The Masters World Cup got under way in Lillehammer, Norway on Sunday with the 30/15 kilometer classic races.
The competition continues with the 30 and 15 kilometer skate races on Monday.
10 k classic and 10 k skate will be held on Tuesday, relays on Thursday and classic and skate again on Friday and Saturday.
Norway dominated day one of the competition and captured the gold’s in eight of the eleven age categories in the men’s division and took home the gold’s in seven out of the 10 women’s age categories.
Other nation with gold medals included Sweden, Finland, and Russia.
Some age group races had incredible tight finishes for first, while others were dominated by a “super starâ€.
Fasterskier mentioned two Norwegians to watch out for last week. One was Jan Lindvall, a national team skier that raced in the 1982 World Championship in Oslo, Norway.
Jan raced one of the best races of his life in the 30 k that year, but ended up in (only) 10th place on incredible slow skis. He skiing faster than everyone up the hills for so to loose it in the easy sections. Loyalty to (a now defunct) ski company did not pay off.
He took the gold in the 50-54 year-old category on Sunday.
US highlights:
Kelli Boonstra of Alaska and Sarah Dominick of Maine captured Silver and Bronze in the F1 category. We do have to add that the field here was unusually small with only five competitors (3 Americans, 1 Norwegian and 1 German).
Allison Bradly of Idaho captured the silver in the F5 category (20 competitors) and Todd Boonstra of Alaska took the bronze in the M3 category (40 competitors). Todd was only 6.9 seconds from first.
