Even more photos from Craftsbury

The week leading up to the final Eastern Cup race was one of the nicest of the year, with warm temperatures and nothing but sunshine every training session. We had some great skis out there with the gang, and I have some photos from the fun balance drills we did at the beginning of practice one day. After the drills we all headed out for a group ski around the lower trails, trying not to tax ourselves too much before the weekend.

Dev did several 360s in a row and I missed every single one on camera. But he did them I swear.

MK goes for a 360 of her own and corks it a little. Sick!

That’s Dev landing a three, but just looking like he’s skiing.

Smiles all around!

Dev started like this, then took the ski off and twirled it above his head. He couldn’t get it back on in time and ended up crashing and burning down on the banked turn. It was totally sweet while it lasted, though.

Fitzy channeling her inner bird, or something.

The weekend itself was a huge success, as we’ve written about in the posts leading up to this one. But we haven’t seen many photos from the classic day yet, so I’m putting a bunch up to show the action from the 5/10 km race on Saturday.

Kaitlin skied a great race and finished 22nd, her best Eastern Cup result ever!

Here she hammers up the 4 km climb, pulling away from her competition.

MK started behind eventual winner Maria Stuber from the Green Team, and skied a great race, only losing 20 seconds over the 5 km.

She finished 3rd for the day and 3rd in the skate as well. Two podiums in a weekend is pretty sweet.

We had another great weekend of racing at Craftsbury. These guys have been killing it all year.

Hans was looking to go out and ski an awesome race, and that’s exactly what he did.

Cruising around the 1 km corner on the first lap looking relaxed, Hans skied up from here, charging hard until he started to get tired at 8 km. He was able to hang on to the finish and finished a fantastic 12th place overall, roughly a minute behind the winner. Sweet day!

Dev comes into focus.

Dev was already in pretty good standing for JOs, but with a bunch of fast J1s trying to beat him, he needed to have good races this weekend. Fortunately he went out and had by far the best weekend of his season, pulling even farther in front of the chase pack and moving up to 5th J1 on the list.

Hans dukes it out at 4 km.

Our alum David Sinclair started hard and kept going, finishing just behind Paddy Caldwell for second overall on the day. He battles it out with Middlebury’s Taylor Sundali, who also skied well in both races of the weekend.

Dev actually looked a little tired on the first lap, but really turned it on and moved up on lap 2. That’s how you debate!

Luke held his own in the classic race and then turned the screws the next day with a great mass start race. He’s racing the Massachusetts State Championship race right now down at Prospect. Good luck, Luke!

Ian also had a better skate race on Sunday, but his classic form is clearly there as he picked up a 30+ second victory in the classic race of the Maine State Championships two days later.

David finishes it up.