fixed.”
He bought the car from a friend for about $2,000 Canadian dollars two years ago.
“It’s not a super-valuable car to start out with,” he said of his decision to leave it with the police.
He will next try to find a ride to Canmore, Alberta, after this weekend’s races and then he will deal with the car. He wasn’t too concerned about either.
“I’m not too stressed about it,” he said. “There’s lots of people from Canmore here so it’ll be pretty easy to find a ride home.”
On Wednesday, McMurtry said everything was normal and he was training as usual.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I feel 100 percent.”
***
A video from Brent McMurtry detailing his trip to Silver Star, taken before the accident.
After the Nor-Am mini-tour in Rossland, British Columbia, last weekend, racers from both sides of the border raved about the event as an exciting change of pace where all racers – sprinters and distance skiers alike – have a fair chance to fight for the overall title. Contributing to the positive reviews was the excellent job that the organizers and volunteers put down to make it fun, fair and entertaining.
Stefan Kuhn (Canmore Nordic) takes the victory over fellow Canadian Drew Goldsack (Rocky Mountain Racers). Photo: Rob Whitney.
“I love the mini-tour – fun to watch and great to ski in. It adds a lot of excitement for us racers and a great challenge as well. I don’t know if you can do anything much better. The Rossland ski community had done a great job organizing and made a 3-day race series go very smoothly and was lots of fun,” Stefan Kuhn (NTS) said in an email to FasterSkier. The overall men’s tour winner also thought the sprints were factored fairly into the overall results.
“You get a 60-second bonus if you win and down from there, and that is a lot,” Kuhn said.
The overall women’s winner, Jessie Diggins (CXC) also enjoyed the format.
“I think the mini-tour was really fun. The way it was set up made the last day pretty exciting since you knew exactly where you were in terms of the overall tour standings during the race,” Diggins said in an email to FasterSkier.
On the World Cup, some European racers have complained that a mini-tour is not worth the effort for sprint specialists. That was not an issue for the Nor-Am racers that FasterSkier spoke with. If anything, Diggins thinks the sprints may have been weighted a little too heavily, though it was not a problem for her.
“Because the 5km skate was so fast, the girls who weren’t sprinters weren’t given as much of a chance for the overall tour,” Diggins said.
Good mix of sprint and distance
“I really enjoyed the mini-tour format. I think it’s a great way to give both sprinters and distance skiers a chance to mix it up together,” Drew Goldsack (NTS) said in an email to FasterSkier. Going into the event, Goldsack was a bit concerned about the sprints being given too much emphasis. But in practice, he thought the concept worked out fairly for all.
“On paper I thought that the sprint was maybe weighted too heavily but…it actually worked out perfectly. I think it was partly due to the fact that we had distance skiers sprinting better than usual and sprinters skiing distance better than usual, but it worked out well and made for some exciting racing.”
Goldsack, who was third overall, had one single complaint.
“The only thing I’d like to see better is the prize money; it seemed a little chincey for three hard days of racing. $700.00 for the win isn’t bad, but $400.00 for second and $250.00 for third place seems a bit low to me,” Goldsack said.
Great format but keep it reasonable
Brooks racing in Rossland (Photo: Rob Whitney)
Holly Brooks (APUNSC) thinks the mini-tour format is both entertaining and fair, especially on the Nor-Am circuit where there are fewer specialists than on the World Cup. She also thinks the bonuses for the sprints helped even out any discrepancies.
“Especially in the women’s field, the sprinters and the distance racers are the same people anyway, and the bonuses awarded for the sprints were huge, so I think the format was fair. I think on the World Cup there is more of a difference because the racers are more specialized,” Brooks said to FasterSkier.
“We train so hard all year and make so many sacrifices. We train to race, and this is it. For me, this was a good intensity block before nationals. There were good interesting courses, and you have to be really versatile with this format that includes sprint, skate and classic,” Brooks said, but added that she doesn’t want organizers to go bananas with the concept just because the first one was a hit.
“I hope they keep mixing it into the schedule, but I wouldn’t like to see all race weekends turn into mini-tours,” Brooks said, noting that one or two of them per year could be a reasonable amount.
“Mini-tours are hard on both racers and organizers. There are more logistics and it’s easy to make mistakes, and it makes it complicated for everyone,” she said.
Just a good, hard weekend
“Overall I think the mini-tour format is really good. I wished they had them at the start of my career. I have always enjoyed racing different formats and distances,” Lars Flora (APUNSC) said. The only thing he would like more of was hills, even on the last day.
“The time bonuses seem to play out fairly between sprint and distance racing. The only thing I would change is adding a hill climb at the end of Sunday’s race. It would have been fun to finish with a classic hill climb,” Flora said.
Caitlin Compton (CXC) also thoroughly enjoyed the Rossland experience, both for the variety and for the rigor. For Compton, the mini-tour was also an opportunity to test her own limits.
“I knew that Saturday’s 5K skate would be my better event, but I also wanted to see how my fitness was through the entire weekend. I was pleased to find that my energy and quickness was still there (on Sunday), if not higher than the days before,” Compton said, noting that Diggins had reserves nobody else could match.
Mixed feelings on the World Cup
US Ski Team’s Kikkan Randall, who is on the FIS Athlete Commission for cross-country skiing, said in an interview with FasterSkier earlier this season that she has mixed feelings about the mini-tour concept. On one hand, Randall likes the idea of cross-country capitalizing on the increased TV-viewership that comes with these tour type events. On the flip side, Randall is concerned that by adding the overall time component and with each individual stage only worth half World Cup points, the sprint race is being devalued. She is also skeptical to adding a longer event weekend to the early World Cup season.
“I also feel that with an already packed ‘Period I’ racing schedule, it is better to have two races instead of three this early in the year to allow for a little more training during the week and thus better longevity through the season,” Randall said.
Among the Norwegians, some of the sprinters left Kuusamo after the opening sprint event of the “Tour de Opening” in November. Ola Vigen Hattestad and Kuusamo sprint winner John Kristian Dahl were among those who left early. Dahl dislikes the mini-tour, and was happy to explain why.
“We get more points for regular WC sprint races than we do here, there is a packed schedule with a lot of races before the end of the year, and we have important races in Düsseldorf (GER) already next weekend. To do three races here takes an incredible toll (on the racers), and it seems a little oddly placed,” Dahl said to the Norwegian TV station NRK.
The mini-tour in Kuusamo consisted of three competitions. Sprint on Friday, individual start classic on Saturday and pursuit/handicap start skate on Sunday. Only the overall winners will be listed as World Cup winners for the event. The sprint winners were awarded only 50 points compared to the normal 100 points.
“It’s no secret that the mini-tour robs some of the status from the sprinters. For me as a sprint specialist, this is not great,” said Ola Vigen Hattestad.
According to Vegard Ulvang, the Cross-Country Committee Chairman, this year the mini-tour is a test-event and it will be evaluated in the spring as to whether to make the Kuusamo “Tour de Opening” a permanent part of the World Cup calendar.
As for the Nor-Am mini-tour, it seems like the athletes are giving the format a thumbs up, at least after the Rossland experience last weekend.
![](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/11/2017-Haig-Glacier-Black-Jack-Group-002-e1510529440902.jpg")
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![Canada's Remi Drolet (r) and Norway’s Harald Østberg Amundsen during the men's 20 k skiathlon at 2017 Junior World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. On Amundsen's seventh lap, he lapped Drolet. Amundsen went on to finish third and Drolet 49th. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/02/SMF9253A.jpg")
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![The start of the A final, day two of of the BlackJack mini tour in Rossland. Newell (301) leads Locke (304, tallest) with Kennedy nearest. (Photo: Dafné Theroux Izquierdo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/12/unnamed-15-1.jpg")
![Another view of the men's A final. Newell and Lapointe (black suit hidden by Newell) would lead out early. Kennedy is nearest, Locke is tallest, the TBay skiers are light blue. (Photo: Dafné Theroux Izquierdo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/12/unnamed-16.jpg")
![Eric Frenzel (r) leads German teammates Vinzenz Geiger (c) and Fabian Rießle (l) toward a sweep of the podium in the Nordic Combined World Cup individual normal hill/10 k on Sunday in Ramsau, Austria. (Photo: FIS Nordic Combined/Facebook)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/12/15625751_1355052184537050_4871656724869834955_o.jpg")
![The men's 4 x 7.5k relay podium on Sunday in La Clusaz, France with Russia in second (left four) Norway first (center four) and France third overall. (Photo: FIS Cross-Country twitter)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/12/Cz9kGZ9XgAEuAGW.jpg")
![The women's 4 x 4 k mixed relay podium on Sunday in La Clusaz, France. Norway (c) took the win ahead of team Finland in second (l) and Sweden in third. (Photo: FIC Cross-Country/Twitter)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/12/Cz92zMFXEAE8D0E.jpg")
![Gabriela Koukalová of the Czech Republic looks to her home crowd as she wins the women's 12.5 k mass start on Sunday at the IBU World Cup in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. She fended off Germany's Laura Dahlmeier (r), who took second. (Photo: IBU)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/12/pskpj8bjzd1u9byuqbcf.jpeg")
![Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) after crossing the finish first through 23 finishers in the women's 7.5 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. She went on to place third for her first podium of the season and the fourth of her career.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/12/Dunklee-finish-2.jpg")
![Julien Locke (right) rollerskiing up Mount Norquay in Banff, Alberta, with Canadian National Ski Team teammate Lenny Valjas. (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/10/Norquay.jpg")
![Locke getting some glacier time. (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/10/unnamed-16.jpg")
![Julien Locke (r, Team Black Jack) challenges APU's Eric Packer at around 400-meters to the finish of the semi-final for the men’s 1.5 k freestyle sprint at 2016 U.S. National Championships in Houghton, Mich. Locke went on to finish third overall.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/01/IMG_7605-e1451967492230.jpg")
![Kris Freeman on his way to winning the 30 k freestyle interval start by more than a minute and a half on Dec. 20 at the Sovereign Lake NorAm in Vernon, B.C. (Photo: Frances Weeks)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/Men-2.jpg")
![The start of the women's 7.5 k classic at the Black Jack NorAm on Dec. 13 in Rossland, B.C. ( Saturday’s 11 k classic individual start at the NorAm opener in Rossland, B.C. (Photo: Fresh Cafe & apres/Facebook)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/10818280_364405347065937_2763545229578745374_o.jpg")
![Andrew Pohl of the New Zealand Ski Team crossing the line in 15th in the men's NorAm 30 k freestyle interval start on Dec. 20 at Sovereign Lake, B.C. (Photo: Frances Weeks)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/Men-1.jpg")
![Matt Liebsch enjoying the view from their chartered flight from Oroville, Wash., to Bozeman, Mont., on Dec. 7.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/photo-4.jpg")
![Brian Gregg up front with the pilot.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/photo-22.jpg")
![The chartered plane Brian Gregg and Matt Liebsch took to Bozeman, Mont., on Dec. 7. (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/photo-12.jpg")
![Patrick Johnson (Far West) leads Brian Gregg in the 15 k classic mass start on Dec. 8 in Bozeman, Mont. (Photo: Anya Caldwell Bean)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/Mens-3.jpeg")
![Team Gregg, with Caitlin (second from l) and Brian (r), and Matt Liebsch (l) in Bozeman, Mont. (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/photo-31.jpg")
![Amanda Ammar (Team Ninja) racing to third in the 10 k classic individual start on Dec. 15 in Rossland, B.C. (Photo: Shelley Peachell/Peachell Photography, http://peachellphotography.com/)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/AA2_NorAM_peachell_photography.jpg")
![Kate Fitzgerald (APU) racing to third in the West Yellowstone SuperTour 10 k freestyle individual start on Nov. 30.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/609.jpg")
![Kevin Sandau (AWCA/NST) racing to victory in the NorAm 15 k classic individual start on Dec. 15 in Rossland, B.C. (Photo: Shelley Peachell/Peachell Photography, http://peachellphotography.com/)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/KS_NorAM_peachell_photography.jpg")
![The Canadian women jumping for joy after notching Biathlon Canada's best-ever finish in a relay. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/Matthias Ahrens)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/Matthias-Ahrens-2.jpg")
![Norway’s Anders Gløersen celebrates his win as he crosses the finish line (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/gloersen151213al036.jpeg")
![Emily Nishikawa (AWCA/NST) halfway through her 10 k freestyle race on Dec. 7, in which she placed fifth in the NorAm opener at Sovereign Lake, B.C.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/Emily_halfway_P1000578.jpg")
![Erik Bjornsen (APU/USST) leads Peter Hegman (CGRP) up Tele Hill. Erik Bjornsen (APU/USST), 11th](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/IMG_1125.jpg")
![Dave Wood, Alison and their two Cocker Spaniels (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/10/P1000289.jpeg")
![Dave Wood Black Jack Ski Club Oct. 2013](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/10/IMG_6670.jpg")
![The Black Jack Ski Club, with head coach Dave Wood, while hiking Mount Assiniboine on the Great Divide on the British Columbia/Alberta border in August 2011. (Photo: Dave Wood)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/10/Blackjack_MtAssiniboine.jpeg")
![Dave Wood at the 2010 Olympics in Callaghan Valley, British Columbia. (Photo: Dave Wood)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/10/P1000058.jpeg")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2011/12/Slickrock-Trail-in-Moab-Photo-Evan-Martell-e1324950302751.jpg" "Sam Tarling, Moab")
![Vail](http://images.fasterskier.com/2011/12/Conor-Wallace-and-Sam-Bounding-Intervals-in-Vail-Photo-Sylvan-Ellefson-e1324950329334.jpg" "Conor Wallace, Sam Tarling")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2011/12/NorAm.rossland.bailey.jpg" "Eric Bailey, Rossland NorAm")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2011/12/AggJv4DCQAEJDdp.jpg" "Brent McMurtry 1999 Toyota Corolla")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2011/12/McMurtry.noram_.SL_.2.jpg" "Brent McMurtry crop")
![NorAm Sovereign Lake](http://images.fasterskier.com/2011/12/Sovereign-Lakes-Day-2-231.jpg" "David Greer")
