From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.
Thomas O’Harra (APU) approaches the turnaround point in the 2022 Mt. Marathon race above Seward, Alaska. (photo: Anna Engel)
Occurring annually on the 4th of July, and touted as the toughest 5 k on the planet, the 94th edition of the Mount Marathon race took place this past Monday in Seward, AK. Needless to say, the race is a storied tradition, beginning with its first “official” running in 1915. Over the years, participation has increased to such an extent that these days there are a number of complex ways for race entrants to register, including selection through a lottery system, petition for a race spot, or even buying a bib at a last-minute live auction.
There is no set course up the mountain itself. Racers start on city streets, at sea level, and run through town for half a mile before starting the climb and heading straight up the mountain. During the climb, athletes cover roughly 2,675 vertical feet of climbing in less than a mile (0.9 to be exact). Once they’ve crossed the timing mat around the false summit at Race Point, they turn around and descend that same steep slope via a slightly different route. A junior boys and girls race is also run, in which the participants only ascend partway up the mountain before turning around.
Runners bomb down scree back towards Seward and Resurrection Bay after turning around at Race Point. (Photo: Walker Hall)
This steep and challenging course has seen a number of nordic skiers succeed, including current men’s record holder, David Norris (41:26). Norris has won the race all three times he entered and took the record from mountain master, Kílian Jornet (41:48). Four-time Olympian, Nina Kemppel, holds the record for most race wins at an impressive nine victories. And until this year, three-time Olympian, Todd Boonstra was the oldest victor at age 41. However, at the conclusion of the 2022 edition of Mount Marathon, that crown went to a new champion.
The men set off at 11 a.m. local time and Max King of Bend, Oregon, took this year’s victory in a time of 43:37. At the age of 42, he became the oldest winner in the race’s long history.
Behind King, APU skier Thomas O’Harra placed second in his Mount Marathon debut. “I really didn’t expect to do as well as I did,” shared O’Harra. “It’s such a strong field, even without David [Norris] racing this year.”
Just a few weeks before O’Harra took top spot in the Bird Ridge Hill Climb, so he had confidence heading into the uphill section of Mount Marathon. “I knew that I was in good shape for the climb at least, after Bird Ridge, so I figured that I could be in the top three to the top and then the downhill was a total unknown to me. I practiced it once, a week before the race, but I’ve never raced a downhill like that before so I had no idea what to expect.”
Thomas O’Harra (APU) rounds Race Point in second place in the 2022 edition of Mount Marathon (Photo: Anna Engel)
Plummeting down the scree slope, O’Harra said his main goal was to stay on his feet and not get hurt. “I was shocked that I was still in second coming off the mountain and suffered my way down the road to the finish, where I managed to sneak under 45 minutes, which was a kind of secondary, if-it-goes-well goal,” said O’Harra. “[It was a] super fun time though, the closest running race I’ve ever done to the Birkie, and I’m stoked to come back and race again next year!”
Canadian skier and current Ute (athlete at the University of Utah), Sam Hendry, finished second behind Norris in 2021. This year, Hendry placed 7th with a time of 47:39. Hendry shared that this year’s Mount Marathon “was a bit of a disappointment.” He continued, “I finished second last year and was really hoping for a strong result again. With some busy travel getting up to Alaska, I didn’t have the best preparation and my legs were just a little off.” Hendry raced both the Vertical Kilometer (VK) and 26 k at the Broken Arrow Skyrace mid-June and placed fourth in both, besting King by nearly a minute in the 26 k. Hendry said, “I had some good results there, and plan to add some more running competitions to the calendar for later in the summer. I really enjoy getting some competitions in during the summer and getting to feel stressed and nervous.”
Michael Earnhart descends a dusty slope towards Seward (Photo: Jim Jager)
New U.S. D-Team member and APU skier, Micheal Earnhart, finished his day in 15th (49:45). He wrote to FasterSkier, “I wasn’t stoked with my results by any means but I am happy that I’m at a point in my career where top-15 at Mount Marathon can be a bad day.” Earnhart was quick to praise his teammate’s success saying, “My main takeaway was how impressive it was to see my APU teammate, and race rookie, Thomas O’Harra get second place. Definitely a strong day for APU and skiers in general which is always fun to see.”
Fellow U.S. Ski Team athlete Luke Jager was shortly behind Earnhart in 18th.
With the men’s race concluded, the focus turned to the women, who started at 2 p.m. local time. (The men and women now race in the flagship afternoon slot in alternate years.) Breaking the seven-year-old women’s record, Allie McLaughlin of Colorado earned the victory in a time of 47:09. Previously held by Swedish runner, Emelie Forsberg, with a time of 47:48, McLaughlin created a margin of 39 seconds in her favor.
Rosie Frankowski, who finished 4th in 2021, and is perhaps one of the fastest climbers out there, came in sixth this year (53:19). Racing Mount Marathon for the first time, newly named U.S. Ski Team A-Team member, Novie McCabe placed 8th (56:27). About her race, McCabe shared, “Mount Marathon was crazy! So hard, but a very cool experience for sure. I’m pretty happy with it. I was nervous about the downhill and was honestly pretty happy with myself for just doing something a bit out of my comfort zone.”
After racing the junior girls event, Dashe McCabe waters her sister, Novie (bib #7), on the climb (Photo: Jim Jager)
Kendall Kramer of UAF finished just outside the top-ten in 11th position (57:12). Kramer finished 9th last year (56:50) and was the junior girl’s race champion in 2018 (34:05).
Full race results of all the Mount Marathon events can be found here.
In other racing news, U.S.A. Track and Field Mountain Running Championships (USATF) in Wilmington, NY at the beginning of June saw two 2022 Beijing Olympians competing. Sophia Laukli finished third in a time of 1:29:03., and Caitlin Patterson came in sixth (1:35:52.3). Results for that event can be found here.
The Loon Mountain Race hosted Vertical U.S. Mountain Championships on July 10th, which a number of nordic and biathlon athletes attended. Alex Lawson representing Craftsbury Green Racing Project finished third, and posted the second fastest time on the “Upper Walking Boss,” a 40% grade ski hill for a half-mile at the end of the race.
Jake Brown (also of CGRP) had the second fastest time on the “Upper Walking Boss” and finished 9th overall. Full results for the event can be found here.
The Cirque Series mountain race circuit kicks off this coming Saturday (July 16th) at Brighton, UT. With a schedule of six U.S. based races taking place over the next few months nordic ski fans should keep an eye out for familiar names near the top of the results sheet.
Coaches: Erik Flora (head coach/director), Jack Novak (assistant coach)
Current roster: Penny Smyth, APUNSC Marketing & Communications, writes:
“Women’s Team: Rosie Brennan (USSS A Team), Hailey Swirbul (USSS A Team), Hannah Halvorsen (USSS D Team), Rosie Frankowski (World Cup Alternate), Becca Rorabaugh, Anna Darnell, Annie Gonzales, Marit Flora, Lily Pannkuk, Zoe Noble
“Men’s Team: Logan Hanneman (USSS B Team), Scott Patterson (USSS B Team), David Norris (World Cup Start), Hunter Wonders (USSS D Team), Zanden McMullen (USSS D Team), Luke Jager (USSS D Team), Tyler Kornfield, Michael Earnhart, Thomas O’Harra, Forrest Mahlen, Garrett Butts, Ari Endestad, Karl Danielson, Bjorn Halvorsen, Chip Schoff”
A total of nine APU athletes will be starting Period 1 World Cup races this season, though as we approach the Ruka opener later this week Smyth advises, “Scott [Patterson] won’t be joining the team until Lillehammer,” the season’s second race weekend, “due to hand injury.”
Who’s new or who’s moved on: Smyth writes, “Sadie Maubet Bjornsen, a two-time Olympian and World Cup skier, retired after last year. We have some new skiers that have grown up through the APU Nordic program join the Elite Team, including Marit Flora and Lily Pannkuk. New to the men’s team is Bjorn Halvorsen, younger brother of Hannah Halvorsen!”
Hailey Swirbul (left, third overall) and Rosie Brennan (first, wearing the yellow bib as World Cup overall leader) after the women’s 10 k skate in Davos, December 20202. (photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Top results last season: Brennan was fourth in both the overall World Cup and distance standings, and for one magical weekend in December was the best skier in the world, winning back-to-back races in Davos. She became the second American woman ever to wear the yellow bib, after Maubet Bjornsen, and kept it for roughly a month. It was a well-deserved coming-out party for the longtime APU athlete (note that she was also on this team nine years ago) currently in her third separate stint on the U.S. Ski Team, after most recently being cut in 2018 after she raced poorly in PyeongChang while unknowingly suffering from mono.
Behind her, Swirbul finished the season ranked 23rd overall in the World Cup (21st for distance) and 4th in the U23 standings, picking up her first World Cup podium along the way, which she shared with Brennan. Maubet Bjornsen stayed home in Anchorage for the first half of the season, placed 10th in her first World Cup race in a year after returning to Europe, then at World Championships came within a combined 3.17 seconds of coming home from Oberstdorf with two medals.
Swirbul, Maubet Bjornsen, and Brennan formed the first three-fourths of the American women’s relay team at World Champs, which came 0.8 seconds away from medaling. Norris recovered from Covid to post some of his best results yet, including 16th and 17th at World Champs, and Patterson had his best season in years, highlighted by a 10th in the World Champs 50 km; the two of them formed half of the American men’s relay team in Oberstdorf. (The team sent seven athletes total to World Championships.) Jager was a tantalizing 0.09 seconds out of the heats in his World Cup debut. Hanneman made three World Cup heats and finished the year ranked 29th in the Sprint Cup standings. Halvorsen returned from a year of grueling rehab from a car accident to finish 23rd in her first race back in two seasons – which was not an OPA Cup or a local citizens race but rather the World Cup sprint in Dresden.
Hunter Wonders races at Government Peak Recreation Area, Palmer, Alaska, Nov. 14, 2021, in the season-opening Race to the Outhouse #1. David Norris is behind him. (photo: Eric Strabel for APUNSC)
Domestically, Jager, Wonders, and Maubet Bjornsen won the December Anchorage JOQ races that were the unofficial U.S. Nationals west (also on a podium in these races: McMullen, Mahlen, and Frankowski), and Frankowski and Kornfield picked up a combined four podium finishes at the American Birkebeiner, including Frankowski’s win in the classic race.
Smyth adds, “Locally, races happened for the rest of the elite team, where we had numerous podium sweeps and a Tour of Anchorage podium sweep in the women’s 50K with Rosie Frankowski (1) Becca Rorabaugh (2) and Anna Darnell (3) and then in the men’s 50K Tyler Kornfield (1) and Thomas O’Harra (2).”
APU head coach Erik Flora, Independence Mine, October 2021. (photo: courtesy APUNSC)
Coach’s comments: “The APU Elite team is more than 25 skiers strong. We had a great summer of training with a majority of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard D-Team joining us. U.S. Ski and Snowboard coaches joined the Elite team in July for training sessions, which was positive for the team! This brought some young energy to the daily grind along with a fun group to work with. October brought early snow in Hatcher Pass to finally get on skis for training with early November snow in town to follow. We feel ready for the race season to happen and are excited to see what the races bring moving into an Olympic year!”
Hailey Swirbul (second from right, pink elbow sleeves) tags off to Sadie Maubet Bjornsen (far right) after the opening leg in the women’s 4 x 5 km relay at FIS nordic world ski championships, Oberstdorf, March 2021. (photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Disclaimer: I live in Anchorage, and have trained with the APUNSC Masters program for eight seasons and counting. On the one hand, the Masters group has been an important part of my personal and athletic life for many years now; on the other hand, on a day-to-day basis the Masters team has basically nothing to do and no overlap with the APU Elite Team, and is not coached by Elite Team coach Erik Flora. I don’t receive free gear from APU, or anything in that vein, in exchange for writing about the APU Elite Team.
This series comes to FasterSkier from the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Club.
A Day in the Life: APUNSC is checking in with Elite Team members of the course of the next few months to get a glimpse into what life looks like for elite athletes as training starts up again during a global pandemic.
Today we check in with Thomas O’Harra (24), an APUNSC member since 2007 when he joined the APU DEVO program. Thomas received his undergraduate degree from APU in 2017 and has continued on working towards a Master of Arts degree, set to graduate in 2020. Thomas qualified for his first World Cups this season!
Where are you right now? What have the restrictions been? Are they now changing?
I am currently in Anchorage, AK. I have been here since March 15th, when I got back after the cancelled World Cup Sprint Tour. I was initially under a 14-day quarantine, and Alaska was under a hunker-down order that has since been lifted. In the past few weeks, Alaska has gone back to pretty much normal, minus wearing masks and social distancing.
How did your season end? Were there any race cancellations that affected your season?
I had just qualified for my first World Cup races, traveled all the way to Quebec, and woke up (on my birthday) to learn that the Minneapolis World Cup had been cancelled. We spent the rest of the day in limbo before the US and Canadian teams withdrew from the races, at which time we bought tickets to fly home the next morning. In addition to the World Cup tour being cancelled, I was really looking forward to Spring Nationals in Silver Star; a few teammates and I were going to arrive a couple of days early and have a mini training camp!
Enjoying the course and podium at the Minneapolis World Cup venue after learning that the event had been cancelled. (Photo: Thomas O’Harra)
What is a highlight of the ski season you did have?
I would say that the highlight of my season was definitely qualifying for the World Cup Sprint Tour, though it was made possible by racing my way into one of the sprint finals at US Nationals in Houghton, which is my best result so far!
(Racing at US Nationals Photo: Thomas O’Harra)
How have you planned around the unexpected end to the season? Did you do anything to “finish” out the season or jump into summer training early?
When I got home, I was in a bit of disbelief over everything that had happened during the previous four days, but I really wanted to take advantage of the amazing spring skiing that we still had in Anchorage. NSAA groomed until mid-April, we had an amazing sea-level crust season, and then Mat-Su Ski Club groomed at Independence Mine until mid-May! I tried to ski as much as I felt like for a few weeks before taking a short break. Everyone seemed to be on different plans, but I just tried to enjoy the phenomenal skiing we had.
Enjoying some fantastic crust skiing after the season ended early. (Photo: Thomas O’Harra)
What activities are you doing to keep yourself busy outside of training?
I have been working mostly. I also (like everyone else in the world) acquired a sourdough starter and have been baking bread with my girlfriend. Additionally, I have been reading more. I recommend The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells; it is a good read and a way not to forget that we are still amid a climate crisis in addition to the pandemic.
What did your workout look like today?
Today I did some rollerski speeds in the morning and then a distance run in the afternoon.
Do you have any indoor/at home workouts you are doing?
I actually started doing core this spring, mostly because I have not been able to get into a gym to do any lifting. For me, core is one of the more difficult workouts to get motivated for.
Without knowing what the future has in store, has it been challenging to keep up the motivation to train? Where are you getting that motivation? What motivates you to keep training?
I enjoy getting out to train, and I am currently operating on the assumption that we will have a season this coming winter. If we don’t get to race, I will deal with that in November. For now, it is summer and I am just excited to be healthy and able to spend time outside.
How are you keeping in touch with friends/family/teammates?
During April, our team used Zoom to keep in touch, and I have done the same with family. That being said, I live a few blocks away from my parents, so I have been able to see them frequently.
What has been your biggest challenge in relation to Covid-19 and how are you tackling it?
Honestly, I feel like life is almost normal for me. I am able to train every day and be outside, and I have been able to work (albeit on Zoom, which was difficult in its own way).
What are your plans from here? What things do you have in store for a summer that will include many restrictions?
I plan to keep training and hopefully do a little adventuring in a tourist-free Alaska, a chance that I might not get for a long time. I also have some off-grid adventure ideas that I’d like to accomplish, so we will see what happens!
Do you have any helpful advice in dealing with the changing times?
Just take everything day-to-day. I am not thinking about planning, or what might or might not happen in a month, but instead, I am focusing on getting out and training quality sessions every day.
Enjoying the mountains and the close to home adventures. (Photo: Thomas O’Harra)
Kevin Bolger on his way to qualifying 16th overall and finishing 18th on the day: Planica, Slovenia’s World Cup skate sprint in December 2019. (Photo: NordicFocus)
You may have heard that the World Cup is returning not only to North America, but also to American soil, within the next few weeks. The world’s best skiers will be contesting sprint races in Québec City on March 14 and 15; a sprint in Minneapolis on March 17; and distance races plus a mixed relay in Canmore on March 20-22.
For all six races, including the five across the border, the U.S. has an expanded nation’s group start quota (thanks, Canada, for letting us count as Canadian for a week), meaning that a remarkable thirty skiers total will toe the line in that distinctive candy-cane uniform. Here is a brief overview of the fourteen men currently announced with start rights in the three sprints (some of the sprinters will not be racing in Canmore, where some distance-oriented athletes will have starts instead).
In alphabetical order, with pictures where available (an asterisk by a name denotes an athlete making his first World Cup start in Québec City):
Kevin Bolger of the U.S. Ski Team on his way to qualifying 32nd in the Ruka, Finland classic sprint in November 2019. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Kevin Bolger
Team and club: SVSEF Gold Team; United States Ski Team (USST) B-Team
Currently lives in: Idaho
Selected career highlights: 11th in his first-ever World Cup sprint, March 2018; 18th, skate sprint, 2019 World Championships; 1st, 2017 U.S. nationals classic sprint; 2nd, 2018 U.S. nationals skate sprint
Instagram page: @kevinbolger
Age: 26
Logan Diekmann as a University of Utah freshman (Courtesy photo)
Logan Diekmann*
Team and club: University of Utah
Currently lives in: Montana
Selected career highlights: 38th, 15km classic, 2020 U23 World Championships; 10th, classic sprint, 2020 U.S. nationals; 11 top-five finishes in RMISA races, member of 2017 and 2019 NCAA championship teams
Instagram page: @logandiekmann
Age: 22
In his return to World Cup sprinting, Simi Hamilton skis to 14th overall on Stage 3 of Ski Tour 2020. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Simi Hamilton
Team and club: Stratton Mountain School, or SMS; USST A Team
Currently lives in: Vermont
Selected career highlights: Three-time Olympian; four individual World Cup podiums, including one win; 6th, team sprint, both 2014 and 2018 Olympics; 9th, individual skate sprint, 2019 World Championships
Instagram page: @simihamilton
Age: 32
Logan Hanneman of the U.S. during the Falun, Sweden classic sprint qualifier in February 2020. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Logan Hanneman
Team and club: Alaska Pacific University, or APU
Currently lives in: Alaska
Selected career highlights: 2018 Olympian; 26th, 2019 World Championships; six individual top-30 World Cup results; two national championship podiums
Instagram page: @logan.hanneman
Age: 26
Peter Holmes during the qualifier in the 1.6 k classic sprint at the 2019 U23 World Championships in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Doug Stephen)
Peter Holmes
Team and club: SVSEF Gold Team
Currently lives in: Idaho
Selected career highlights: 27th, classic sprint, 2019 U23 World Championships; multiple top-1o finishes, national championship and SuperTour sprints
Instagram page: @vacationholmes
Age: 24
Mulleted and proud: Luke Jager destroys the field, opening a gap of 25 seconds on the lead-off leg of the 2020 World Juniors relay earlier this month. (Photo: Doug Stephen)
Luke Jager*
Team and club: University of Utah/APU; USST D Team
Currently lives in: Alaska
Selected career highlights: Gold medal, relay, 2019 and 2020 World Juniors; silver medal, relay, 2018 World Juniors; 10th, 10km classic, 2020 World Juniors; 2nd American, classic sprint, 2020 U.S. Nationals; three podiums in RMISA races this season
Noel Keeffe during the 1.6 k classic sprint qualifier at Junior World Ski Championships in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Doug Stephen)
Noel Keeffe
Team and club: University of Utah/Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club; USST D Team
Currently lives in: Colorado
Selected career highlights: 12th, classic sprint, 2019 World Juniors; 3rd, skate sprint, 2019 U.S. Nationals; three top-10 finishes in RMISA races; made World Cup debut in Oberstdorf earlier this season
Instagram page: @noel.keeffe
Age: 20
APU’s Tyler Kornfield (126) celebrates as he crosses the line first in the men’s 30-kilometer classic mass start on Sunday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska. Eric Packer (118) finished second and Denver University’s Eivind Romberg Kvaale (124) placed third.
Tyler Kornfield
Team and club: APU
Currently lives in: Alaska
Selected career highlights: 2018 Olympian; seven national championship podiums, including three national championships; 19th, skate sprint, 2014 U23 World Championships
Instagram page: @tkornfield
Age: 29
Forrest Mahlen (APU) racing to fifth in the men’s 1.4 k classic sprint qualifier in February 2020 at the SuperTour in Craftsbury, Vermont. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Forrest Mahlen*
Team and club: APU
Currently lives in: Alaska
Selected career highlights: 10th, classic sprint, 2019 U.S. Nationals; dozens of SuperTour top-10 finishes, including one victory; 3rd, 2018 Tour of Anchorage
Instagram page: @forrest_mahlen
Age: 26
Andy Newell during the sprint qualifier in Obertsdorf, Germany, in January 2020. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Andy Newell
Team and club: Bridger Ski Foundation
Currently lives in: Montana
Selected career highlights: Four-time Olympian; three individual World Cup podiums; 5th, classic sprint, 2007 World Championships; 7th, team sprint, 2015 World Championships; top-10 in Sprint Cup standings six times from 2006–2013; made the heats in every World Cup sprint he started for nearly a decade straight
Instagram page: @andynewellskier
Age: 36
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8HtYWxHUVo/
Thomas O’Harra*
Team and club: APU
Currently lives in: Alaska
Selected career highlights: 6th, skate sprint, 2020 U.S. Nationals; 5th, 2019 American Birkebeiner; first, 2017 Tour of Anchorage; ten top-10 SuperTour finishes since 2016/2017 season
Instagram page: @thomasoharra
Age: 23
Ben Saxton races in the sprints at 2020 U.S. Nationals. (Photo: Reese Brown)
Ben Saxton
Team and club: SMS
Currently lives in: Vermont
Selected career highlights: six national championship podiums, including two national championships; dozens of SuperTour podiums; 54th, classic sprint, 2015 World Championships; 44th, Otepää classic sprint, 2018/2019 World Cup season
Instagram page: @saxtonskier
Age: 26
Gus Schumacher skis the final leg of the men’s relay at World Juniors earlier this month. (Photo: Doug Stephen)
Gus Schumacher
Team and club: Alaska Winter Stars; USST D Team
Currently lives in: Alaska
Selected career highlights: Gold medal, relay, 2019 and 2020 World Juniors; silver medal, relay, 2018 World Juniors (anchor leg for all three races); gold medal, 10km classic, 2020 World Juniors; two podiums at 2020 U.S. Nationals, including one national championship; 41st time of day, 15km pursuit, 2019 Québec City World Cup
Instagram page: @gus.schumacher
Age: 19
From left, Logan Hanneman, Hunter Wonders, and Tyler Kornfield make up the podium at a December 2018 Besh Cup race. (photo: courtesy CCAK)
Hunter Wonders*
Team and club: APU
Currently lives in: Alaska
Selected career highlights: National champion, classic sprint, 2020 U.S. Nationals; 8th place, 15km classic, 2020 U23 World Championships; fifth place, mixed relay, 2020 U23 World Championships; six top-10 SuperTour or NorAm finishes, including two podiums
Instagram page: @wonderboy_hup77
Age: 21
* The athlete is making his World Cup debut in Québec City.
The Chugach Mountains and a winter sunrise, seen in this file photo view from the parking lot at Government Peak Recreation Area, Palmer, Alaska, in February 2018. (photo: Gavin Kentch)
Note: FasterSkier is accepting submissions for regional race reports, including for juniors racing. If you would like to see a particular race circuit covered and have the writer with the will to do it, please have them email info@fasterskier.com. Be sure to include a link to results, and preferably a few original race photos with proper credits.
GOVERNMENT PEAK RECREATION AREA, outside Palmer, Alaska — On a day that had a decidedly old school feel, one of the state’s newest racing venues took center stage, as Government Peak Recreation Area successfully hosted the opening Besh Cup races of the 2018/2019 Junior Nationals qualifying series this past weekend on less than a week’s notice.
Saturday morning saw U18 boys and up cover 15 kilometers, on a hilly two-lap course; U18 girls and up raced 10 k, on an even hillier two-lap course. It was classic technique, it was interval start, it was cold, and the trees were draped with fresh snow. It felt like a World Cup race circa 1990.
Senior women Hailey Swirbul, Rosie Frankowski, and Lydia Blanchet. (photo: courtesy CCAK)
The comparison isn’t totally bathetic, given the overall leaderboards for Saturday’s races: Rosie Frankowski, Hailey Swirbul, and Kendall Kramer for the women, and Gus Schumacher, Luke Jager, and Hunter Wonders for the men. That’s an Olympian and a three-time World Juniors medalist for the women, and three-fourths of this spring’s breakthrough World Juniors silver medal relay team for the men. Oh, plus the 16-year-old Kramer, who was third in the junior women’s 5 k classic mass start at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships and who may have a pretty bright future in this sport herself.
Saturday: distance classic races
Male racers set out at 11 a.m. Saturday morning from the compact stadium at Government Peak Recreation Area (GPRA), a labor of love by the Mat-Su Ski Club and the Palmer and Wasilla ski community over the past ten years. They headed out on a course that is a poor man’s Davos distance course, with consistent climbs and V2-able false flats for the first two-thirds of the loop, giving way to a working downhill and a sharp drop back to the stadium. Or to just below the stadium, actually; the course ends with a grueling B-climb immediately before the finish (see next picture, below right). The obvious challenge is to pace the uphills easily enough the first time to ski the downhills and flats efficiently, then do the same thing a second time in lap
After roughly 80 racers had covered two 7.5 k laps in the day’s first race, leaving the stadium at 30-second intervals, it was Schumacher who had done this most efficiently, covering 15 k in 43:23.11. Jager (+12.36) and Wonders (+26.53) made up the overall podium. The top three senior athletes were Wonders, Logan Hanneman (fourth overall), and Tyler Kornfield (fifth).
The top three U20 racers on the day were Schumacher, Jager, and Ti Donaldson, who was seventh overall. Leading the U18 racers were Zanden McMullen (15th overall), Everett Cason (16th), and Max Germain (19th). 50-year-old Adam Verrier, a 1994 Olympian, was the top Master in 47th. Behind Schumacher, who skis for Alaska Winter Stars, in first, Alaska Pacific University (APU) showed its depth by putting six skiers in the top 10 and 10 in the top 16.
Part of the final climb leading back up to the stadium at the end of the Government Peak comp loop, seen in this file photo view from November 1, 2018. (photo: Gavin Kentch)
The day’s second race saw 43 women, age U18 and up, take on two laps of the Davos-lite 5 k course described above. Two laps of 5 k at Government Peak is in many ways harder than two laps of 7.5 k, as the longer course adds 2.5 kilometers of gently rolling terrain near the end of the homologated (or perhaps homologation-pending) 5 k course. The 5 k course has no such recovery intermezzo, and the final climb of the first lap segues into the first climb of the second lap for a difficult extended climb with negligible recovery.
After two laps and 10 k classic, the day’s last starter, Rosie Frankowski, posted the fastest time, finishing in 32:28.01. (While snow conditions are obviously extremely variable from one venue and race to the next, making time comparisons unreliable, and Frankowski did not have World Cup skiers in front of her to chase on Saturday, the fact that Frankowski has previously skied a World Cup 10 k classic in 27:44, on a homologated course in Falun with 365 meters of total climb, suggests that the new Government Peak comp loop deserves respect.)
Frankowski’s APU teammate, Hailey Swirbul, was second on Saturday, 22.39 seconds back. Kramer (+1:42.15) was third, ahead of a top-10 otherwise composed of skiers from the University of Alaska Anchorage and local Dartmouth College skiers home for winter break.
The top three senior athletes were Frankowski, Swirbul, and Lydia Blanchet, who was fourth overall. The U20 podium was Jenna Difolco (seventh overall), Molly Gellert (17th), and Maggie Meeds (23rd). Somewhat ahead of them were the three fastest U18 skiers: Kramer, Adrianna Proffitt (11th), and Ivy Eski (14th). M4 skier Alison Arians, in 18th, was the top Master.
U16 girls Katey Houser, Marit Flora, and Victoria Bassette. (photo: courtesy CCAK)
Next out on the course were 51 U14 and U16 boys, who did a single lap of the comp loop. U16 skier Aaron Maves, like Frankowski before him, lived up to his top seeding, finishing one lap in 16:35.99. Second and third went to Konrad Renner (+18.99) and Eli Merrill (+36.83), also both U16 athletes. The top U14 skiers in this race were Skyler Amy (22nd overall), Murphy Kimball (23rd), and Aven Elsberg (26th).
Moments later came the start for the first of 49 U14 and U16 girls, as organizers efficiently put roughly 250 total athletes out on course at a venue that is a one-hour drive from Anchorage and sees a mid-December sunrise some time after 10 a.m. U14/U16 girls likewise did one lap of the 5 k comp loop.
Quincy Donley had the highest seed and final start position for this race, but 5 k later it was penultimate starter Marit Flora who took the victory. Flora finished in 18:23.47. Donley was 22.78 seconds back in second. Meredith Schwartz (+48.59) was third.
All three podium finishers were U16 girls. The top three U14 finishers in the race were Heidi Schumacher (12th overall), Sammy Legate (15th), and Zarah Laker-Morris (24th).
Sunday: distance freestyle races
After the U12, U10, and U08 skiers finished up the first day’s races, and the afternoon’s sunset time of 3:33 p.m. threatened, volunteers took down the course, coaches packed up waxing equipment, and tired racers began the trek back to Anchorage homes or Mat-Su hotel rooms. The first volunteers were officially on site by 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning to assist with parking, although doubtless some people had returned to the venue by long before then.
Day two of racing brought some differences – freestyle instead of classic, shorter distances, and slightly warmer temperatures – but more repeat podium finishers than not across the day’s races.
The first division on course was again U18 boys/U20/Seniors/Masters men, this time with 78 starters going out at 15 seconds apart. Sunday’s skate race was 10 k freestyle interval start, twice around the 5 k comp loop (precisely the same as the senior women’s 10 k classic the day before). The top three overall were unchanged from Saturday’s 15 k classic: Gus Schumacher, then Jager, then Wonders, the World Juniors silver-medal relay team united once more. Schumacher’s time on Sunday was 26:17.07. Jager (+15.56) and Wonders (+42.74) were the only other two athletes to break 27 minutes on the hilly course.
U16 boys Josh Baurick, Konrad Renner, and Aaron Maves. (photo: courtesy CCAK)
The U20 leaders on Sunday were again Schumacher, Jager, and Donaldson, who was fourth overall. The senior podium was Wonders (third overall), Thomas O’Harra (fifth), and Forrest Mahlen (sixth). Best times for U18 skiers went to McMullen (seventh), Cason (11th), and Germain (16th), precisely the same U18 podium as in the 15 k classic. Much as on Saturday, behind Alaska Winter Stars skier Schumacher in first, APU placed seven athletes in the top 10.
The first Master, among eight Masters finishers on Sunday, was M1 skier Cody Priest, 30, a former skier and runner at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in 25th overall.
Soon after the last of the Senior men collapsed across the finish line, the first of the U16 boys headed out for one lap of the 5 k course. (All races on both days were interval-start.) First on Sunday was Renner (15:21.27), improving on his second-place finish from the day before. Josh Baurick (+9.17) was second, with Maves (+17.20) staying on the podium but moving down to third after his victory on Saturday.
Next up were 43 U18 girls/U20/Seniors/Masters women. Neither Frankowski nor Swirbul raced on Sunday, but their APU teammate Jessica Yeaton, who skis domestically with APU but competes internationally for her native Australia, did after not racing on Saturday. Yeaton was seeded third in the 5 k skate but ended up first, covering one 5 k lap in 14:47.25. Kramer (+26.15) moved up to second overall on Sunday, with Emma Tarbath (+46.32) third, barely a second ahead of Lydia Blanchet in fourth. Anna Darnell was the fifth and final woman to break 16 minutes on the hilly course.
The senior women’s podium was Yeaton, Tarbath, and Blanchet. The top three U20 finishers were Jenna Difolco (seventh overall), Molly Gellert (ninth), and Emma Jerome (21st). The top three U18 finishers were, again, Kramer (also second overall), then Ivy Eski in eleventh overall, barely ahead of Annika Hanestad in twelfth. Arians (15th) was again the first Master.
U14 boys were the next race out on the course. Sunday brought a 3.75 k skate, on a course that covered most of the 5 k comp loop used throughout the weekend, but elided one major climb and the only rolling section from the top part of the course. The technique and the distance were different, but the U14 podium was precisely the same as on Saturday: Amy (13:29.76), then Kimball (+2.05), then Elsberg (+7.19).
Finally, U14 and U16 girls headed out on the same 3.75 k loop. Marit Flora took her second victory of the weekend by a substantial margin, finishing in 12:13.98. Katey Houser (+30.59) and Victoria Bassette (+32.64) collected their first podia of the weekend.
The overall podium was again all U16 racers. The U14 leaders were Legate (tenth overall), Heidi Schumacher (16th), and Nora Hulse (24th).
Reflecting the depth of skiing in southcentral Alaska, the roughly 250 entrants for the weekend’s races included a healthy six former Olympians (Rosie Frankowski, Logan Hanneman, Tyler Kornfield, Adam Verrier, Casey Wright, and Jess Yeaton) and four World Juniors medalists (Gus Schumacher, Luke Jager, Hailey Swirbul, and Hunter Wonders), as well as additional senior national championship podium finishers, most of the rest of the APU Elite Team, a dozen or more NCAA skiers, and scads of past Team Alaska Junior National members.
Both races were FIS races, as well as certified for National Rankings List purposes by U.S. Ski & Snowboard. FasterSkier unofficially calculates the USSA penalty at a healthy 41.99 points for the men’s distance races.
Thoughts on the weekend
Two common themes emerged after talking with a handful of the weekend’s podium finishers: One, these races are a good introduction to the season and to bigger races still ahead. And two, the new Government Peak courses are great. But hard.
As two-time U18 champion Zanden McMullen told FasterSkier Sunday afternoon, “Yesterday I was definitely hurting in the race, but I was proud to come out on top. I definitely felt a lot better today. I’m pretty happy going into the season, where I am; I still have a little work to do before Senior Nationals, but I’m super excited.”
U20 men Luke Jager, Gus Schumacher, and Ti Donaldson. (photo: courtesy CCAK)
Two-time overall champion Gus Schumacher expressed similar sentiments, telling FasterSkier, “I wanted to use [these races] to get into racing more, and get some more races under my belt, so I felt better at the bigger races. But obviously, to get into good racing shape, you want to be trying to race as best you can, so that was kind of the goal, to be able to start getting my racing speed to its top level.”
Schumacher, who is undefeated in five local races this year, including the Race to the Outhouse #1 hill climb at Hatcher Pass the preceding weekend and a sprint and distance race in Fairbanks in the Alaska Nordic Cup in early December, described his current shape as “pretty good.” He elaborated that he plans to add some more intensity soon, but thinks that he is “coming into my race form, and it looks pretty good. Good to have these fast boys around me to push me every day.”
Schumacher plans to do some trials with Alaska Winter Stars, possibly collaborating with APU, before flying to Craftsbury on December 29th for senior nationals.
Two-time U18 champion (and double overall podium finisher) Kendall Kramer sounded similar notes, but was somewhat more introspective when asked what her weekend results told her about her current fitness and the upcoming race season.
“I got invited to a lot of national camps this summer,” Kramer said to FasterSkier, “and I think being exposed to so many different training groups and training styles – I really diversified how I trained this year, and so I’m happy that it’s working out for me. It’s less stressful, and I’m putting less pressure on myself.”
Kramer, who had never previously raced at Government Peak, described the new courses as “really, really tough.” She seemed to recognize that the course profile was advantageous to her, while stopping short of actually saying that she had enjoyed them when asked if she had liked the courses: “I mean, yes, being super small and light and getting up hills – I wouldn’t pick this venue, necessarily. But I think it was good for me.”
Ivy Eski, who claimed a pair of U18 podium finishes on the weekend, was more effusive.
“I love it,” she told FasterSkier. “It was really fun. I definitely want to race here again. The courses are amazing.”
Eski also praised the “really good snow and super good grooming,” calling it “overall really a great weekend.”
U18 boys Everett Cason, Zanden McMullen, and Maxime Germain. (photo: courtesy CCAK)
And McMullen, who had also never raced at this venue, similarly said of the new courses, “They’re tough, but I like them. You definitely have to be on top of it to be able to push it and go fast.”
Are they as hard as a nationals course? he was asked. “I definitely think they could be,” said McMullen, who has raced throughout the U.S. as well as in Finland. “Because if you don’t ski it correctly, you could be hurting.”
* * *
The overall success of the weekend is noteworthy only in light of two facts: That the Mat-Su Ski Club had never hosted an event at this level before, and that it did so on less than a week’s notice, as poor trail conditions throughout southcentral Alaska forced governing body Cross Country Alaska (CCAK) to have a series of competition committee meetings and teleconferences during the week of December 3 to decide where in the state to send 250 athletes and their parents for a weekend of racing. (Anchorage and Fairbanks are a six-hour drive apart, nearly the twice amount of daylight in Fairbanks in mid-December; the decision to move a race weekend is not made lightly.)
On Sunday evening, December 9, CCAK announced the decision of the Competition Committee to have the opening Besh Cup weekend at the Government Peak ski trails. Six days later, skiers were pouring into the carefully managed, not-really-large-enough parking lot for the weekend’s first race, with overflow parking stretching hundreds of yards down one side of the access road. Notwithstanding the venue’s youth and the Mat-Su Ski Club’s relative inexperience, all races on both days appear to have gone flawlessly. (Full disclosure, this reporter contributes money to Mat-Su Ski Club for grooming each year, but was not otherwise involved in organizing or supporting these races save for paying an entry fee for both days to race as a Masters athlete.)
Senior men Logan Hanneman, Hunter Wonders, and Tyler Kornfield. (photo: courtesy CCAK)
Next up
Besh Cup racing for Team Alaska selection continues with two more weekends of racing, currently scheduled for Soldotna on January 19-20, 2019, and Fairbanks on February 2-3. There are traditionally two interval-start distance races, two mass start distance races, and two sprint races throughout the six-race Besh Cup series, three races each of skate and classic. CCAK will announce future race details in advance of upcoming race weekends, after atypically starting the season with two consecutive interval-start distance races due to the last-minute move to Government Peak.
2019 Junior Nationals will be held at Kincaid Park in Anchorage from March 9-17, 2019. Recent snowfall has brought the trails there from, as CCAK recently described them, “ice/grass rinks” to skiable within the past week (that is, after the decision was made to move the races).
While relatively warm temperatures hindered the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage (NSAA)’s ability to make snow through the early winter, leading to NSAA running the snowmaking system for only 48 hours through November 28, the snowmaking system did survive the 7.0 earthquake of November 30 unscathed, NSAA Business Manager Erin Beam told FasterSkier in an early-December email. “NSAA has tested it since the earthquake, and there are no apparent damages or problems,” she wrote at the time. “It’s certainly incredible it wasn’t worse.” NSAA has made some snow at Kincaid within the past week or so, in addition to grooming the natural snow on most trails.
Thomas O’Harra (Alaska Pacific University) racing at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships last month at Kincaid Park in Anchorage, Alaska. (Photo: Ariana O’Harra)
In an effort to showcase the North Americans who competed at last week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2018 Nordic Junior/U23 World Championships in Goms, Switzerland, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 21-year-old Thomas O’Harra, of Alaska Pacific University, who represented the U.S. at his first U23 Worlds (after competing at three Junior Worlds).
Last week in Goms, O’Harra placed 43rd in the 15 k classic and 64th in the freestyle sprint.
***
“My full name is Thomas O’Harra, but you can call me Thomas.
I was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and I learned to ski at the age of 5.
I spent the time between U.S. nationals and Junior/U23 Worlds training and getting ready for school.
The chase for third place during men’s 50 k freestyle at the 2017 U.S. Distance Nationals last March in Fairbanks, Alaska. Thomas O’Harra (123) leads, followed by Patrick Caldwell (103), Adam Martin (105), Eric Packer (119), Tyler Kornfield, and Tad Elliott. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
This is my second time in Switzerland and seventh time racing internationally, and so far it’s been fantastic.
One difference I’ve noticed between Switzerland and the U.S. is the chocolate is much better.
Skiing and racing in the Alps is pretty great. Usually racing at altitude is fun for me because I enjoy steady grinding. There are many mountains around where I live.
One of the things I’m most excited about for Junior/U23 Worlds in Goms is the opportunity to race against this level of competition again.
One race I’m especially targeting there is the 30 k skiathlon (specifically, the second half).
I really hope I can chat/make friends with someone from Norway and ask them if they think Klaebo is as cool as most Americans.
My favorite thing at the breakfast where we are staying is I can eat as much as I’d like.
Fondue is bread and cheese, my friend. The cheese here is stinky. And the chocolate is milk.
If I had a totally free day here and didn’t have to worry about race fitness or training, I’d spend it taking pictures and taking the tram up to the mountaintops.
The best way to follow me on social media is on Instagram @thomasoharra.”
The women’s 10 k classic podium at 2018 U23 World Championships, with Russia’s Yana Kirpichenko (c) in first and Anna Zherebyateva (l) in second, and Switzerland’s Nadine Fähndrich (r) in third. (Photo: JWSC2018.ch)
(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Americans Lydia Blanchet and Ian Torchia.)
U23 World Championships (Goms, Switzerland): 10/15 k classic
Russia put two in the top three in both the women’s and men’s races on Wednesday at U23 World Championships in Goms, and for the second-straight race, Canada’s Katherine Stewart-Jones landed in the top 30.
In the women’s 10-kilometer classic, Russia’s Yana Kirpichenko pulled out a 13.9-second victory over fellow Russian Anna Zherebyateva, finishing with the winning time of 27:46.1 minutes. Switzerland’s Nadine Fähndrich returned to the podium for the second race in a row (after placing second in Monday’s skate sprint), finishing third, 29.6 seconds behind Kirpichenko.
In Monday’s sprint, Kirpichenko qualified fourth and ended up fifth in the final. She is a bronze medalist in the 15 k skiathlon at last year’s U23 Worlds.
Stewart-Jones, of the Canadian National U25 Team and National Team Development Centre (NTDC) Thunder Bay, started relatively early on Wednesday in bib 19 and ultimately placed 29th, 3:07.3 out of first. She sped up as the race progressed, from 40th at 2.4 k to 32nd at 5 k and up to 30th at 7.4 k.
So far in all five races she’s competed in over the last two years at U23 Worlds, Stewart-Jones has finished in the top 30. Her best result is 21st in last year’s 15 k skiathlon, and at the Junior Worlds level, she had a best individual result of 14th in the 10 k skiathlon in 2015.
American Lydia Blanchet (Dartmouth Ski Team) started fifth on Wednesday and ended up 30th (+3:10.4) after skiing in the top 30 throughout the race. Her Dartmouth teammate Lauren Jortberg followed in 34th (+3:28.9) and Nicole Schneider was 49th (+5:23.8). Julia Kern did not start.
For Blanchet, a Dartmouth junior, this week marked her first time racing at the Junior/U23 World Championships level. So far, she has placed 32nd in the freestyle sprint and now 30th in the classic distance race.
“This is my first time racing internationally, and I tried to go into the races with no expectations,” Blanchet explained in an email. “I was excited to get as close as I did to qualifying for the sprint, but it was definitely bittersweet—missing heats by 0.3 seconds left me regretting some of the smaller details of my race. Still, it is really exciting to know that I can compete on the world stage!”
After the sprint, she made a goal of finishing in the top 30.
“I really like hilly, rolling courses—especially ones with very technical downhills—and this course definitely fit that bill,” she wrote of the classic distance course. “I am really happy with my race, all things considered. I didn’t feel great while I was racing – my legs flooded pretty hard a few km’s in – but I think I did a good job of holding myself together and staying strong mentally. I know I have the ability to do even better, which is motivating and exciting. I am looking forward to get to ski head-on against the whole field in the skiathlon, and I’m excited to try and pick my way forward from my bib number. I’m also really excited to go home and race carnivals with the Dartmouth team.”
Canada’s Laura Leclair finished 40th (+4:20.9), Sophie Carrier-Laforte was 43rd (+4:19.2) and Maya MacIsaac-Jones 47th (+4:47.3) out of 53 finishers.
Nicole Bathe of the Midwest-based Central Cross Country (CXC) Team, who races for Great Britain, placed 37th (+3:43.8), for her second top 40 of the week after placing 39th in the skate sprint.
Norway’s Mattis Stenshagen racing to the win in the men’s 15 k classic at 2018 U23 World Championships in Goms, Switzerland. It was his first gold medal and podium at U23 Worlds (he earned silver two years ago in the 15 k freestyle at Junior Worlds and also gold in the relay that year). (Photo: JWSC2018.ch)
In the men’s 15 k classic that followed, Norway’s Mattis Stenshagen edged Russia’s Denis Spitsov by 4.8 seconds for the win in 36:28.3. Also for Russia, Ivan Yakimushkin placed third, 35.2 seconds back.
Canada’s Alexis Dumas, of the Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre (CNEPH) was the top North American in 31st, 2:51.7 out of first. He worked his way up from 40th at 5 k to 35th by 10 k, and finally just 0.2 seconds outside of 30th at the finish.
American Ian Torchia (U.S. Ski Team D-team/Northern Michigan University) followed in 32nd (+2:55.9) and Bill Harmeyer (University of Vermont) finished 39th (+3:43.3). Also for the U.S., Thomas O’Harra placed 43rd (+4:17.3) and Zak Ketterson was 57th (+5:37.6).
Torchia, an NMU junior, has been to two Junior Worlds in 2015 and 2016, but this marked his first U23’s.
“The jump from juniors to U23s is quite a leap. I missed the first year of being a U23 last year due to mono so getting back into international racing was a shock to the system,” he explained in an email.
As for his goals for the 10 k, he was hoping for a top 15 or 20, but moreover “wanted to race smart and feel good out on the course technically and physically,” Torchia wrote. “This was the hardest course I have ever raced with 600m of climbing throughout the 15k and I was excited to showcase my striding ability out there…
“However, from the first km I was in the pain cave (even though I didn’t open that fast!) and it was a fight the entire way,” he continued. “I need to work on staying technically strong when hurting and I did not do a good job of executing that today. The eventual second place Russian started as I was looping around for my 2nd lap so I was able to see and feel what a podium performance looks like. Going to have that image in my head throughout the next year!”
For Friday’s 30 k skiathlon, Torchia wrote that he would be “throwing all place goals out the window and focusing on skiing technically well and racing smart. Looking forward to channeling my last skiathlon in Kazakhstan which went really well [he placed 11th in the 20 k at 2015 Junior Worlds] and moving up from my starting position.”
Canada’s Gareth Williams finished 41st (+4:00.2) on Wednesday, Philippe Boucher was 45th (+4:22.7) and Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier 47th (+4:24.3) out of 63 finishers.
Norway’s Tiril Udnes Weng (second from l) and Switzerland’s Nadine Fähndrich (l) battle for first down the finishing stretch of the women’s final for the gold medal in the U23 World Championships skate sprint in Goms, Switzerland. Weng won it by eight-hundredths of a second. (Screenshot: Swiss Ski livestream)
(This article has been updated to include comments from Canada’s Laura Leclair, Katherine Stewart-Jones and Maya MacIsaac-Jones, as well as American Julia Kern.)
U23 World Championships (Goms, Switzerland): Freestyle sprints
On the first day of U23 World Championships racing in Goms, Switzerland, Norway’s Tiril Udnes Weng tallied her first individual world title in the women’s 1.2-kilometer freestyle sprint, winning the A-final in 2:50.24 minutes, just 0.08 seconds ahead of Swiss World Cup regular Nadine Fähndrich in second. Another World Cup skier, Natalia Nepryaeva of Russia finished third, 4.78 seconds out of first.
Weng, 21, is no stranger to World Cups, either. Just two days ago, she qualified 11th in the World Cup skate sprint in Seefeld, Austria, and went on to place 17th overall.
On Monday, she qualified second, 0.2 seconds off Fähndrich’s top qualifying time of 3:03.51. Weng then placed second to Nepryaeva in the fourth quarterfinal, a heat that included Canadians Maya MacIsaac-Jones and Katherine Stewart-Jones, both of the Canadian National U25 Team. While Sweden’s Moa Olsson finished third in that quarterfinal and advanced as a lucky loser based on time, the two Canadians did not. MacIsaac-Jones had previously qualified in 19th and Stewart-Jones in 22nd. Overall, MacIsaac-Jones placed 18th and Stewart-Jones was 23rd on the day.
In an email, MacIsaac-Jones explained her goal had been to make the semifinals.
“My strategy was to stick behind the top two girls, and hang on as best I could,” she wrote of her quarterfinal. “As Canadians we tend to be pretty good at downhilling, so I tried to use that to my advantage. I wasn’t quite able to stick with the top girls over the crest of the big hill, but I was happy to be fairly competitive in the heat overall!”
Still, the top 20 was her best result in her fourth trip to Junior/U23 Worlds.
“I’m disappointed of course to have missed out on making the semi-final, but I feel I did the best I could with what my body had on the day so I’m happy with that,” she continued. “It was of course exciting to get my first top-20 , but also disappointing because I felt like my body wasn’t moving as well as it was at trials a few weeks ago (I got sick right after arriving in Europe which probably didn’t help with that).”
For Stewart-Jones, this marks her fifth Junior/U23 World Championships.
“Over the years I have learned that it’s just another race, and that I don’t need to treat it any differently,” she wrote in an email on Tuesday. “Coming into te race I knew that I was in the best shape I’ve been all year, but I also had only done one skate sprint qualifier and no heats) this year so I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
Her goal had been to reach the semifinals and finish in the top 12.
“I am happy with how I skied the qualifier. The quarterfinal was tough,” Stewart-Jones wrote. “My teammate Maya and I ended up being in a really fast heat. I felt like I skied well technically but I don’t think I skied it how I needed to to have a chance of moving on. I tried holding on to the top 2 girls over the top of the first hill and ended up losing time on the second… I think it would have made more sense to lay back a bit over the top of the first to save some gas for the end.”
Stewart-Jones as well as MacIsaac-Jones came incredibly close to making Canada’s 2018 Olympic team based on their results at NorAm trials earlier this month.
“Overall, I am happy with how the body feels but disappointed with how I skied tactically,” Stewart-Jones wrote. “Not making the Olympic team was definitely more frustrating than it was disappointing. The whole ordeal was a bit exhausting, with first missing out on the 4th spot by less than a second and then being 12th on the list of [11] quota spots, it was really as close as it gets. I’m doing my best to fuel that frustration into positive energy so that I can perform at my best here. I am really looking forward to the next 2 races!!”
Norway’s Tiril Udnes Weng (l) and Switzerland’s Nadine Fähndrich in a photo finish for first in the women’s freestyle sprint final at U23 World Championships on Monday in Goms, Switzerland. Weng won it by eight-hundredths of a second. (Screenshot: Swiss Ski livestream)
Fähndrich won both her quarterfinal and semifinal leading up to the final, and Weng won the second semifinal by 0.59 seconds over Nepryaeva. In the final, Weng had the edge.
“I dream about winning, that’s the goal of my season,” Weng said during a post-race interview in the arena. “So it felt good to win.”
Three Canadians made the heats, with Laura Leclair of the Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre (CNEPH) qualifying in 26th then placing third in her quarterfinal, 2.75 seconds behind German winner Nadine Herrmann. That put Leclair 15th overall on the day in her first U23 World Championships race.
“As it is my first time at Worlds and my first year in a big category (U23) I was coming here for experience,” Leclair wrote in an email on Tuesday. “Experience to ski internationally, in Europe and against the best. Of course, I was hoping to perform but I never anticipated a top 15.
“Since I was seeded 30th, I was a little skeptical of making it through the qualifier,” she continued. “Qualifying 26th was a very exciting moment.”
In her quarterfinal, she said the pace didn’t pick up until about halfway up a long uphill out of the start, a climb that lasted for about a minute and a half.
“I was in a strong position (4th) but it was hard to make my way to the top,” Leclair wrote. “At the top of the big hill, a girl broke a pole and I was able to pass her and push over the hill into the downhill in order to come closer to the two girls in front. The last uphill felt like it was just give or take. Obviously, I chose the give option and gave it all I had into the finish. My heat wasn’t one of the fastest so I wasn’t a lucky loser but I am very happy of how I skied that course.
“This season has been full [of] surprise,” she concluded. “Just qualifying for Worlds in Canada was one! I am very happy that all my efforts and my dedication to the sport are paying off. For the rest of the week, I want to have some strong races, especially in the skiathlon and maybe surprise myself again.”
Two Americans qualified in the top 30 as well, with Lauren Jortberg (Dartmouth Ski Team) in 14th and Julia Kern (U.S. Ski Team/Dartmouth/Stratton Mountain School T2 Team) in 21st. Jortberg went on to finish fifth in her quarterfinal, 7.28 seconds behind German winner Pia Fink, and Kern finished sixth in Fähndrich’s quarterfinal, 22.28 seconds out of first. Overall, Jortberg placed 22nd and Kern was 27th.
In an email, Jortberg, who competed at U23 World Championships last year at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, explained her goal was to qualify for the heats.
“I honestly had no idea what to expect in Goms this year because Soldier Hollow felt just like US Nationals and the Super Junior National Qualifiers I’d been going to for the past ten years,” Jortberg, a Dartmouth College sophomore, wrote on Monday. “Obviously the competitors from all over the world was different, but was easy to visualize what is going to be like. The venues are similar in many ways because there are very few trees making it very open and a great spectators course.
“A big difference between Goms and Soldier Hollow is the little towns everywhere,” she continued. “The first ski we did here, we skied through the roads and through a town. There are ski trails everywhere here, we could even ski from the venue to the hotel (which is pretty far)! For the ski courses, I think Goms is one of the most challenging ski courses I’ve ever raced on. There are huge climbs are incredibly technical downhills! Its a one of the most exciting places I’ve ever raced, I love it so much.”
As for her racing on Monday, she wrote that she was “really psyched because I felt really strong and smooth in the qualifier! I was a bit bummed because I had to scrub a fair amount of speed skiing behind a girl I caught on the really technical downhill. The heats were really fun!! I had a great starting position and skied really smooth up the big climb. Then I took a very gutsy move on the downhill to sling shot into first place on the inside corner around the downhill turn. Unfortunately right after that I got caught up in a tangle on the last climb, and then I lost contact with the lead group. I was bummed to get caught up in a tangle, but it was really cool to be able to ski with these girls!”
Overall, Jortberg described the day as “pretty incredible.”
“My motto has always been that sprints are funny because ‘anything can happen’ for the good and bad!” she added. “I’m pretty excited for the rest of the week of racing even though this race was my main target. These courses play really strongly to my strengths so it should be fun to see what I can do!”
Kern explained in an email that she’s been sick for the past month so her main goal was to start Monday’s race. But for a long time leading up to this race, she had envisioned a top 10.
“Regardless of how I was feeling, one of my goals was to ski with good technique because that is something you can always control,” Kern wrote. “I was pretty content with my qualifier, given being sick. Skiing out there today, I had no idea if I would surprise myself and my illness wouldn’t impact my skiing or if I was just going to feel absolutely terrible. I was happy with how I placed given how I felt.”
In the heats, she wanted to stay in contact with leaders up the course’s big climb, then try to “drop the hammer on the downhill and last uphill.”
“However, my quarterfinal did not play out that way,” she wrote. “The pace was hot from the start, with bib #1 [Fähndrich] gunning from the start. I stuck with the heat until part way up the first climb, where I started to lose the leaders. I did not feel good and I had no energy so I was not able to hold the pace of the other competitors. I had considered not doing the heats because I felt pretty wiped after the qualifier, but the competitor inside me couldn’t just walk away from my favorite thing—sprint heats.
“Given my current health state, I feel okay about my day, but I am obviously bummed because this was the race I was looking forward to most this season,” Kern added. “I am looking forward to getting healthy in time to race the 10k classic, or at the very least the skiathlon!”
Also for the U.S., Lydia Blanchet missed qualifying by 0.32 seconds in 32nd, as did Canada’s Sophie Carrier-Laforte, who was 3.68 seconds out of the top 30 in 34th. American Nicole Schneider finished 44th.
The all-Norwegian men’s freestyle sprint podium on Monday at U23 World Championships in Goms, Switzerland, with Erik Valnes (c) in first, Jan Thomas Jenssen (l) in second and Even Northug (r) in third. (Screenshot: Swiss Ski livestream)
In the men’s 1.5 k skate sprint on Monday, Norway swept the men’s podium, with Erik Valnes winning his first World Championships medal in 2:56.38, Jan Thomas Jenssen finishing 0.24 seconds back in second, and Even Northug placing third (+6.34).
For the 21-year-old Valnes, this marked his first U23 World Championships (or Junior Worlds for that matter). He’s competed in two World Cup sprints this season, placing 22nd in the skate sprint earlier this month in Dresden, Germany, and 27th in a classic sprint in December in Lillehammer, Norway.
Valnes started Monday by winning the qualifying round in 3:00.18, by 0.77 seconds over Sweden’s Anton Persson, then won his quarterfinal and semifinal, both by nearly half a second, before besting his fellow Norwegians in the final.
“Fun to take the gold medal at the end,” Valnes said during a televised in-arena interview after the final. “It was my biggest goal this year, so it means a lot, of course. A gold medal is always good to have.”
No North American men qualified for the heats. Canada’s Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier placed 40th, Antoine Briand was 41st, Philippe Boucher 42nd, and Olivier Hamel 60th.
For the U.S., Bill Harmeyer finished 46th, Andrew Egger was 47th, Thomas O’Harra 64th, and Zak Ketterson 65th.
Left to right: Tyler Kornfield (APU), Reese Hanneman (APU) and Ben Saxton (SMS) as the top three finishers in the men’s 1.6 k classic sprint final on Monday, the last day of 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — No two races are exactly alike, the saying goes, and there’s a lot of truth to this cliché. But if you step back just a little bit, two race days can start to look awfully similar to one another.
For example, for the second time this week, a Hanneman brother won the sprint qualifier, Reese Hanneman won the final, and Alaska Pacific University (APU) put three athletes in the final and two on the podium on a perfect day for sprinting at Kincaid Park. That was the story on Monday, when Reese Hanneman led teammate Tyler Kornfield and Ben Saxton of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team across the line in the men’s classic sprint at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships. But it was also the case on Friday, when Reese was first and Kornfield was third in the freestyle sprint. It’s been a good week for the Hanneman family.
The classic sprint, the final race of this year’s U.S. nationals, had a slightly more subdued feel than the three that preceded it.
The fields were 50 percent smaller; a combined 160 athletes skied in the qualifier on Monday compared to 337 on Friday, as many juniors opted out of a race whose results did not bear on qualification for international trips and championship teams, and some athletes had already left town. The spectator numbers were smaller, measuring in the dozens rather than the hundreds after three days of packed parking lots and raucous crowds, as the first day of school following winter break sent local students back to the classroom. And the athletes were tired, too, after a full week of racing.
“I was just running on fumes out there, especially after the 30 k yesterday,” fifth-place finisher Kevin Bolger, of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) told FasterSkier after the men’s final.
But cross-country skiers are nothing if not resilient, and so, just after 10 a.m., Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess (Bend Endurance Academy) once again led 95 men out onto the qualifying course at 15-second intervals. The temperature was 10 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the display on the stadium scoreboard. The sun had yet to rise and start burning off the morning’s dense fog. It felt cold.
“It’s a very quintessential Alaskan day,” women’s domestic podium bronze medalist Becca Rorabaugh (APU) said after. “It’s like an Alaska temperature, and I feel like a lot of the Alaskan teams have great skis, it’s hard-wax skiing, and it’s just a classic race day. It’s very Alaskan.”
Hanneman Brothers Headline Qualifier
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APU skiers did very well in the time-trial portion of the morning, which has added, if not exclusive, significance for Olympic qualifying purposes slightly a month before the 2018 Winter Olympics begin in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Reese Hanneman, 28, who grew up in Fairbanks, covered the brand-new, 1.6-kilometer sprint course in 3:21.93, a time good for the fastest qualifying mark on the day. And he did so by nearly three seconds. Next best was his APU teammate and younger brother, Logan Hanneman, 2.84 seconds back. Third was his APU teammate Tyler Kornfield, 4.23 seconds off Reese’s mark.
Alaska Pacific University’s Reese Hanneman during the men’s 1.6-kilometer classic sprint heats on Monday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska. Hanneman won the qualifier and eventually, the final for the national title.
In light of the bonus points awarded for U.S. nationals podium performances, FasterSkier’s unofficial calculations put Logan first on the 2018 Olympic Winter Games domestic sprint qualifying list, with 80 points (45 for first at U.S. nationals and 35 for second), and Reese second, with 71 points (45 for first and 26 for third).
In Monday’s classic sprint, Benjamin Ogden (SMS) was fourth in qualifying, 5.12 seconds back. Blackhorse-von Jess was fifth (+5.16), Zak Ketterson of Northern Michigan University sixth (+7.56), Cole Morgan (SVSEF) seventh (+7.61), David Norris of APU eighth (+7.85), Saxton ninth (+7.88), and Bolger tenth (+9.09).
Just like the skate sprint, Brian Gregg, of Central Cross Country (CXC), Loppet Nordic Racing (LNR) and Team Gregg, was the final athlete to make the heats, 16.53 seconds back in 30th.
“I would say all the top sprinting guys, everyone’s focusing kind of on the qualifier, more so than normal,” Reese said on Friday after he had qualified third in the skate sprint. “There’s no margin for error, and you just have to ski it absolutely as fast as possible. It’s definitely different tactics than in the heats… but if you’re fast, you’re fast.”
Reese Hanneman Wins Everything En Route to Final
On Monday, Reese was pretty darn fast. He won his quarterfinal, the first of the day, as well as his semifinal, the first of the day, to make the final with the maximum amount of rest possible. And then, of course, he won the final as well for his fourth national title — and second of 2018 nationals.
In the day’s first quarterfinal, Reese was in the lead by the first turn at 200 meters, followed closely by Bolger. The two of them had a big lead by the time they were coming off Gong Hill. The rest of the field caught up to them somewhat by the finish, but Reese and Bolger still took the top two spots with relative ease.
In the second quarterfinal, U18 skier Ogden led the field into the first turn, with Morgan and Bill Harmeyer, of the University of Vermont, right behind. Ogden was still into the lead coming back into the stadium, but Kris Freeman (Caldwell Sport) had caught up into third. Coming into the finish, Freeman won a four-way lunge for second over Thomas O’Harra (APU), Ben Lustgarten (CGRP), and Harmeyer. O’Harra’s third place in a fast heat was good enough to send him on to the semifinals with the day’s first lucky loser spot.
In the third quarterfinal, Andrew Egger (Colby College) took the lead out of the stadium, but it was Blackhorse-von Jess in the top spot by the time they came back. Blackhorse-von Jess entered the finishing stretch with a 10-meter lead. Ketterson took second, 1.2 seconds back, with Egger another second back by the finish.
From left to right: Logan Hanneman (APU), Like Jager (APU), Ben Saxton (SMS Elite Team) Nick Michaud (BSF), Scott Patterson (APU), and Jack Hegman (SVSEF) at the start of their quarterfinal in the men’s 1.6-kilometer classic sprint on Monday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
In the fourth quarterfinal, Saxton and Logan Hanneman left the stadium with the early lead, alongside a quick-starting Luke Jager (APU), one of three U18 skiers who made the senior heats. It was Saxton in the lead coming back to the stadium two minutes later, with Logan leading Jager. Saxton came into the finishing stretch with a healthy lead, but Logan made a powerful move to pull around him and come alongside. Saxton won the heat by 0.37 seconds over Logan. Yesterday’s medalist, Eric Packer (APU), was out in third.
The fifth quarterfinal was heavy on local pride, with three APU skiers and a fourth from University of Alaska Anchorage. Erik Axelsson (Montana State University) led Kornfield and Logan Diekmann (University of Utah) into the first uphill. But two minutes later it was all APU, with Kornfield, David Norris and Forrest Mahlen with a sizeable lead on the rest of the field. Kornfield took the win; Mahlen came around Norris for second, but Norris moved on with the day’s other lucky loser spot. Axelsson was nearly five seconds back of Norris in fourth.
In the first semifinal, Blackhorse-von Jess flashed his ski speed and momentum by dropping into a tuck within the first 200-meter straightaway in the stadium, then still led the field over the top of the first, smaller climb. Ogden and Reese Hanneman were nearby. When they returned to the stadium, Reese had a 20-meter lead over Ogden on the downhill. As happened throughout the day, though, that lead shrank to half that size by the time the skiers entered the finishing stretch. But Reese still had the lead, which he held to the finish. Bolger was second, 0.32 seconds back. Ogden was relegated for obstruction.
The second semifinal featured a predominantly blue color scheme, between four suits from APU and the blue accents on Saxton’s SMS suit. Saxton again led out of the stadium, with Ketterson and Kornfield close by. By the time they came off Gong Hill two minutes later, it was Kornfield in the lead, with Ketterson close behind him. Kornfield led into the finishing stretch, but Ketterson overtook him to place first in the heat.
Behind them, Logan Hanneman made a strong push for third. He closed down Saxton, edging him by 0.04 seconds for third behind Ketterson and Kornfield. In practice, both Logan and Saxton advanced to the final as lucky losers; Norris’s fifth place in this heat would have won the day’s first semifinal by nearly a second.
Reese Hanneman Wins Final, Again
Slightly after 2 p.m., six men lined up in the south end of the Kincaid Stadium. From racer’s left to right, it was Logan, Kornfield, Ketterson, Reese, Bolger, and Saxton in the starting blocks. The sun was out, the temperature was in the high teens, and the course was firm and fast. There was no wind. Conditions were once more basically perfect.
The field had a clean start at the sound of the starter’s pistol, double poling in six separate lanes over the first 200 meters slightly downhill through the stadium. As the racers turned right to go up the first hill it was the Hanneman brothers in the lead, with Kornfield immediately behind them and Ketterson to Kornfield’s right. The pack double poled up the first part of the climb, then strode up and over the top of the hill.
A quick descent followed, then a high-speed, double-pole section leading to the start of the course’s main hill. Reese pushed the pace going up the hill, and not everyone was able to respond.
“I basically started at the base of the big climb,” Reese recalled of the 24-meter vertical gain B-climb in the middle of the sprint course. “I just kind of led in the climb and then just threw down the hammer and just tried to drop everyone going up that thing, and just continue to pound it over the top and take it all the way home.”
The largest climb on the course is “tough for classic skiing,” Bolger explained. “That hill definitely adds a different dynamic to your whole approach to every heat you do. To be able to ski up that hill four times, strong, it’s a challenge.” (Bolger added that he didn’t think anyone would have attempted to double pole a hill of that size, saying that “it’s a challenging enough hill to where it’s going to rule out double poling for anyone.” But just to be sure, race organizers placed a no-double-pole technique zone up the entire length of the climb for both the qualifier and the heats.)
By the time the field descended the waterfall downhill back into the stadium, Reese had a substantial gap over Kornfield, who in turn had a sizeable lead over Ketterson.
Kornfield made up some of this gap going down and around the final 180-degree turn, but Reese still entered the final straightaway with a sizeable lead. Saxton had moved into third, ahead of Ketterson, by the time they reached the 100 meters to go mark.
Reese Hanneman (1) of Alaska Pacific University celebrates his second sprint title of the 2018 L.L.Bean U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships on Monday with a win in the classic sprint final, just ahead of teammate Tyler Kornfield (r) in Anchorage, Alaska. Ben Saxton (SMS Elite Team) rounded out the podium in third. (Photo: Michael Dinneen Photography)
Kornfield barreled down the slight uphill of the finishing straight with grace and fury, closing in on Reese with each extension of his lanky frame. But he was still in the same finishing lane as his APU teammate, getting closer to Reese, but still immediately behind him. With roughly 20 meters to go, Kornfield moved one lane to his left, then lunged as he approached the finish. But Reese’s lead was still too much, and he crossed the finish with his second sprint national title of the week.
Reese’s time for the final was 3:20.62. Kornfield was 0.2 seconds back in second.
Some distance behind them, Saxton crossed the finish line in third, 4.78 seconds back of Reese, with a slight lead over Logan and Bolger. Ketterson finished sixth, 6.83 seconds back, in his second sprint final of the week.
“He is obviously on super-good form right now,” Reese continued. “I just have to know that I have a little more speed than he does. … But he’s really cranking right now. He is skiing great, but it definitely motivated me to know to just drive that thing so hard in the final.”
The second national title in as many races was “an answer to a lot of prayers from this morning and in the heats,” Reese said. “I just feel really lucky and stoked that I could put it together and be in such good form right now in January. It was a great day, an amazing day.”
Tyler Kornfield leads his APU teammate Forrest Mahlen in the men’s 1..6 k classic sprint on Monday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
Although Kornfield was second today, he “probably got the all-around performance of the week for the men,” Reese said of his teammate. Kornfield reached the podium in every race this week save the opening 15 k freestyle individual start, where he was 14th.
Kornfield’s race series was “a dream come true a little bit,” Kornfield told FasterSkier, “a little unexpected, but I knew I had it in me. The start of the season didn’t go as planned, I got sick for a month before it started, I also sprained my wrist for another month and so I was pretty frustrated with the lack of performances, but I knew there was something there and it was just a matter of time.”
“In this sport there are a lot of ups and downs,” he continued, “and it’s really easy to get caught up in the downs and not realize that just because you have a few bad races doesn’t mean you lose your ability to succeed, so just have to keep your head up and keep trying and hoping for the doors to open.”
When it comes to possibilities for potential Olympic selection, “I don’t know anything,” Kornfield said. “I can let you know in a couple weeks.”
Mathematically speaking, Kornfield currently ranks second to APU teammate Scott Patterson on the most recent version of the Olympic selection distance points list, which reflects both distance races from U.S. nationals.
For now, Kornfield plans to leave Alaska on Tuesday (that is, today) for a previously planned trip to Austria. He plans to work out precisely what races he will contest soon; he had planned on racing a Ski Classics marathon, but is currently uncertain where he will be racing next.
While Kornfield’s week at U.S. nationals exceeded his expectations, Monday’s third-place finisher, Saxton, didn’t have the week he was hoping for.
“I came here, like many people, with goals of heading to Korea and representing the country racing in the Games,” Saxton said after the final. “I fell short of that this week and that’s nothing to be ashamed of, but I was really disappointed I wasn’t in the mix as much as I would have hoped to be. This week was difficult because I don’t feel like I put forth a representative effort.”
Saxton was quick to offer sincere congratulations to the skiers who had had more success this week.
“I am incredibly proud to know and am happy for Logan and Scott and Reese and all of the other champions from this week,” he said, “and incredibly happy that those are going to be the skiers going to over to represent us. I think it’s just, from a personal standpoint, people can understand I was disappointed not to feel like I had my absolutely best days out there, but I am really proud to end the day on a podium, representing the hard work that all my teammates and my coach and the program at Stratton have done all year, and to reward them for that work and that effort is a great feeling.”
Saxton also enjoyed the “playground mentality” of the sprint day.
“I think a lot of the times racing we can get lost in the technical aspects of it,” he mused, “but one of the reasons I love racing heats so much is, it just kind of reminds me of being back in elementary school and pointing to something in the far end of the playground, basketball hoop, or whatever it is, and just saying, ‘Let me race you there.’ And there’s no rules, there’s no anything, it’s just the feeling of you and the other person just going all out, and that’s a beautiful way to live and that’s a beautiful way to compete, and sprints are a wonderful thing like that.”
Strong Alaska Performances Throughout the Week
What a difference a year makes. One year ago this week, in the classic sprint at Soldier Hollow, APU didn’t put any athletes into the heats for the first time in at least a decade, done in by a combination of illness, seeding, weather conditions, and wax choice. This time around, head coach Erik Flora’s squad sent eight men through to the heats, six to the semifinal, three to the final, and two to the podium.*
The classic sprint capped a successful week for APU, and for Alaskan skiers more generally. Caitlin Patterson, who skis for CGRP, took all four gold medals for the women. Then APU skiers took all four golds on the men’s side, between Scott Patterson on Wednesday, Reese on Friday and Monday, and Kornfield on Sunday. Chelsea Holmes, Kornfield again, Hannah Halvorsen, Rosie Frankowski, Eric Packer, Becca Rorabaugh, and Kornfield again also stepped on the domestic podium for APU. All told, that’s 15 out of a possible 24 medals going to athletes who hail from or ski in Alaska.
(Although if you slice the data another way, there were also seven out of 12 possible medals in women’s races won by CGRP, between Patterson’s quadfecta and Kaitlynn Miller’s trifecta.)
This week’s results “just show the depth” of the team, Reese told FasterSkier after his race. “It speaks to the hard work of our coaches, especially Erik Flora. That guy will not be outworked, he just puts so much into us. I’m just really happy that we can have a week like this and go four for four in the men’s with APU, just to show that what he is doing works and how hard he works for us. … To get to this point that we can do that and crush all week and just give them a good show is really rewarding.”
“We’re all Alaska born-and-raised,” Reese added of the APU men. “Can’t beat that.”
*(Full disclosure, this reporter skis on the APU Masters team, and receives direct coaching from Flora roughly once a year at Masters Camp.)
Jessie Diggins making her decisive move during the women’s 30k freestyle at the 2017 U.S. Distance Nationals in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
U.S. Distance Nationals (Fairbanks, Alaska): 30/50 k freestyle mass starts
On Sunday in Fairbanks, Alaska U.S. Distance Nationals came to a conclusion for the women as they contested a 30-kilometer skate mass start.
Spoiler alert: Diggins swept the week.
Marked from the start was Jessie Diggins of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team and the U.S. Ski Team (USST). Diggins is coming off a World Cup campaign where she placed sixth overall and won a sprint silver and team sprint bronze at the 2017 World Championships in Lahti, Finland.
Her overseas haul became a bit heavier this week in Fairbanks: Diggins placed first in the skiathlon, first in the freestyle sprint, and first with the SMS Elite Team mixed relay squad.
No doubt Diggins remains in form as she closed out her season on Sunday. She was the skier to mark as this much was a certainty: Diggins would at some point turn the pace-setting screws.
Early into the race, seven skiers separated themselves by a gap of approximately 12 seconds at the 5 k mark. (The 5 k split times were taken as the women completed their single lap of the South Tower Course Loop. The remainder of the race’s 25 k were comprised of three 8.3 k loops.) Speeding along in a pace line were Diggins, Chelsea Holmes of Alaska Pacific University (APU), Caitlin Gregg of Team Gregg/Loppet Nordic Racing, Kikkan Randall (APU/USST), Annie Hart (SMS Elite), Caitlin Patterson (Craftsbury Green racing Project), Sophie Caldwell (SMS Elite), and Rosie Frankowski (APU).
“I wanted to take the opportunity at the start to work on my pack skiing, and because it’s the end of the season, it should be fun,” Diggins said after the race on the phone. “Around the 12-13 k mark, I decided to start upping the pace a little bit. And then I kind of slowly pulled away. Once I had made a gap, I said, ‘OK, now I need to stick with this,’ and settled into my pace.”
What was once a group streamlining thinned as the race progressed. Note: Diggins soon began to charge ahead solo. At the second split, the Diggins gap was 17 seconds on Randall, Holmes and Gregg.
Patterson at that point was skiing in fifth, roughly 46 seconds back. While Frankowski, Hart, and Caldwell trailed Diggins by nearly one minute and thirty seconds.
Chelsea Holmes leads Kikkan Randall as they protect their podium spots during the women’s 30 k freestyle at the 2017 U.S. Distance Nationals. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
Just as Diggins separated herself, Randall and Holmes eventually pulled away from Gregg. The Randall-Holmes duo made it a two-skier race for second and third. They minimized their loss to Diggins up front and created enough of a buffer to those chasing from the back that minus a gear-breaking fall or a tumble-induced injury, they were a lock for the remaining podium spots.
Diggins secured her third individual and fourth win of the week as she won the U.S. Distance Nationals 30 k skate in 1:20:55.1 hours. Randall followed 1 minute and 37.2 seconds back in second and Holmes placed third (+1:50.4).
“At the end of the season it is one of those things where you need a little bit of luck, you need to be healthy, and everyone is in totally different places,” Diggins said. “I think it is a little unfair to compare how we ski right here to how we would ski during the season. That said, I have been working on a lot of things and working hard and so it is nice to have all that hard work show through during the races.”
Unofficially, with Holme’s third place, she’ll be the overall SuperTour winner on the women’s side. As the overall winner, the APU skier will earn World Cup starts for Period 1 of the 2017/2018 World Cup.
Liz Stephen (Burke Mountain Academy/USST) did not start the race, citing the onset of illness.
The junior women, who began their race in a group mass start with the senior women, raced a 15 k skate competition. Nicole Schneider of Northern Michigan University (NMU) placed first in 38:22.5 minutes. Margaret Gellert (Alaska Winter Stars) skied to second (+3.3), Anna Darnell (University of Alaska Fairbanks) was third (+30.9).
Men’s 50 k freestyle podium from the 2017 U.S. Distance Nationals in Fairbanks Alaska. Scott Patterson (c) from APU placed first, Brian Gregg (l) skiing for Team Gregg second, and Eric Packer (r) also from APU was third. (Photo:Max Kaufman)
In the men’s 50 k that followed, APU’s Scott Patterson racked up his second win of the week, after winning the skiathlon, finishing first in the 50 k freestyle mass start race in a time of 2:19:36.3 hours.
The chase for third place during men’s 50 k freestyle at the 2017 U.S. Distance Nationals in Fairbanks, Alaska. Thomas O’Harra leads, followed by Patrick Caldwell (103), Adam Martin (105), Eric Packer (119), Tyler Kornfield, and Tad Elliott. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
While Ski and Snowboard Club Vail’s (SSCV) Tad Elliott set the pace for the first 10 k, Patterson who was position just behind Elliott, eventually took over the lead before another 5 k. From then on, Patterson presided as the pace setter. He was followed closely by Stratton’s Paddy Caldwell (USST D-team), Team Gregg’s Brian Gregg (Loppet Nordic Racing), NMU’s Adam Martin, and Canada’s Michael Somppi (NTDC Thunder Bay).
Once given the reins, however, Patterson didn’t let up. He continued to dictate the lead for the remainder of the race, besting Gregg as the runner-up by 3:19.9 minutes.
Moving his way up during the second half of the race was APU’s Eric Packer, who finished third (+4:14.2). Another APU skier, Tyler Kornfield, crossed 22.4 seconds later in fourth (+4:36.6). In a photo finish, Caldwell placed fifth (+4:37.6) ahead of Martin in sixth (+4:37.6).
Four APU skiers finished in the top 10, with Thomas O’Harra placing seventh (+5:24.5). Elliott finished eighth (+6:52.1), Norway’s Håkon Hjelstuen ninth (+7:00.7) and Somppi 10th (+8:13.4).
In the junior men’s 20 k freestyle mass start competition, Alaska Winter Stars Gus Schumacher won the event in a time of 54:03.3. Ti Donaldson racing for the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks/Fairbanks Cross-Country placed second, just 5.4 seconds after Schumacher. Rounding out the junior men’s podium was Northern Michigan University’s Lars Sønsterud in third (+2:05.2).
University of Alaska Anchorage freshman Hailey Swirbul races through the stadium at Birch Hill Ski Area in Fairbanks, Alaska, in the Alaska Nordic Cup on Nov 19. (Photo: Zachary Hall/UAA Athletics)
FAIRBANKS, Alaska – Scott Patterson is on a roll. The Alaska Pacific University (APU) skier has now won all of the ski races he entered this year – and over half the ski races held in this country in the 2016/2017 winter to date– after picking up wins on both days of racing in the Alaska Nordic Cup at Birch Hill Ski Area in Fairbanks, Alaska, this past weekend, Nov. 19-20.
APU’s Jessica Yeaton was also a double winner on the weekend. And in the collegiate ranks, the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) maintained its hold on the Alaska Nordic Cup against the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA).
Skiers from both universities competed with a new lease on athletic life, after learning earlier this month that the ski programs would not be cut at either UAA or UAF.
The Alaska Nordic Cup is an early season, relatively low-key (but nonetheless International Ski Federation (FIS) sanctioned) competition between Alaska’s only two NCAA nordic programs. Prior to this season, in which UAF switched its conference affiliation from the Central Collegiate Ski Association to the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association (RMISA), it marked the only time outside U.S. nationals that Alaska’s college skiers might compete head to head until, potentially, NCAA Skiing Championships in March.
The Nordic Cup is held each year in November, alternating between the Fairbanks and Anchorage areas. 2016 marked the 13th annual Nordic Cup competition. The UAF Nanooks enjoy a healthy historical advantage over their southern rivals, the UAA Seawolves, entering the weekend with an 8-3-1 all-time record (eight wins, three losses, and one tie) in the first 12 years of the dual meet. Scoring is typically based on an individual race on Saturday plus a relay on Sunday. Lowest combined time wins.
But despite a strong team showing from UAF that carried the Nanooks to victory, and some standout individual performances from UAA, it was APU that owned the top steps of the podium throughout the weekend.
APU’s Becca Rorabaugh (l) and Jessica Yeaton (r) at U.S. SuperTour Spring Series in March 2016. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
In the women’s race, Jessica Yeaton, an Australian national-team member who competes for Australia internationally but lives in Anchorage and trains with APU, finished Saturday’s 6 kilometer freestyle interval start in 16:52.1, skiing smoothly in relatively cold and slow conditions. APU’s other entrant, Fairbanks native Becca Rorabaugh, finished second, 34.1 seconds back. Third went to Hailey Swirbul, 1:27 back, in the UAA freshman’s college racing debut. UAF skiers swept the next four spots, led by senior Nichole Bathe, the day’s final starter, in fourth.
Yeaton appreciated the early season racing opportunity. “It was awesome to race up here on good snow,” she wrote to FasterSkier. Yeaton added, “The conditions were thin but still provided a really good opportunity for a race effort. We are lucky to have these early races to help prepare for the Supertour in a couple weeks – the [Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks] did a great job making them happen despite the lack of snow!”
Swirbul, a Colorado native, echoed Yeaton’s praise for the venue and host club: “Thanks to Fairbanks for using their limited snow and delivering excellent (all things considered) courses and conditions for us to open our season this past weekend,” she wrote in a Sunday email to FasterSkier.
Swirbul added, reflecting on the sensation of putting on a race bib once more: “As usual, it’s an interesting feeling to return to an on-snow race scene after long summer months without one… nerves, waxing, morning jogs and stretching, race strategy, etc. I sure enjoyed being back at it this weekend! I was satisfied with my and my team’s skiing this weekend, considering it is only November, and think we have great things ahead of us. We are all revving our engines preparing for a long winter ahead, ready to establish a new name for our team with many young skiers, and meanwhile prove to the president of our university that we are more than worthy of being part of a long lasting ski team at UAA! I am very excited for what the season has to bring for UAA.”
Bathe, originally from Madison, Wis., was likewise pleased by the strong first-day showing of the UAF team. “I thought today went well especially for our whole women’s team,” she wrote in an email on Saturday. “To have four women right in there is always awesome and makes us excited for the season! It’s nice to see all the summer training pay off and start getting back into race mode again.”
On the men’s side, the top-seeded Patterson took advantage of his position as the final starter to ski to the victory over several of his APU teammates, including David Norris in second.
“Snow instead of ice made coming to Fairbanks [from Anchorage] for races an easy decision,” Patterson wrote. “Although I hadn’t raced here since high school, I have always enjoyed the Birch Hill trails. During the race, I had to remember how to race a little after getting some early splits that I was even with David and knowing his fitness through the summer and fall. Overall it was a great chance to chase out some early season rust and get ready for important races.”
APU teammates and brothers Logan Hanneman (7) and Reese Hanneman (4) lead teammate Tyler Kornfield (17) during their quarterfinal of the men’s 1.5 k classic sprint at 2016 U.S. nationals in Houghton, Mich.
Patterson completed the 8.25 k skate race in 19:36.3. Norris finished 16.7 seconds behind him. Tyler Kornfield rounded out the APU podium, finishing 1:03 back of Patterson.
Patterson and Kornfield grew up in Anchorage. Norris is a Fairbanks native. Their good-natured geographic rivalry stretches back a decade or more, to when they were all competing in Alaska high school skiing. (“We hated the Anchorage guys,” Fairbanks skier Reese Hanneman told the Alaska Dispatch News “with more amusement than venom” in a summer profile. “We were like the rednecks from Fairbanks, out skiing in the woods, going up against the city boys.”)
APU skiers took the top five spots on the day, with Anchorage skier Thomas O’Harra in fourth and Fairbanks local Logan Hanneman in fifth.
The top college skier was UAF junior Max Donaldson, another Fairbanks product, in sixth, 1:37 back of Patterson. The top UAA skier was sophomore Toomas Kollo, from Estonia, 2:35 back in ninth.
At the end of the first day of racing, the combined times of the top three UAA women put them just 23.5 seconds behind the top three UAF skiers. On the men’s side, UAF created a larger gap of 2:14.2 over UAA’s combined times, giving UAF an advantage of roughly 2:38 heading into Sunday’s relays.
Sunday saw more of the same: APU took the easy win, Swirbul shined for UAA, and UAF used its depth and balanced performances to take the overall victory.
APU entered only one team in the relay, but it included the top two finishers from each of Saturday’s individual races. Unsurprisingly, the team of Patterson, Rorabaugh, Norris, and Yeaton posted the fastest time in all four legs of the 4 x 4 k skate relay, finishing in 46:57.4.
UAA skiers Hailey Swirbul (l) and Casey Wright (r), on the UAA campus in October 2016. (Photo: Gavin Kentch)
The top college team was Nanooks A (Donaldson, Sarissa Lammers, Michael Fehrenbach, and Bathe), finishing just over three minutes behind APU in 50:10.1. Donaldson and Fehrenbach posted the fastest male collegiate times of the day in their legs. Seawolves ‘A’ (Kollo, Swirbul, Marcus Deuling, and Casey Wright) was less than eight seconds behind the Nanooks in 50:18. Swirbul was again the fastest collegiate woman on the day, while Wright similarly recorded the day’s fastest anchor leg.
Nanooks ‘B’ was next, followed by Seawolves ‘B’. Ultimately, the time gaps from day one grew, and UAF finished with a 4:08 cumulative advantage over UAA, taking home its ninth Nordic Cup overall and second in a row.
UAF nordic coach Nick Crawford said in a Sunday press release, “The Seawolves had a good day today and it was very exciting to watch the race unfold. The margin between our two teams was much smaller today, so it made it that every skier had to race hard which isn’t always the case in relays. The victory was for sure a team effort today with both the men and the women putting together good races. We really enjoy the collaboration we have with our Anchorage rivals.”
UAF skier Anna Darnell expressed similar sentiments, telling the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, in light of the recent political rollercoaster of threatened cuts to both schools’ ski programs, “We feel a lot closer to the UAA team after this.”
Meanwhile, at the top of the results sheet, Patterson’s brace of victories on the weekend, combined with his easy victory at the Race to the Outhouse #1 outside Palmer, Alaska, earlier this month, meant that the APU skier has now won every single race he has entered this winter, as well as 60 percent of all the ski races held in this country this year. (The Mat-Su Ski Club held a pair of 5 k skate and classic races at Hatcher Pass on Nov. 19 and 20.)
“I’ll have to get a time turner for the coming weekends,” Patterson wrote in an email as he reflected on his current track record, “so I can continue to win every single race in the U.S.”
This particular race was slightly more competitive than the Race to the Outhouse. FasterSkier unofficially calculates the USSA race penalty (a measure of the strength of the field) for Saturday’s men’s race as an impressive 29.03, well below the USSA minimum penalty of 35 for a College Event or Regional Scored Event. (The penalty for the women’s race was unofficially a higher, but still respectable, 60.52.)
Reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of NCAA skiing, competitors in the 45-racer FIS/USSA field hailed from at least eight foreign countries, including Canada, Norway, Germany, Australia, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Estonia. They were joined by roughly 200 more skiers in the day’s other races, ranging from kindergartners in snowsuits who skied a 500 meter course without poles to the 60- and 70-year-old age brackets in the community 4 k race.
The strong community support, and college athletes who had finished their race but stayed to cheer on their teammates, combined to make the atmosphere as electric as can be found for American cross-country skiing. Dozens of spectators lined a late-race climb back up to the stadium, where racers were met by an even larger, frenzied crowd cheering them on.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks ski team poses with the trophy for the Alaska Nordic Cup at Birch Hill Ski Area in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Nov. 20, 2016. (Photo: Nick Crawford/UAF Athletics)
Conditions were, as the athletes acknowledged, undeniably snow rather than ice (as on the Anchorage trails these days), but unfortunately not that much of it. Fairbanks has seen approximately five inches of total snowfall so far this winter. The impeccably maintained trails at Birch Hill meant that racers found a base of roughly two inches of compacted snow, with some leaves and sporadic dirt showing through, but no rocks. Most skiers in the FIS race competed on their prior-generation race skis.
Although the official high for the day at the Fairbanks airport was a barely FIS-legal 1° F (-17 degrees Celsius), temperatures at the relatively elevated Birch Hill were comparably temperate, hovering around 10° F (-12 C) throughout the afternoon.
At least in the sunlit stadium. Racing at Birch Hill on clear and cool winter days can be an oddly hellish experience. Not because it is unenjoyable – far from it; the trails are a delight to ski, and the snowy birch forest is sublimely beautiful– but because it evokes the sensation of voyaging into the underworld and back again. The stadium is in the sun, and elevated, and relatively warm; many trails drop down leaving the stadium, sending the skier into the realm of dark and cold. And so one goes from light to dark, sun to shade, warmth to cold, and back again with each new trail, the stadium become a modern-day Cumae (entrance to the underworld in classical mythology) and the skier Heracles or Odysseus, re-enacting the journey between worlds.
RMISA college racing resumes early next year with the Utah Invitational at Soldier Hollow on Jan. 7.
University of Alaska Anchorage skier Casey Wright skis in the Alaska Nordic Cup in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Nov. 20, 2016. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
Alaska Pacific University skier Jessica Yeaton skis the anchor leg of the winning relay team in the Alaska Nordic Cup in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Nov. 20, 2016. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
University of Alaska Fairbanks skier Alex Eckert skis in the Alaska Nordic Cup in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Nov. 20, 2016. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
University of Alaska Fairbanks skier Alex Eckert skis in the Alaska Nordic Cup in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Nov. 19, 2016. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
University of Alaska Fairbanks skiers Sarissa Lammers (464) and Hannah Rowland (462) ski in the Alaska Nordic Cup in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Nov. 19, 2016. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
Second-place finisher Alaska Pacific University skier Becca Rorabaugh approaches the finish line of the Alaska Nordic Cup in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Nov. 19, 2016. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
First-place finisher Alaska Pacific University skier Scott Patterson approaches the finish line of the Alaska Nordic Cup in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Nov. 19, 2016, ahead of UAF skier Max Donaldson (494). (Photo: Max Kaufman)
Alaska Pacific University skier David Norris skis the third leg of the winning relay team in the Alaska Nordic Cup in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Nov. 20, 2016. (Photo: Max Kaufman)
Thomas O’Harra won the day after his 19th birthday, and Brooke Dunnagan, Katharine Ogden and Emily Hyde repeated as 2015 champions on the third day of racing at U.S. Junior Nationals, in which the 5-, 10- and 15-kilometer classic mass starts took place on Friday at Auburn Ski Club in Soda Springs, Calif.
Below are some podium and race photos, courtesy of Mark Nadell/MacBeth Graphics (minus the U18 and U20 women). Check out his complete gallery here.
Junior Nationals wrap up Saturday with the women’s 3 x 3 k and men’s 3 x 5 k classic relays. Live timing | Live stream
The U16 women’s podium from Friday’s 5 k classic mass start at 2015 U.S. Junior Nationals at Auburn Ski Club in Soda Springs, Calif. (Photo: Mark Nadell/MacBeth Graphics)
The U16 men’s podium from Friday’s 5 k classic mass start at 2015 U.S. Junior Nationals at Auburn Ski Club in Soda Springs, Calif. (Photo: Mark Nadell/MacBeth Graphics)
The U18 men’s podium from Friday’s 10 k classic mass start at 2015 U.S. Junior Nationals at Auburn Ski Club in Soda Springs, Calif. (Photo: Mark Nadell/MacBeth Graphics)
The U20 men’s podium from Friday’s 15 k classic mass start at 2015 U.S. Junior Nationals at Auburn Ski Club in Soda Springs, Calif. (Photo: Mark Nadell/MacBeth Graphics)
The 2015 Junior World Championships concluded on Sunday in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and left the U.S. team with a lot to celebrate.
Seventeen-year-old Katharine Ogden, of the Stratton Mountain School, in particular had a standout week, finishing sixth in the 10-kilometer skiathlon (for the best American distance result at Junior Worlds since 2002) and 11th in the 5 k freestyle. Northern Michigan University’s Ian Torchia finished 11th in the men’s 20 k skiathlon, while earlier in the week Thomas O’Harra of Alaska Pacific University was 14th overall in the classic sprint. The U.S. capped off Junior Worlds with its women’s squad placing eighth in the 4 x 3.3 k relay and the men taking 11th in their 4 x 5 k relay.
Below are several photos from American athletes and coaches of their week in Almaty.
From l-r, Vivian Hett (NMU), Kristen Bourne (NMU), Julia Kern (CSU), and Hailey Swirbul (Aspen Valley) after the classic sprint at Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: Vivian Hett)
Thomas O’Harra (APU) races in the classic sprint quarterfinals at the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. O’Harra would place third in his heat and 14th overall. (Photo: Thomas O’Harra)
Kristen Bourne (NMU) overlooking the ski jump and the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan (shrouded in smog) from the course at Junior World Championships (Photo: Vivian Hett)
From l-r, Alayna Sonnesyn (UVM), Vivian Hett (NMU), and Kristen Bourne (NMU) doing some casual training on the course at Junior Worlds in Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: Vivian Hett)
The view overlooking the course and the stadium at Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: Julia Kern)
From l-r, Julia Kern (CSU), Hailey Swirbul (Aspen Valley), and Katharine Ogden (SMS) cheering on the U.S. U23 team at World Chamionships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Kern and Ogden were named to the U.S. Ski Team’s “D” team this spring. (Photo: Julia Kern)
Kristen Bourne (NMU), Alayna Sonnesyn (UVM), and Vivian Hett (NMU) enjoying some time away from racing at the Junior World Championships by exploring a bazaar in Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: Vivian Hett)
Julia Kern (CSU) on her way to 38th place in the 10 k skiathlon at Junior Worlds in Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: Bryan Fish/USSA)
17-year-old Katharine Ogden’s sixth-place finish in the women’s 10 k skiathlon at the 2015 Junior World Championships was the best American result in a distance race since 2002 (Photo: Bryan Fish/USSA)
Katharine Ogden (10) on her way to a sixth-place finish in the women’s 10 k skiathlon at the 2015 Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: Bryan Fish/USSA)
Ian Torchia (NMU) on his way to an 11th-place finish in the 20 k skiathlon at the 2015 Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: Bryan Fish)
The view at sunset from the U.S. team hotel at the 2015 Junior World Championships reveals smog permeating the valley over Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: Thomas O’Harra)
U.S. Ski Team Development Coach Bryan Fish being glittered up by Hailey Swirbul at the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: Julia Kern)
Julia Kern (CSU) racing against a backdrop of smog in the first leg of the 4 x 3.3 k relay at the 2015 Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The American team would go on to place eighth. (Photo: Logan Hanneman)
The venue in Almaty, Kazakhstan, was faced with problems of snow shortages during Junior and U23 World Championships in early February. Here, American Thomas O’Harra (back left) staying with the leaders during the first leg of the junior men’s relay; his team would go on to finish 11th. (Photo: Logan Heinemann)
Hailey Swirbul of the Aspen Valley Ski Club races the anchor leg while guiding the American team to eighth place in the 4 x 3.3 k relay at the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 2015. (Photo: Logan Hannneman)
Do you have photos from Junior World Championships or U23 World Championships that you’d like to share? Email info@fasterskier.com with a high-resolution photo attached and photo caption/credit information.
Julia Kern (CSU) races the first leg of the 4 x 3.3 k relay at the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The American women’s team would go on to place eighth. (Photo: Logan Hanneman)
The American junior women’s team wrapped up a successful week at the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan, by placing eighth in Sunday’s 4 x 3.3-kilometer relay. They finished 2:11.0 minutes behind the winning Norwegian team (35:04.0).
Norway erased an 11.1-second deficit after the second leg to claim victory with a time of 35:04.0 and beat the Russian team by 0.4 seconds. Germany used a strong final leg from Victoria Carl to overcome Sweden and take third (+35.3).
Julia Kern (Cambridge Sports Union) set up the American women’s squad by posting the fifth-fastest first leg and putting the team just 8.6 seconds behind Slovenia, the leader at the time.
Kern wrote in an email that the mass start today was not as chaotic as during Friday’s 10 k skiathlon, but was still fast and aggressive. “In these international races, people go hard from the start, leaving it all out there,” she wrote.
The 17 year old added that it was encouraging to be able to ski with the lead pack and be with the top skiers.
“It was relatively fast for the warm conditions, with a few icy spots,” she wrote. “My skis were fantastic, I didn’t slip once and also had really fast skis.”
Northern Michigan University’s Vivian Hett, who skied the second leg, wrote in an email that she felt okay about her race despite falling on an icy corner.
“The ski conditions today were getting a little tricky. The morning started out really foggy but the sun began to shine right after the race began! It has been really warm here so klister was needed for the classic legs,” she added.
17-year-old Katharine Ogden, of the Stratton Mountain School – who placed sixth in Friday’s skiathlon and tied the best American distance result at a Junior Worlds since 2002 – skied alone for the fifth-fastest third leg of the day. However, the team was still 1:16.4 minutes behind Norway and 24.7 seconds out of seventh going into the final leg.
“The people ahead of me were far ahead and the same with the people behind me,” Ogden wrote in an email.
Hailey Swirbul (Aspen Vally SSC) races the anchor leg while guiding the American team to eighth place in the 4 x 3.3 k relay at the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: Logan Hanneman)
Hailey Swirbul’s anchor leg was also fairly uneventful, the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club member explained in an email.
“A pack of teams in front of us had created a gap in the previous leg, so it was my job to hold off the Finnish team behind us. It was a painful but lonely anchor leg for me!” Swirbul wrote.
She explained that conditions on the course were great considering the warmth Almaty has experienced over the past few days, and “the skis were ripping fast as usual thanks to our hard working techs.”
Overall, the American women were satisfied with their result.
“I thought that our team skied really well today. Other than a little crash on the second leg everything went smoothly and everyone gave it their all,” Ogden wrote.
“I was really excited about how our team did today,” Kern wrote. “We had bib 10 and we moved up to eighth, so that was exciting!”
Though Swirbul was happy the team improved on its 10th-place ranking from 2014, she explained that she is confident the team will only get better in years to come.
“It has been great to see the U.S. really mixing it up this year in multiple events, so I am looking forward to improving that relay result in the future,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, the Canadian women’s team finished 10th (+3:04.0). Katherine Stewart-Jones skied first and left the team in ninth, 37.5 seconds back. However, her leg could have gone a lot better.
The 19 year old Nakkertok and Canadian National Junior Team skier – who was 14th in Friday’s skiathlon – wrote in an email that her leg started off well, and she was in fourth after the first lap.
“Then I got tangled up and fell,” Stewart-Jones explained. “I got up as quickly as I could but realized I had lost my ski and that my binding was broken. I ran with one ski until one of the coaches gave me a new one.”
By that point, she had lost a lot of time and had fallen back to ninth place.
“It is obviously a little disappointing but skiing as a team is always a lot of fun anyway. It was great to be able to watch my teammates hammer their legs and cheer them on!” she wrote.
Russia wins again; Canada cracks top 10
On the men’s side, Russia continued to assert their dominance by winning the 4 x 5 k relay in 45:11.0. They were essentially tied with the French team going into the final leg, but Russian Alexey Chervotkin had too much speed for France’s Louis Schwartz, and Russia won by 17.3 seconds.
Norway was never within striking distance of the Russian or French skiers and finished third (+1:01.5).
The leading pack: (l-r) Russia, France, Norway, Sweden, and Finland during the 4 x 5 k men’s relay on Sunday at the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. (Photo: Logan Hanneman)
The Canadian men’s team took 10th (+3:40.9), while the American men placed 11th (+4:51.4).
“I thought that we did pretty alright,” American Thomas O’Harra (Alaska Pacific University), who skied the first leg, wrote in an email. “We were hoping to get into the top 10 at least, or even higher, but we couldn’t quite make it.”
O’Harra explained that he moved into fifth place during the first loop and pushed hard to stay with the leaders, but the pace caused him to blow up approximately 300 meters into the second loop.
“I moved backwards through the pack until we were pretty far down on the leaders,” he wrote. “Then, in the tag zone, something weird happened and Ian fell right after I tagged him.”
However, O’Harra was happy to see the team not get lapped and hold on for 11th.
Juniors reflect on week in Almaty
The North American athletes had mostly positive things to say about their experiences at the 2015 Junior World Championships.
Ogden explained that her goals coming into Junior Worlds were mainly to obtain valuable international racing experience and earn a top-20 result. She certainly got those results: In addition to her sixth-place performance in the skiathlon, she also placed 11th in Wednesday’s 5 k freestyle.
“I was really stoked to be able to meet and even exceed my goals,” she wrote.
She added that one of her favorite memories took place on Sunday when all the teams – wearing coats, hats, and suits from their own countries – were conversing and trading their specialized items of clothing.
“It was just so cool to see all of the teams come together like that,” she wrote.
Kern was disappointed that she missed the sprint heats by 0.4 seconds on Tuesday, but wrote that otherwise she had a fantastic week.
Thomas O’Harra (back left) staying with the leaders during the first leg of the men’s relay at the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. (Photo: Logan Heinemann)
“One of my favorite memories was relay day. We all put glitter on all our faces and then went to track down all of our coaches and wax techs who all received glitter on their faces as well!” she wrote.
Swirbul reflected on World Juniors by writing that the week has been an “important and successful step” in her skiing career.
The 16-year-old Swirbul was 35th in the skiathlon and 40th overall in Tuesday’s sprint.
She wrote that she began her season with a goal to qualify for Junior Worlds, and after achieving that goal, she arrived in Almaty feeling little pressure and with a mindset to learn as much as possible.
“I was able to achieve my goals to absorb as much as I could from the elite athletes surrounding me, and learn from their race strategy and the way they carry themselves at competitions,” Swirbul explained.
O’Harra wrote, “The smog in Almaty is pretty bad, but the people are all really nice, and the food is good … I’ve met a lot of really cool people here, and I’m looking forward to racing with and against them in the future!”
Katharine Ogden (SMS) placed 11th in Wednesday’s 5 k freestyle in the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. (Photo: Bryan Fish/USSA)
American Katharine Ogden (Stratton Mountain School) made the most of her World Junior Championships debut, placing 11th in the women’s 5-kilometer freestyle individual start on Wednesday in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The 17-year-old Stratton Mountain School T2 Team athlete was the top North American skier and finished 24.5 seconds behind winner Victoria Carl of Germany.
Ogden is coming off a U.S. Nationals performance where she placed sixth in the 10 k freestyle and won the juniors’ 5 k classic mass start.
Ogden wrote in an email that her strategy was to ski hard throughout the race and focus on the uphills – where she thought she could make up the most time. Going into the race, she was hoping for a top-20 result but wrote that she did not know what to expect.
“I skied the whole race pretty hard because everyone was saying that the people here go out really hard and keep going really hard,” Ogden explained, adding that she skied alone except when she briefly skied with a Swiss skier who started in front of her.
Ogden wrote that the experience at Junior Worlds has been incredible.
Victoria Carl of Germany (50) tops the podium after winning the women’s 5 k freestyle at the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Anastasia Sedoiva of Russia (66) was second and Natalia Nepryaeva was third. (Photo: FIS)
“Everything here is new and exciting and different … I love skiing with all of the people from different countries and learning from them as well as learning from my amazing and talented teammates from the U.S.,” she wrote.
Race-winner Carl skied to a time of 13:26.9 and gapped the field by over five seconds to earn her second victory of worlds. She also won Tuesday’s 1.3 k classic sprint.
“It’s a big and very important moment for me personally and in my career. The day is unbelievable. It’s a very, very big success for me. The course is great! I would also like to thank my coaches and everybody, who supported me today,” she said in a post-race interview with the International Ski Federation (FIS).
Rounding out the women’s podium were two Russians – Anastasia Sedova was 5.3 seconds off pace in second, while Natalia Nepryaeva finished 5.9 seconds behind to take third.
“The course was hard and difficult, but I was well prepared for today’s race. I had some troubles with my legs, but I coped with it,” Sedova told FIS.
Nepryaeva explained to FIS that the course was difficult, but her training at the venue this season was a large factor in her second third-place finish in as many days.
Meanwhile, Katherine Stewart-Jones (Nakkertok) led the Canadian women in 25th (+1:05.0)
The race comes a day after Stewart-Jones earned a 19th place performance in Tuesday’s 1.3 k classic sprint. The 19-year-old found success at the international level prior to Kazakhstan. She earned 15th in the freestyle sprint at the 2014 Junior World Championships freestyle sprint in Val di Femme, Italy.
Stewart-Jones wrote in an email that she was happy with the result, especially when recalling a 56th-place finish in the same event at Junior Worlds two years ago.
“I felt a lot better than I thought I would and sort of expected to have to push to keep the same pace during the second half, but that wasn’t the case,” she explained, adding that while coaches were giving her splits she was not focused on her place during the race.
Stewart-Jones maintained a consistent pace throughout the race, as she was also 25th at the 1.7 k split.
Teammate Anne-Marie Comeau (CNEPH/NST) crossed the 1.7 k split in 21st but eventually fell to 39th (+1:23.2). Two fellow Canadians finished back-to-back – Annah Hanthorn (Whitehorse) was 44th (+1:35.8) and Maya Macisaac-Jones (Rocky Mountain Racers/NST) placed 45th (+1:36.6).
American Vivian Hett of North Michigan University (NMU) was right behind in 46th (+1:42.8), followed by two teammates – Kristen Bourne (NMU) in 51st (+1:53.6) and Alayna Sonnesyn (University of Vermont) in 52nd (+2:04.2).
Dumas Cracks Top 30 to Lead North Americans
Russian skiers dominated the men’s 10 k freestyle, snagging the top four places, while Canada’s Alexis Dumas (CNEPH/NST) was the lone North American skier to finish in the top 30. The 19-year-old took 30th, and crossed the line 2:09.3 minutes behind winner Alexey Chervotkin (23:36.4).
Desis Spitsov was 15.9 seconds back from his teammate to take second, while Alexander Bakanov trailed by 34.4 to take third. The Russian trio told FIS that their sweep was indicative of Russian skiing and that they were pleased to share the podium with teammates.
Russians Alexey Chervotkin, Denis Spitsov, and Alexander Bakanov swept the podium in the Junior World Championships 10 k freestyle in Almaty, Kazakhstan (Photo: FIS)
“We are extremely glad to stand on the podium together,” Chervotkin said.
“I’m glad to stand here with my teammates also. I hope the other days of competitions will be successful for the Russian team too,” Bakanov added. His third-place performance comes off a second-place finish in Tuesday’s sprint.
Meanwhile, Dumas wrote in an email that his plan was to start strong, as he is typically a slow starter.
“In an event like World Juniors you cannot afford to be conservative. You have to hammer as hard as you can and if you fade, at least you tried,” he wrote.
Dumas started strong, and was 21st overall at the 1.7 k split. He later faded to 34th after 5 k. He explained that his race went well but he felt there was a potential for a better result, as he felt he could have skied with more speed on the last lap and on the course’s downhill section.
Dumas added that he likes the difficulty of the course along with its long climbs.
“You have to be strong in your head to continue pushing hard. I think I’m good with dealing with the pain and that really helped me today because I definitely felt pain all through my body,” he wrote.
Dumas improved on his results from the 2014 Junior Worlds in Italy, where he finished 60th in the 20 k skiathlon and 46th in the 10 k classic.
“My experience from last year in Val di Femme definitely helped me. I was a lot more confident. Last year, I wasn’t feeling good at all, but I learned a lot and this year I was ready to perform,” he explained.
American Ian Torchia of Northern Michigan University of was the next North American finisher, taking 35th (+2:20.2), and Canada’s Philippe Boucher (CNEPH/NST) was right behind in 40th (+2:24.4). Thomas O’Harra of Alaska Pacific University – who placed 14th overall in Tuesday’s sprint – finished 49th (+2:36.3).
After the sprint was pushed back on Tuesday due to air-quality concerns, the air was clearer on Wednesday, according to Ogden.
She wrote that since the race started at 11 am, the pollution was fairly under control, as the smog remains in the valley and the city of Almaty in the morning before gradually rising into the mountains throughout the day.
“I didn’t notice it during the race, although afterwards I did have a bit of a weird cough,” she added.
Nakkertok Head Coach Kieran Jones wrote an email on Tuesday, “That stuff is out of our control. That’s always been the message — control what you can, and don’t worry about anything else.”
Racing in Kazakstan continues Thursday with the U23 10/15 k freestyle interval starts.
— Chelsea Little and Lander Karath contributed reporting
An exhausted-and-ecstatic Fredrik Riseth of Norway after winning his first Junior World Championships title on Tuesday in the 1.3 k classic sprint. (Photo: FIS)
Last year in his FIS Junior World Ski Championships debut, Thomas O’Harra placed 54th in the freestyle sprint in Val di Fiemme, Italy. Another year older and with another season of training under his belt, the 18-year-old Alaska Pacific University (APU) skier placed 14th on Tuesday in the opening race of 2015 Junior Worlds in Almaty, Kazakhstan: the 1.3-kilometer classic sprint.
APU’s Thomas O’Harra (13) leading his freestyle-sprint quarterfinal with Sun Valley’s Miles Havlick (3) and Kris Freeman (8) last month at 2015 U.S. senior nationals in Houghton, Mich. He went on to place 18th overall.
O’Harra qualified 18th and went on to place third in his quarterfinal, 2.92 seconds behind the winner of his heat, Ludek Seller of the Czech Republic, and 0.35 seconds behind Russia’s Alexander Bakanov, who also automatically advanced in second.
O’Harra’s quarterfinal was the slowest of the five, which prevented him from moving on to the semifinals as a lucky loser. But at the end of the day, 14th was still way better than 54th.
“I don’t know if I can say I was expecting it, but I definitely knew that if I had a good race, I could get into the top 30,” O’Harra wrote in an email on Tuesday. “Coming into the sprint, my goal was to qualify. Ultimately though, my goal was to get into the top 10. Once I had qualified, I focused more on trying to advance out of my quarterfinal.”
He reflected that his quarterfinal was “pretty hard right off the bat … everyone was jostling for position.” Knowing that he needed a top-two in his heat to guarantee a spot in the semifinal, O’Harra followed Bakanov in his track to the finish and lunged between the Russian’s legs as Bakanov let up near the line. And while it wasn’t quite enough, O’Harra was pleased to finish well within the top 30.
“Today was a much better experience than last year’s sprint!” he wrote. “Last year I tripped myself going up the first hill and ended up 54th — not exactly super-duper. I think that a year’s more experience helped a lot. I was definitely a lot more collected and calm this year, both going into the race and during the race.”
He was also optimistic about another top 30 in Wednesday’s 10 k freestyle.
“I think that I’m in a really good place right now, but I didn’t actually try to peak specifically for these races, mainly because there is still a lot of racing left this season,” he wrote.
“Last year I tripped myself going up the first hill and ended up 54th — not exactly super-duper. I think that a year’s more experience helped a lot.” — Thomas O’Harra, 14th in 2015 Junior World Championships 1.3 k classic sprint
O’Harra led the North Americans in the junior men’s sprint, which Norway’s Fredrik Riseth won outright in 3:01.25. The Norwegian qualified fifth behind Finland’s Lauri Vuorinen (the top men’s qualifier in 3:01.88), and Riseth went on to win his quarterfinal and his semifinal before beating Bakanov by 4.85 seconds in the final.
Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo made the podium as well in third, 8 seconds behind Riseth. Germany’s Marius Cebulla was fourth (+10.04), Sweden’s Oskar Svensson finished fifth (+10.11), and Vuorinen was sixth (+21.67).
Riseth’s father, Svein Riseth, told Langrenn that he was impressed with his son’s result. While he knew Fredrik was in great shape, Svein wasn’t sure he had enough left after dominating his quarterfinal and semifinal. The contender he was most concerned about was Fredrik’s Byåsen IL teammate, Høsflot Klæbo.
“Johannes is not only a good skier, but he is mentally and tactically strong,” Svein said, according to a translation. “It is outrageously fun two Byåsen runners entered the podium. Not just for the team but for [Trondheim] skiing.”
While no other North American men qualified in the top 30, Canada’s Julian Smith (Georgian Bay) placed 39th, 3.82 seconds from 30th. Americans Evan Weinman (Middlebury) and Peter Holmes (University of New Hampshire) were 46th and 48th, respectively, Canada’s Alexis Dumas (CNEPH/NST-Junior) ranked 53rd, Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier (CNEPH/NST-Junior) was 56th, American Gavin Hess (UNH) 58th, and Canadian Philippe Boucher (CNEPH/NST-Junior) 59th.
Stewart-Jones Leads Three Canadian Women in the Heats
Canadian National Junior Team members Katherine Stewart-Jones (19) and Maya MacIsaac-Jones (29) chase Russia’s Natalia Nepryaeva (2) in the quarterfinal of the 1.3 k classic sprint on the opening day of 2015 Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. (Photo: Lisa Patterson/CCC)
In the women’s 1.3 k classic sprint, Katherine Stewart-Jones knew what was coming, or at least what to expect, in her third time qualifying for the Junior Worlds heats.
The 19-year-old Canadian National Junior Team member qualified in 19th, 13.61 seconds behind Russia’s Yulia Belorukova, the top qualifier in 3:29.24. Stewart-Jones then finished fourth in her quarterfinal, 9.77 seconds after another Russian, Natalia Nepryaeva, who won the heat. Their quarterfinal was the second slowest and Stewart-Jones did not advance, putting her in 19th overall.
“I am satisfied with my result,” Stewart-Jones, the top North American female junior of the day, wrote in an email. “I definitely had the goal to make it past the quarter-finals because last year I was extremely close. I can’t really be disappointed with how it turned out because I gave everything I had.”
“I definitely had the goal to make it past the quarter-finals because last year I was extremely close. I can’t really be disappointed with how it turned out because I gave everything I had.” — Katherine Stewart-Jones, 19th in 2015 Junior World Championships 1.3 k classic sprint
Last year at Junior World Championships, she placed 15th in the freestyle sprint, and the year before, she was 25th at the 2013 Junior Worlds in Liberec, Czech Republic.
But for the first time on Tuesday, she raced against one of her fellow national-junior team members in the heats: Maya MacIsaac-Jones of Rocky Mountain Racers (RMR).
“We both had a really good start so it was fun to ski at the front together for the first part of the race,” Stewart-Jones explained. “After the long downhill I was in third place but then I made a bit of a tactical mistake. At the start of the long uphill I went right behind a Russian but she slowed down. When I went to make the pass and change lanes I lost my momentum.”
MacIsaac-Jones, 19, made the top-30 qualifying cutoff in 29th and ended up fifth in her first time racing the heats at that level, 12.05 seconds behind the winner.
“Katherine and I have raced together for a long time, and since there are so many things at World Juniors that are different from racing in Canada, it was nice to have a familiar face beside me,” MacIsaac-Jones wrote in an email. “My ‘realistic’ goal for today was to qualify, and my ‘dream’ goal was to get a top-15 result. I am very happy to have qualified for the heats, especially to have qualified with two of my teammates, but I am disappointed that I wasn’t able to move on past the quarter final.”
Her previous best in her last Junior Worlds in 2013 was 36th in the classic sprint. On Tuesday, she placed 25th overall. The third Canadian woman to make the rounds, Sophie Carrier-Laforte (Skinouk/NST-Junior) qualified in 23rd and placed 22nd overall after finishing fifth in her quarterfinal, 12.21 seconds behind Austria’s Lisa Unterweger, who won the heat.
“It was a lot of fun to be racing with so many other Canadian girls in the heats today,” MacIsaac-Jones wrote. “We have all been training really hard for these championships, so it feels great to show the world what Canadian girls can do!
“This experience is definitely different from my experience in Liberec 2013,” she explained “I feel like I am in a lot better distance racing shape than I was in Liberec, and I should have a chance to race most or all of the distance races, which will be a lot of fun. This being my second Championships, I feel like I have a bit of a better idea of what to expect and how to prepare for racing on the international scene.”
Stewart-Jones was also looking forward to the distance races after placing 31st in the skiathlon in Val di Fiemme last year.
“I would like to make a top 15 in a distance race and I believe that I can,” she wrote.
Nakkertok Head Coach Kieran Jones wrote in an email that Stewart-Jones’ performance on Tuesday wasn’t a surprise.
“We have been targeting top 30’s at World Juniors since the start of the year. While I was pretty excited for the classic sprint, I would say that it’s definitely not her strongest event,” he noted. “It’s more of a good indicator that the fitness and speed is where we want it to be. Katherine is rock solid — once she gets rolling, she’s great at managing her energy, enthusiasm, and focus.”
He explained that she’s shooting for top-30 results in both Wednesday’s 5 k freestyle and Friday’s 10 k skiathlon.
“Personally, I think she has a shot at a top 10 in the 5 km if everything goes to plan,” Jones wrote. “She is also really looking forward to the relay — this year the Canadian women’s team is one of the strongest it has been in a long time, and she wants to help them have a strong finish.”
Germany’s Victoria Carl after notching her second Junior World Championships title and third podium in the first race of 2015 Junior Worlds in Almaty, Kazakhstan. (Photo: FIS)
Just 0.26 seconds from qualifying in the top 30, Julia Kern of the Cambridge Sports Union led the U.S. junior women in 31st. Vivian Hett (Northern Michigan University) placed 36th, 3.89 seconds from 30th, and Hailey Swirbul (Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club) was 40th.
Canada’s Annah Hanthorn (Whitehorse) finished 45th, and American Kristen Bourne (NMU) placed 46th.
Germany’s Victoria Carl racked up her second Junior Worlds title since she last raced at the championships in 2013 (where she won the 5 k freestyle and placed second in the classic sprint). Carl, 19, qualified fourth and won her quarterfinal and semifinal before topping the final as well in 3:29.01, 1.64 seconds ahead of Belorukova in second.
Another one of the women in the Stewart-Jones/MacIsaac-Jones quarterfinal, Nepryaeva placed third in the final, 2.18 seconds back from the win. The Russian edged Norway’s Lotta Udnes Weng by 0.2 seconds for the podium, and Weng’s sister Tiril Udnes Weng placed fifth, 6.42 seconds after Carl. Germany’s Jenny Mann finished sixth in the final (+30.43).
First Impressions
The junior classic sprint was originally scheduled for Monday, then pushed back a day to allow more time to extend the 800-meter loop to 1.3 k. In addition to concerns about dirt and rocks on the trail, the air quality in Almaty continues to pose one of the biggest problems for athletes, with several U.S. athletes bringing ventilation masks to the championships.
“The air quality is certainly an issue, but we all share this challenge,” U.S. Ski Team Development Coach Bryan Fish wrote in an email. “Many of our athletes purchased filtering masks before arriving. The same ones used [at the Summer Games] in Beijing.
“They don’t wear them all the time — primarily when skiing,” he added. “The trails are uphill, so it depends how high the inversion is. Unfortunately there is no way to escape it in the city. All the teams are staying in the city except Russia is an hour away in the mountains.”
According to O’Harra, “Skiing here is… thin. When we arrived, there was only about 2.5k of trail, and that was full of rocks. The volunteers and organizers have done an amazing job, though! They have been blowing snow around the clock, and their hard work definitely shows,” he wrote. “The smog varies. It pretty much always sits down in the bottom of the valley, and most days it creeps up to where the trails are as we ski. It was definitely hazy today, but there have been worse days. I don’t think that it hindered my performance, but I still don’t like having it around.”
MacIsaac-Jones wrote that the skiing over the last week had not been ideal; the postponement of the first race “altered everyone’s race preparations, and we have been dealing with heavy smog all week.”
She added that there was adequate snow on the sprint course, “and there should be enough for the skate race tomorrow. The snow here is artificial, cold and hard-packed right now, which is great for me because it is similar to the snow I am used to training on in Canmore, Alberta,” she wrote.
“The skiing here is nothing like I have seen before,” Stewart-Jones explained. “The race site is built at the top of a huge sand hill in the middle of the city. All the trails weave around the hill and the snow is all man made. … The smog is definitely an issue; I have been coughing a lot more than usual.”
Through email exchanges, her coach Jones has been keeping tabs on the conditions.
“That stuff is out of our control,” he wrote. “That’s always been the message — control what you can, and don’t worry about anything else. … Kath is great at that, so I wasn’t worried.”
The Swedish women’s relay team congratulates anchor Jonna Sundling at the finish, with Anna Dyvik, Sofia Henriksson, and Maja Dahlqvist, after defending their Junior World Championships relay title with another win on Monday in Val di Fiemme, Italy. (Photo: Fiemme2014)
Monday’s final event of the Junior World Championships included the women’s 4×3.3-kilometer and men’s 4×5-kilometer relays. Both events alternated classic and skating legs in Val di Fiemme, Italy.
According to a press release, Russia, France and Sweden led through the classic legs, while Norway and Finland sat patiently. On the last leg, Norway’s Eirik Sverdrup Augdal was first to pick up the pace at the end of a long uphill. AlexeyChervotkin, of Russia, and JeanTiberghien, of France, were surprised and forced to react quickly. Over the final sprint, Augdal found the best line and captured gold for Norway in 53:36.6, exactly 1 second ahead of Tiberghien who outskied Chervotkin by a tenth of a second for second.
Norway’s Eirik Sverdrup Augdal looks back after anchoring his 4×5 relay to gold on Monday on the last day of Junior World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy. France took second, 0.1 seconds ahead of Russia. Augdal teamed up with Eivind Krane Heimdal, Petter Reistad, and Johan Hoel. (Photo: Fiemme2014)
In the women’s relay, Russia led the first leg, but Sweden’s Sofia Henriksson did not let the Russian off easily, according to press release. Early in the the skate portion, Sweden was a hair ahead of Russia, while Norway was shortly behind, attempting to make up ground. At the final exchange, Russia’s Natalia Nepryaeva started off with a slight advantage over Jonna Sundling of Sweden, but by the end of the last leg, Sundling had gained enough ground to surpass — and even create a gap on — Nepryaeva, sealing the win for Sweden in 39:54.8. Russia took second, 7.7 seconds behind, and Norway’s Lotta Weng followed in third, 26.8 seconds behind the Swedes.
With four gold, two silver, and eighth bronze medals, Norway was crowned as the winning team at the 2014 FIS Nordic Junior/U23 World Ski Championships.
Among the North Americans, Canada placed just above the U.S. women in 10th (out of 14 teams). The Canadian females chosen to participate in the day’s event included Frédérique Vézina of the Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre (CNEPH), Dahria Beatty (Alberta World Cup Academy), Anne-Marie Comeau (CNEPH), and Katherine Stewart-Jones (Nakkertok). They raced in that order and Team Canada finished 2:49.9 behind the winners.
“I love mass starts so I was pretty pumped when I knew what position I had for the relay,” Vézina wrote in an email. “It was a great fast fight right from the start. My body felt very good and I was able to stay with the lead pack up the first long up hill.”
With slightly slower skis, Vézina explained she struggled on the downhills, but was able to catch back up to the pack on the climbs. “I am very happy with our race and it was as always a lot of fun!” she wrote.
The American women finished about a minute after, 3:51.4 behind the leaders in 12th. Racers included Nichole Bathe (University of Alaska-Fairbanks), University of Vermont’s Marion Woods and Stephanie Kirk, as well as Sloan Storey (University of Utah), respectively.
The Americans men placed 12th out of 18 teams, 3:08.4 behind the winners, with Canada finishing 45 seconds later in 13th. The U.S. men’s team included Adam Martin (Northern Michigan University), Lars Hannah (Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club), Thomas O’Harra (Alaska Pacific University), and Patrick Caldwell (Dartmouth College),in that order.
“It was exciting to race today, because we got another chance to race head to head with the best junior athletes,” Martin wrote on Monday. “I was able to hang with the Norwegian skier for both 2.5 k loops. … In general the relay was fun, it was a nice way to conclude the week. … It is very motivational to see some of the other athletes’ strong form and on days like today realize that I can really get in and race them.”
The Canadian men’s team included Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier (Fondeurs Laurentides), Alexis Dumas (Skibec), Scott James Hill (NDC Thunder Bay), and Benjamin Wilkinson-Zan (NDC Thunder Bay), who crossed the finish line in 13th. The Canadians finished in 57:30.4, 3:53.8 minutes behind the winners.
Russia Roman Kaygorodov racing to his first Junior World title on Sunday in the 10 k classic individual start in Val di Fiemme, Italy. (Photo: Fiemme2014)
Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Canadians Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier, Scott Hill and Katherine Stewart-Jones.
Russia went out on a high note on the last day of individual racing at Junior World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy, with Natalia Nepryaeva and Roman Kaygorodov winning the women’s 5- and men’s 10-kilometer classic individual starts, respectively, on Sunday.
Russia’s 18-year-old Natalia Nepryaeva celebrates her 2.7-second victory in Sunday’s 5 k classic individual start, her first title at Junior World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy. (Photo: Fiemme2014)
For Nepryaeva, 18, the victory was her first at the world championships and she did so by edging Sweden’s Sofia Henriksson by 2.7 seconds in 14:05. Another Russian, Anastasia Sedova rounded out the podium in third, 13.6 seconds after her teammate.
“I am exhausted, but winning a gold medal in a world championship is an incredible satisfaction,” Nepryaeva told FIS after the race. “I kept focused on my pace throughout the whole race, although I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to climb the last uphill. There was another girl in front of me and I kept skiing really close to her to keep control of my pace. I am really happy for the other girls in my team too, it’s a great day for Russia.”
For Henriksson, 19, the silver marked her first individual podium at her fourth Junior World Championships.
“I feel so happy today because I have been struggling for this medal for so long,” she told FIS. “In 2012 in Erzurum in the 5km Classic I finished fourth, only one second behind the bronze medal. It feels good to break up the three Russians.”
As Nepryaeva and Henriksson passed through the intermediate checkpoints, it was clear they were gunning for top two. Nepryaeva narrowly prevailed on a hilly and challenging course at Lago di Tesero, leading four Russians in the top six, with Alisa Zhambalova in fourth (+16.4), Germany’s Julia Belger in fifth (+24.2) and Russia’s Yulia Belorukova in sixth (+27.4).
In the men’s race, Kaygorodov, 18, won his first race at the championships in 26:36.9 for his first title (and podium) as well, beating Swedish runner-up Jens Burman by 5.5 seconds. Norway’s Petter Reistad was another 0.3 seconds back in third.
“I can’t believe it!” Kaygorodov told FIS. “In the first part I didn’t want to push too much, the snow was pretty slow and I wanted to save most of my energy for the last lap. When I finished this race I was totally exhausted, and for me this result will be unforgettable.”
Burman said he felt like he had good power and energy throughout his race.
“I think that was a good race for me,” he told FIS. “I don’t do anything in particular to get encouragement or motivation, I only think I have to go fast.”
Canada’s Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier leads a teammate in the 20 k skiathlon on Jan. 31 at 2014 Junior World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy. (Photo: Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier)
France’s Jules Lapierre and Valentin Chauvin were fastest through the first checkpoint, but Kaygorodov picked it up for the last half of the race and put time into his competitors over the final kilometers.
Lapierre ended up fourth (+12.9) and Chauvin placed seventh (+18.4), while Sweden’s Simon Lageson placed fifth (+13.5) and Marcus Ruus took sixth (+16.9).
Monday’s relays were the final races on the schedule, with Sweden winning the women’s 4 x 3.3 k, defending their title from last year with Anna Dyvik, Henriksson, Maja Dahlqvist, and Jonna Sundling.
Canada placed 10th with Frédérique Vézina, Dahria Beatty, Anne-Marie Comeau, and Katherine Stewart-Jones. The Americans finished 12th of 14 teams with Nichole Bathe, Marion Woods, Stephanie Kirk, and Sloan Storey.
Norway won the men’s 4 x 5 k with Eivind Krane Heimdal, Reistad, Johan Hoel, and Eirik Sverdrup Augdal. The U.S. men placed 12th of 18 teams, with Adam Martin, Lars Hannah, Thomas O’Harra, and Patrick Caldwell Canada was 13th with Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier, Alexis Dumas, Scott Hill, and Benjamin Wilkinson-Zan.
Two Canadians in Individual Top 15
Izquierdo-Bernier (Fondeurs Laurentides), who’s living in France with his family until August, when he’ll return to Montreal, notched 14th in the 10 k on Sunday.
In an email, he xplained his goal was top 20 in one race at his first Junior World Championships.
“I had identified the skiathlon to be my best chance to accomplish it, but bad skies in the classic part ruined my race … it’s part of cross country,” he explained of the preceding race, in which he placed 57th. “Sunday morning I had no expectations, my only goal was to do a good race in classic and keep a steady pace for the 2 laps. Up to now this year in classic, I didn’t have any good race and the result of Sunday morning surprised me a little!”
Throughout the 10 k, he focused on managing himself and his effort.
“I knew that I had a good race but I was not expecting to finish in the top 20,” Izquierdo-Bernier wrote. “After the race I was watching the screen with the timings, as the other skiers were ending their race and my time was staying tin the top ones. As the last racer finished, I was very happy and my goal was achieved.”
Izquierdo-Bernier moved to the French Alps, specifically the Vercors, for his father’s sabbatical year.
“Last summer I trained at the training center in Québec and when I came to France I trained 2 months with some French athletes and had finalised my preparation alone with a personal coach,” he explained.
Dahria Beatty (Alberta World Cup Academy) racing to 29th in Friday’s 10 k skiathlon at Junior World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy. She notched 15th in the 5 k classic on Sunday. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com/Proceeds go to the National Nordic Foundation)
The lone Canadian man in the top 40, he shared a personal best in the top 15 with Dahria Betty of the Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA), who was 15th in the women’s 5 k.
For Beatty, 19, the result was her best in three world championships after she placed 20th in the freestyle sprint on Jan. 29. She explained in an email that her goal was top 15.
“I am really happy to have achieved that,” Beatty wrote. “The 5k classic was the race I was most looking forward to as I prefer classic races to skate races. I’d like to think I can be both a sprinter and a distance skier, and I hope that I showed that with my 20th place finish in the skate sprint the first day!”
Her plan for the 5 k was to start fast but relax on the climbs, then push hard over the remaining parts of the course.
“I didn’t push enough on the second last climb in the skiathlon Friday so I made sure not to make that mistake again today and went all all out up the climb at 3.5km,” she wrote. “All along I was getting splits that I was leading at my bib, which is what I was hoping for. It’s always great to cross the line in first and see your name with a 1 beside it even if you know it won’t last. I had the chance to sit in the winners chair for a minute too which is always great!”
The 2014 U.S. women’s Junior World Championships team (Photo: Sloan Storey)
Two Americans tied for the best U.S. result of the day in 26th: Nichole Bathe (University of Alaska-Fairbanks) and Adam Martin (Northern Michigan University). For both, it was their first top 40 at their first world championships.
“My goal going into to today’s race was to top 40 and to just feel like I was skiing strong and to really leave it all out there,” Bathe wrote on Sunday. “I didn’t know what place I was in while racing, I went off third so there where only two girls started ahead of me so I just went out as hard as I could and tried to hold on and set down a time that would hold to a certain extent.”
After breaking through with her first podium at U.S. nationals a month ago, Bathe explained that results like third-place in the nationals classic sprint gave her confidence, but she also knew she would be racing at another level internationally.
“I knew … these girls … are the fastest juniors in the world and that it was going to be tough to even hang in there,” she wrote. “I’m feeling pretty good about where I am at, I’m looking ahead to the next couple weekends of racing leading into the end of the collegiate year knowing that those are going to be some tough races so I’m just gonna try and keep everything going for another month and a half and hope that it all goes well.”
Martin wasn’t sure how he’d stack up in the 10 k after placing 40th in the preceding 20 k skiathlon on Jan. 31. He thought top 30 “would be cool,” but tried not to dwell on results — instead focusing on having a strong race in difficult conditions. He remembered seeing the thermometer read 8 degrees Celsius (46 Fahrenheit) at one point.
“The race was back seeded with the best ranked skiers starting last, so I tried not to think too much about splits, but they did help me gauge that I was picking up a few spots towards the end,” Martin wrote. “I was pleased when I saw that I was 26th. More so, I was happy that I was 1:24 off of the leader. While this certainly is a notable amount of time back in a 10k, it seems like a margin that I can hopefully work with.”
About 3 1/2 seconds after Martin, Caldwell (Dartmouth College) placed 29th. Two days earlier, he notched 10th in a 20 k skiathlon.
Woods, a University of Vermont freshman, placed 34th, and her U.S. teammate Storey (University of Utah) was 43rd.
Canada’s Katherine Stewart-Jones (Nakkertok) finished 36th, Anne-Marie Comeau of the Pierre-Harvey Training Centre (CNEPH) was a second behind in 38th. Also of CNEPH, Vézina finished 51st of 72 women.
Stewart-Jones wrote in an email that she was aiming for top 25 and felt good before falling on a downhill after the first 2 k.
“After that I really picked it up,” she added. “I have had a lot of fun so far. … I also improved my placings in every single race, so it is encouraging to see that improvement!”
Comeau, 17, wrote than her goal was to have fun and give 100 percent. She had already placed 21st in the 10 k skiathlon, and two years ago at Junior Worlds, she was 18th in the skiathlon.
“I’m happy about the result,” she wrote Sunday. “I felt good during my race and I gave all that I had! I think that’s important.”
Also for Canada, Hill (NDC Thunder Bay) placed 45th, Dumas (Skibec) was 1.2 seconds behind in 46th, and Wilkinson-Zan (NDC Thunder Bay) placed 66th of nearly 100 men.
“Going into this season I had my sights set on a top 10 at world juniors,” Hill wrote in an email. “Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling that great leading into the championships and I knew that I wasn’t going to get to the top 10 unless I was in good race shape.
Rain before his race, which made the snow wet and heavy and ruined the tracks on the hill made things tougher.
“I knew I wasn’t capable of reaching my original race goal but I was still hoping for a top 30 so I was disappointed with where I ended up,” he explained. “I have been disappointed with my racing in Italy but I really like the venue and courses, more than last year in the Czech Republic. This year I was solely focused on my racing and results compared to last year where I was more just trying to get experience. My season has been good up until now and I hope I can rest up and finish the season on a strong note at nationals.”
Among the U.S. men, Hannah (Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club) finished 57th in the 10 k and Cole Morgan (University of Vermont) was 68th.
New England’s Koby Gordon (Stratton Mountain School) leads Jake Bassett (Alaska Winter Stars) in Thursday’s J2 boys freestyle sprint A-final at 2013 Junior Nationals in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Photo: bertboyer.zenfolio.com. All proceeds go to NNF)
FAIRBANKS, Alaska — The J2 boys national championship sprint was only seconds old, and already Koby Gordon feared disaster had struck.
“My pole grip came undone so I had to grab my pole and put it back on,” Gordon said. “Yeah it was (stressful). I was like ‘This could put me in last’ but I was able to keep pushing really hard with my legs.”
Gordon, of Stratton Mountain School, quickly regained second place behind teammate Henry Harmeyer, the event’s defending champion. “I was comfortable there,” Gordon said.
New England’s Koby Gordon (r) of the Stratton Mountain School edges Jake Bassett (Alaska Winter Stars) by 0.22 seconds in Thursday’s J2 boys freestyle sprint at 2013 Junior Nationals in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Photo: facebook.com/pages/JN-2013-Fairbanks/153097771413595?fref=ts)
Then on the final hill of the winding 1-kilometer course Thursday evening at Birch Hill Recreation Area, Alaska’s Jake Bassett surged.
“Jake came up and challenged on that hill and I just went for it so deep on that last climb,” Gordon said. “And I realized I was in front. I wasn’t planning on being in front. I wanted to come in second and get the slingshot (at the bottom of the final hill).”
That set the stage for a frantic sprint to the tape decided by 0.22 seconds in Gordon’s favor.
“I wasn’t sure who got first there until I saw my coach put up a big one (finger) in the air, so it was really exciting,” Gordon said.
Afterwards his coach examined the Velcro on Gordon’s pole straps and delivered another message, telling him “You’re not using these poles again.”
Bassett, meanwhile, won the qualifying round and coasted to first place in his quarterfinal and semifinal heats. But he expected a challenge in the final and got it.
“Those guys went out hard and I was just doing my best to not get boxed out,” Bassett said.
Bassett liked his position of second on the final downhill, but it didn’t spring him ahead.
“I kind of caught a little bit of a slingshot, but it wasn’t fast enough to get (Gordon),” Bassett said. “He definitely is a fast skier and he definitely deserved (to win).”
Harmeyer of New England took third 0.84 seconds after Gordon.
Norway’s Martin Thon (9) leads Thursday’s J1 boys freestyle sprint A-final while New England’s Thomas O’Harra (2), Jack Schrupp (10), Rocky Mountain’s Cal Deline (6) and two other Norwegians chase at 2013 Junior Nationals in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Photo: bertboyer.zenfolio.com)
When the J2 qualifying round kicked off the third day of competition at the U.S. Cross Country Junior Nationals at 11:45 a.m., the temperature was 8 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind chill read minus 8. However, by the final J2 race shortly after 4 p.m., the temperature had risen into the teens, though the bluebird sunny day offered little warmth.
In the J1 boys final, Alaskan Thomas O’Harra broke up a Norwegian sweep and claimed the U.S. national championship by placing third.
“I wanted to stay in the mix the whole race and not lose contact with those guys, but I also didn’t want to push myself too hard in the beginning,” O’Harra said. “I knew I had to keep something in the tank for that second hill otherwise they were just going to leave us behind.”
In the end, Norwegian Mattis Stenshagen got away and cruised to a 2.26-second win over teammate Sjur Slettom. O’Harra couldn’t quite outsprint Slettom but bested Norway’s Martin Thon.
“(A sweep), that would have been very fun, but 1-2 is not bad either,” Slettom said.
While O’Harra is impressed by the Norwegians and respects them, he didn’t sound intimidated.
“They’re people too. They put their pants on one leg at a time,” O’Harra said, adding that he’s drawn inspiration from World Cup sprint champion Kikkan Randall. “If she can beat ‘em — Kikkan’s just an Anchorage girl born in Alaska — I think anybody can.”
Julia Kern of New England (left) edges Alaska's Lydia Blanchet in a photo finish for first in the J2 girls 3×3 k relay on Saturday at the 2012 Cross Country Junior Nationals at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah.
All 2012 Cross Country Junior Nationals coverage is brought to you through the generous support of The Memory Clinic, in Bennington, Vt., committed to caring for the mind since 1987. Currently conducting clinical research on the Alzheimer’s disease vaccine.
MIDWAY, Utah – For a few minutes on Saturday, it appeared to have happened again.
According to the live-timing board, Julia Kern of New England and Alaska’s Lydia Blanchet tied for the second straight race at the 2012 Cross Country Junior Nationals, this time with the help of their respective teams in the 3×3-kilometer freestyle relay.
It couldn’t be, and it wasn’t.
Julia Kern (right) of New England gets ahead of Alaska's anchor, Lydia Blanchet, during the J2 girls 3×3 k freestyle relay at the 2012 Junior Nationals in Soldier Hollow on Saturday.
Upon video review, race officials at Soldier Hollow determined that Kern had the edge in the finish-line lunge, giving New England (with Zoe Snow and Katharine Ogden) the J2 girls relay victory.
Blanchet and her teammates, Sarrissa Lammers and Taryn Hunt-Smith, were second by 0.2 seconds.
After tying Blanchet’s time in the 5 k classic individual start on Friday, Kern couldn’t believe they could be dead-even again.
“It’s kind of crazy that we had a photo finish again,” she said. “They gave us a really good challenge.”
After Ogden (Stratton Mountain School) passed off to Kern (Cambridge Sports Union) in second, Kern had the fastest anchor time in 6:41.1. Blanchet wasn’t far off, tagging off in first and skiing the second fastest split in 6:41.8.
Kern had to pass her for the victory and her third Junior Nationals title of the week. She essentially did so at the line.
“It was a really amazing finish,” Kern said.
Earlier in the race, she played it safe.
“I decided to go behind her,” Kern said. “[Blanchet] paced it slow, and I didn’t want her to pull away. At top of bridge she stopped; she didn’t want me to draft her.”
Lydia Blanchet (right) of Alaska tries to avoid New England racer Julia Kern, who fell after winning the photo finish in the J2 girls 3×3 k relay at the 2012 Junior Nationals on Saturday.
By the long downhill before the last climb, Kern was in front. Blanchet of Alaska Pacific University held on until the very end and the two sprinted alone to the line, where Kern collapsed after the finish and sent Blanchet swerving.
The Midwest’s team of Racquel Wohlk, Vivian Hett and Alayna Sonnesyn finished third, 31.4 seconds out of first.
“I planned on holding back the pace and killing it on Hermod’s [Hill],” Blanchet said of her race strategy. “She stayed with me the whole way. … I was gonna try to slingshot around her on the hill and that didn’t really work. I don’t know, my downhills weren’t that great today.”
Fourth at the first handoff, Hunt-Smith (APU) brought them to first. She planned to hold back on the first hill, but feeling good, decided to go for it and ended up behind the leader, Abbey Habermehl of Rocky Mountain.
“I had super-fast skis and passed her on a tuck,” Hunt-Smith said. “I went for it on Hermod’s and heard [Ogden] behind me. It was such a motivator.”
“Alaska pushed us so hard,” Ogden said, after trailing Hunt-Smith and Habermehl on the infamous climb. “I started out pretty much right in there with top four. I ended up being pretty far behind the leader until the downhill on bottom of Hermod’s, then I passed the two Rocky Mountain girls. The hill was probably my strong point.”
Snow, who jumped out to the second-place position for New England, said she was initially boxed out, but double poled her way to the front by the first hill.
“On the last hill, I really tried to kick it in, finish strong,” Snow said.
She came in 0.8 seconds behind the leader, Gretchen Burkholder of Steamboat Springs. Her Rocky Mountain team went on to place fifth after another Rocky Mountain squad in fourth.
2012 Junior Nationals J2 girls 3×3 k freestyle relay podium: 1. New England, 2. Alaska, 3. Midwest
Alaskan Boys Win Relay
Things were pretty hectic from the start of the J2 boys relay on Saturday. With 19 eager 14- and 15-year-olds vying for first, the field remained thick and tough to navigate.
A select few made it through.
Alaska's Thomas O'Harra (left) skis out of the exchange zone after receiving the tag from teammate Jacob Volz (second from left). Jack Elder of New England passes off to Koby Gordon in the J2 boys 3×3 k relay at Junior Nationals.
Sam Miller of the Bridger Ski Foundation gave a solid effort to put his Intermountain squad ahead at the first handoff, and Jack Elder (New England/Cumberland) skied a blistering second leg to bring his team to second.
At the end of the day, consistency mattered, and Alaska came out on top.
After Tanner Ramey (Alaska Winter Stars) initially put the team in third, Jacob Volz picked off racers to tag off in first. Friday’s 5 k classic winner, Thomas O’Harra held the lead and edged Intermountain’s Karsten Hokanson (Wasatch Nordic Ski Academy) for the win.
The Alaskans completed the course in 17:57.3, and Intermountain (Miller, Peter Neal and Hokanson) finished 2.5 seconds behind for second place. New England (Ben Hegman, Elder and Koby Gordon) placed third (+17.1).
“The tag-off was crazy; the second leg on our other team [Matthew Muffolato] broke a pole,” Ramey said. “I planned to draft off the leaders for most of it and try to take the lead at the end, which worked decently.”
After Ramey positioned his team in third, Volz (APU) picked off the two skiers in front of him, one from Intermountain and the other from Far West.
New England's second leg of the J2 boys relay, Jack Elder (Cumberland) leads Alaska's Jacob Volz (APU) around a downhill curve in the middle of their 3×3 k race at Junior Nationals on Saturday. Volz later passed Elder to tag off to his anchor in first.
“I just got in behind a few people up the hollow,” Volz said of the first climb. “Down at bottom of Hermod’s, I felt good so just took it up the hill and passed a bunch of people.”
With a bond between the three teammates that dates back to middle school, O’Harra (APU) said he was bursting with excitement in the exchange zone.
“I saw that Jacob was winning and that pumped me up,” O’Harra said. “I just went out there and kept nothing from myself, you know?”
Second heading up the final climb, his skis helped him on the descent.
“My coaches are really good waxers; they had awesome skis in general,” O’Harra said. “I was pretty confident I could win.”
The win was O’Harra’s second Junior Nationals victory in as many days. He had not topped the podium before Friday.
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![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/03/j2.girls_.kern_.finish.jpg" "Julia Kern, Lydia Blanchet")
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![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/03/j2tag.jpg" "Jacob Volz, Thomas O'Harra, Jack Elder, Koby Gordon")
![2012 Junior Nationals](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/03/jack.elder_.ne_.j2boys.jpg" "Jack Elder, Jacob Volz")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/03/j2boysrelay.podium.jpg" "2012 Junior Nationals J2 boys 3x3 k relay podium")