UAF's Marius Korthauer, who won Wednesday's SuperTour sprint freestyle in Duluth, continued to show impressive speed and strength, taking Saturday's 10km SuperTour race by 12 seconds ahead of strong efforts by NMU/Atomic's Bryan Cook and Fischer-Craft's Brayton Osgood. Former US Olympic Team standout John Bauer (Rossignol), semi-ex-retired for about the 3rd time, finished just off the podium with NMU's Martin Banerud in fifth. Conditions were reasonably fast despite some light accumulation of new snow over a relatively firm base.
NMU women went 1-2-4, led by Maria Stuber and Morgan Smyth. Stuber had the victory by 7 seconds, while Johanna Winters of the CXC elite senior development team (based out of nearby Hayward, WI) took third just 4 seconds behind Smyth and a mere tenth of a second ahead of NMU's Laura Dewitt. Winters' CXC teammate was fifth, another 12 seconds back.
Full results: http://www.pttiming.com/raceresults/100290-FreeStyleResults-Overall.pdf
Sunday brings the exciting mass-start classic distance events, with the men racing 15km followed by the women's 10km.
