MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec –Anyone trying to follow the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle individual start at Canadian Ski Nationals on Tuesday might have found the live splits a little confusing. Emily Nishikawa led at 5 k. No wait, Perianne Jones did. Ragnhild Haga sat in second, but Alysson Marshall later bumped her from that spot. Randomized seeding put some of the closest competitors considerably far apart on the start list, making it difficult to determine where athletes...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec – Alex Harvey had no idea what he was in for. Or maybe he did. Fourteen hours after he and several other Canadian National Team members stepped off a plane in Québec City and concluded a 32-hour trip back from the World Cup Finals in Sweden, Harvey was back in his native Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges, Québec, preparing to race again. If it had been up to Harvey, he would have slept in a little...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec – Four days after flying home from Europe, Ivan Babikov was back in action at Canadian Ski Nationals on Monday. The 31-year-old national team member was also back to his winning ways, hitting his stride as usual at the domestic championships and claiming his seventh Canadian title. Out of nearly 160 men in the 10-kilometer classic individual start, Babikov was the fastest, completing the two loops in 28:38.6. Runner-up Erik Carleton (Rocky...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec – After a whirlwind tour of Europe, in which Ida Sargent of the U.S. Ski Team/Craftsbury Green Racing Project came home just once for U.S. Nationals in January, the 24-year-old took on relatively simple task in Canada on Monday. She needed to pass one person and push hard in a 5-kilometer classic individual start. With soft conditions and temperatures upwards of 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) at Canadian Ski Nationals, that...
QUEBEC CITY – Two tiny specks charging toward the finish, Graham Nishikawa and Jesse Cockney appeared to merge into a single lane, and then suddenly jolted in opposite directions. Whatever made them move must have been significant, and it could have explained why Nishikawa lost his lead and ultimately the classic team sprint at the Canadian Ski National Championships on Saturday. Turns out it was just water in the tracks on a balmy afternoon at...
QUEBEC CITY – As Alana Thomas stood in the finish pen on the Plains of Abraham and looked back beyond the line, she smiled as Perianne Jones cruised down the final stretch. The Canadian National Team member was going to win by a mile – or maybe a kilometer, figuratively speaking in Canadian terms. While Jones didn’t quite have a full lap on the 11 other teams in the open classic relay at the Canadian...