At 19 years old and 5’4”, CXC’s Jessie Diggins isn’t all that big. But her performance at the 2011 U.S. National Championships this week has a lot of people expecting big things—and that was before Saturday. Diggins closed out an impressive week in Rumford, ME with a storybook finish in the women’s skate sprint, coming from behind after a fall on the last rise to top Dartmouth’s Sophie Caldwell in a lunge, with APU’s Sadie...
One last national title is up for grabs on Saturday in Rumford, ME, as a skate sprint wraps up the 2011 U.S. championships. Rock-hard, borderline icy conditions should make for a lightning-fast, hectic day of racing around the 1.4-kilometer course. The men’s field is headlined by Torin Koos (Methow ODT), but he’ll have his hands full with Simi Hamilton, the U.S. Ski Team’s 23-year-old sprint stud. Koos won last Sunday’s classic sprint in convincing fashion,...
If the men who skied eleven laps in Thursday’s national championship 30 k were hoping for some longer loops in next weekend’s SuperTour in Lake Placid, event chair Ethan Towsend has some disappointing news: unless Mt. Van Hoevenberg receives a huge dose of snow from an impending storm, it’s likely that one of the two competitions will have to be moved to a two-kilometer loop. The SuperTour, scheduled for next Friday and Saturday, includes two...
With the victories in Thursday’s distance events at the Nor-Am races in Thunder Bay, Dasha Gaiazova and George Grey secured their spots on the Canadian World Championships team.
The Alaska Pacific University women’s team was finally dethroned on Thursday—but it took a world-class athlete to do it. After Holly Brooks and Sadie Bjornsen took the first two races of this week’s U.S. National Championships in Rumford, the U.S. Ski Team’s Liz Stephen finally broke up the monopoly with a persuasive win in the women’s 20 k. Brooks preserved her squad’s pride by placing second, 58 seconds down, while Morgan Arritola (USST) was third....
Bryan Fletcher, who left Europe before Christmas with a career-best eighth place at the World Cup events in Ramsau (AUT), has spent the holidays polishing the details and preparing for the next events.
Interval start races don’t usually end with desperate lunges for the finish line. But that’s exactly how Thursday’s 30 k national championship concluded in Rumford—with CXC’s Tad Elliott sprawled on his back, the winner over APU’s Lars Flora. The scene may have looked ridiculous, but Elliott needed every inch. After an hour and ten minutes of racing, his winning margin over Flora was a mere tenth of a second. “I knew it was really tight,”...
It took a week, but winter has finally returned to Rumford, ME. In the last two days at the 2011 U.S. National Championships, the tropical climate that dogged organizers has departed, replaced by temperatures far below freezing. With distance skate races on tap for Thursday, the 2.7-kilometer loop at Black Mountain has been widened in spots, augmented by snowmaking and shoveling. The men and women will be doing 11 and seven laps, respectively, for a total...
After a difficult 2010 season, Morgan Smyth, 24, seems to be back in business and chasing medals. Wednesday, the former US Ski Team racer won the silver medal in the women’s 10K classic at US Senior Nationals in Rumford, Maine. But nothing has come for free.
Men racing in Thursday’s 30 k freestyle in Rumford had better hope that temperatures don’t necessitate lobster mitts. Because they’re going to need all 10 fingers to keep track of their progress. On Wednesday evening, the race jury for the U.S. National Championships chose to switch Thursday’s race format, from mass start to interval start. Men will race 11 times around the 2.7 k loop in Rumford, for a total of 29.7 kilometers, while women...
Going into the 15 k classic race in Rumford, APU’s Lars Flora had a total of four national championships to his name. But to say that he had endured a dry spell would be an understatement: it had been 1098 days since his last title, which came in Houghton, MI in 2008. After two tough seasons, and a demoralizing defeat in Sunday’s sprint, the 32-year-old Flora finally broke through on Thursday to collect his fifth...
Classic distance races are on tap for the U.S. National Championships in Rumford, ME on Wednesday, after two days of rest to allow for optimal course preparation. Volunteers, coaches, and even U.S. Ski Team member Liz Stephen worked with heavy equipment and shovels throughout Tuesday, leaving a 2.5-kilometer loop available for racing at Rumford’s Black Mountain. Under clear skies and with temperatures cooler—in the 20’s—the action gets started with the women’s 10 k at 10...
After putting on a dominating performance at Canadian National Championships last March, including two wins, Canadian Graham Killick was named to the Canadian National Ski Team’s Development Team, and spent much of his summer training with the World Cup team, including Devon Kershaw and Ivan Babikov, in Canmore, Alberta. While the World Cup team departed for Europe and the biggest cross country skiing stage in the world, Killick remained in North America, picking up right...
Thirty hours of snowmaking has left varying levels of cover on the trails in Rumford, the site of the 2011 U.S. National Championships. On Tuesday morning, athletes trained and coaches tested on a 900-meter loop, while organizers and volunteers were using shovels, dump trucks, groomers, and even chainsaws to prepare a course for Wednesday’s classic distance races. Their efforts were focused primarily on a one-kilometer extension to the 1.4-k sprint course used for Sunday’s classic...
Organizers and volunteers were working tirelessly on Monday to replenish the snow on Rumford’s depleted trails, as competitors at the 2011 U.S. National Championships fanned out north and west in search of skiing. Snowmaking at Black Mountain began at midnight on Monday morning, and by early that evening, Chief of Competition Carlie Casey said that Rumford’s Chisholm Ski Club was poised to pull off successful classic distance races on Wednesday. “We had a very productive...
In her unlikely path from APU coach to elite ski racer, Holly Brooks’s career has taken her to some amazing places, namely the 2010 Olympics. But for all her success over the past two years, there was one spot she still hadn’t set foot until this weekend: the top step of the podium at the U.S. National Championships. In Sunday’s classic sprint in Rumford, Brooks checked another achievement off her list with an emphatic display...
After seeing Lars Flora (APU) dominate his first two heats in Sunday’s national championships classic sprint in Rumford, ME, Torin Koos (Methow ODT) was prepared for a showdown in the finals. Both wily veterans at ages 30 and 32, respectively, Koos and Flora were stacked up against a much younger crew, which was liable to run out of steam late in the day: two juniors in Erik Bjornsen (Methow ODP) and Skyler Davis (Stratton); Dartmouth...
There will be racing in Rumford on Sunday, but it won’t be pretty. “It’s gonna be messy as hell,” said John Farra, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association nordic director. The 2011 U.S. National Championships are set to get underway in one hour, after a long afternoon and evening of work by volunteers and organizers. The 1.4-kilometer classic course at Black Mountain is covered with snow, or a semblance of it – it’s clean in...
Cross-country ski racing is never a cakewalk, with competitions that demand hours upon hours of preparation and hard work from participants. But the low-snow conditions in Rumford, Maine are presenting an extra-big headache for everyone involved in the 2011 U.S. National Championships. As the clock ticked down to the start of the event’s opening race on Sunday, organizers were hard at work preserving and augmenting the remnants of the snow on the course—and they were...
Despite traveling the farthest distance, few teams outnumber Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Club at the US Nationals in Rumford, Maine. And still, some worthy skiers are left at home.