From NENSA and FasterSkier:
Canadian Daria Gaiazova continued a dominant Spring Series week, winning the 10K Classic, the Team Sprint, and today's 5K Freestyle while finishing 2nd in Thursday's individual sprint. Alaskan APUNSC teammates Tazlina Mannix and Olympian Kikkan Randall both made it to the podium. At the finish line, Mannix held second place for a brief moment before Randall topped her time to move her down to third. Mannix outgunned a number of other top skiers including Karin Camenisch (4th) and Maine Winter Sports Center athlete Kate Whitcomb, who came in fifth ahead of Alice Nelson, Dorcas Wonsavage, Christine Bisson, Kate Underwood, and Kristina Strandberg.
Conditions for the women's 5km race were somewhat soft but quite fast, thanks to a decision to move start times to earlier in the morning before warming temperatures could soften and slow the course. The winner Gaiazova, who had the fastest time by a whopping 31 seconds (13:20.7), said with the fast conditions she was able to one-skate (V2-alt) most of the hills.
 heads out of the start</font></center><BR></p><p><BR><center><img decoding=)
The men's 10km race was a different story, as things became softer and slushier at an incredible rate. While no one skied on firm snow, the later starters definitely had a serious disadvantage. Most of the elite skiers started near eachother however, making it a relatively fair race at least among the top contenders.
 and Justin Freeman ready in the start gate</font></center><BR></p><p><BR><center><img decoding=)
Giese had arrived at Spring Series on Thursday and showed that he was in good form, taking third in the sprint final behind Freeman and Canadian Phil Widmer. Today he was able to follow up and improve on that result despite the soft conditions which he said he usually doesn't do as well in.
With the 5km/10km races complete, there remains “only” one more day of racing at the TAMC Spring Series, though in terms of total race kilometers, the athletes who will be competing in tomorrow's 30km/50km mass-start classic National long-distance Championship are only about halfway done. The races have been moved to the nearby Fort Kent venue where snow conditions are significantly better.
Women's 5km results:http://www.nensa.net/sched&result/2006/Women_SS_5K.pdf
Men's 10km results: http://www.nensa.net/sched&result/2006/Men_SS_10K.pdf
More photos as well as several videos from today's races will be added shortly to the Fasterskier Multimedia gallery. There are also more video clips and lots of photos from the SuperTour, US Nationals, and Junior Nationals. <Click here to browse!
[***IMPORTANT NOTE: you must have QUICKTIME to view the videos. If you do not have this program already installed on your computer, you can very easily (and legally) download it for free at the following link:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/ ]
