Another day at Whistler and another day of great skiing. The day started just below freezing with a little new snow overnight, intermittent sunshine, no wind, and no snowfall until after the last skier finished.

The course was two laps of the Olympic Red 5km, the same course used in 2010 for the classic races. About 3km of the loop was the same as used in the classic 20km Monday and Tuesday. There is a big difference between the two techniques: in classic, when a relatively straightforward downhill is too fast to double pole, the skier gets a rest in a tuck, but those same sections reward free skating. Even the podium athletes admitted there was a bite to this course in free technique.

The women’s 10km put two new faces on the podium. Germany’s Helen Hoffmann won in 26:13, edging out Poland’s Izabela Marcisz by just 1 second. Norway’s Margethe Bergane collected her second bronze of the week, finishing 4 seconds back. Tuesday’s silver medallist Lisa Lohmann from Germany was fourth, 14 seconds back.

The USA put three women in the top ten without cracking the podium and it was a solid but not spectacular day for North American men. For the US, Sophia Laukli was best in fifth, at 17 seconds, followed by Novie McCabe in seventh at 40 seconds, Sydney Palmer-Leger in ninth at 43 seconds, and Kate Oldham tied for 39th at 3:22.

Canada had an interesting day. For Canada, Jasmine Lyons had another great day, placing 17th at 1:04. Liliane Gagnon was 27th at 1:58, then Amelia Wells in 31st at 2:24, and Marielle Ackermann in 44th at 4:12 back.

Once again, we will let the athletes tell their own stories in the interval start race.

Women’s 10 k Freestyle

Hoffmann

The day: “My day was very great. I don’t expect that my race would be so good, and I am happy.”

The course: “The course is very hard, very hard.”

Visiting Canada: “It’s beautiful here, much snow.”

Marcisz

The day: “Oh my god, I’m really happy. I have silver. It was really beautiful and really hard to race. I’m really satisfied, I have this medal for all my team.”

The course: “I think this course is really difficult and really sneaky. This is Olympic course, so it have to be really difficult. For the skate and for me, it’s quite nice. I have long steps [one skate/v2 glide] so I felt quite comfortable.”

Visiting Canada: “Before these competitions, we were in Prince George and we did race there. For sure, I want to back to Canada, but probably more for chill and a little bit more than course and hotels.”

Bergane

The day: “It was very, very hard, but very fun to race. I’m very happy with the medal.”

The course: “Oh, I really like the course. It’s tough, and I really like that.”

“It was a hard course, but very, very good conditions. In Norway, we have hard courses as well, so kind of the same like in Norway.”

Visiting Canada: “I had so much fun. I really like Canada so I hope I can come back someday.”

Laukli

The day: “It was good. I was a little bit nervous and curious how it would go. I’ve been a little bit sick and coming off of that, so I was definitely happy to get a top five. I had big goals, but with how I’ve been feeling, I was really happy with how it went.”

The course: “It is incredibly hard. I’ve skied it a lot now, but not until racing it today did I realize how insanely [hard], you’re just grinding all the time.”

The profile looks like 3km of easy downhill: “You don’t feel like there is, it feels like there is only climbing.”

Lesson learned this week: “I’ve learned that you’ve got to be patient with racing. I’ve learned, that I can personally work on is skiing tactically, and this course has made me realize that. I’m really into climbing, but there’s so much more to racing than that. That’s something I want to start working on more.”

Favourite race this season: “I feel like I can’t say anything except the hill climb in the Tour de Ski. That was a pretty great day, and a lot of fun.”

McCabe

The day: “It was pretty good. It was a fun fight out there and we had a lot of strong performances from the team, so I think overall a good day.”

My day: “I feel okay about it. I was hoping for a little more, but it was what I could do today, so I’m proud of it.”

Lesson learned this week: “I had a lot of practice in going through racing that was not quite what I’d hoped and trying to get past that and start fresh in the next race.”

Racing here: “It so nice. This is like a dream venue. It’s so beautiful, I thought today was supposed to snow or rain or something, this is a real treat.”

Palmer-Leger

The day: “I had a pretty good day today. I started that first lap not sure how it would go, my legs were flooding a little bit from the last two races. The second lap, I caught a ride with the German Lisa Lohmann who ended up top three today. It actually turned out a really good race. I’m really excited how it went.”

The course: “I like the course. It’s a lot of climbing the first half, then it’s smaller, like gradual, some powerful V2 the last end of the course.”

Lesson learned this week: “Honestly, just learning that trust my training, trust that I’ve been doing this for a long time, and just find my strengths on the course and push it. Whatever happens, happens. If it doesn’t work out as planned, just try to find the positives in everything. Today, we had three women in the top ten, so that was pretty cool.”

Lyons

The day: “It was a tough one out there. It wasn’t the race I was hoping for, but there’s another one coming up.”

The course: “Course was definitely challenging, it was quite hilly, but the conditions were pretty perfect, the grooming was awesome.”

Lesson learned this week: “Learned a lot about getting prepared for races, staying in the zone. Really learned a lot about how high the level is and how much I need to keep training and improving to try to keep up.’

Gagnon

The day: “It was really hard. The two rest days weren’t the best thing for me, my body was feeling pretty tired, and those uphills my legs were burning up, but made it to the finish. It will be a new day tomorrow.”

The course: “Very, very hard skate course. It’s a long uphill right from the start. You get some recovery downhill, but you go back up on the highest point of the course.”

Lesson learned this week: “I learned that maybe classic is getting way better for me. It’s been interesting racing with those fast girls, I’ve got a lot of experience now.”

Wells

The day: “It was pretty good. It was hard out there, it’s a tough course, feeling a little tired from the 20km. Overall, I had fun.”

The course: “It’s a lot of uphill. The first 2k are all work, you get a little rest at the end.”

Lesson learned this week: “I learned so much, it’s hard to think of one thing. Double pole, and learning to ski with the best.”

Oldham

The day: “Today was pretty awesome. I’m really glad the weather held up for us. The skis were fabulous and we have a really strong team here that’s a pleasure to part of.”

The course: “The course is really high level, really well maintained and cared for these championships. It’s really fun, it’s really hard.”

Lesson learned this week: “I think I learned a lot about leading up to race, how important the little things are. I’m surrounded by an elite team that does those little things well, so it’s been awesome to get another window in that lifestyle from girls that ski on the World Cup, who went to the Olympics.”

Ackermann

The day: “Pretty bad, to be honest. It was pretty tough out there, my legs were not in it, my mind was not in it.

The course: “It’s tough. The hills just go on and on, and then there’s this long working section. You’re wiped from the hills and it’s really hard.”

Lesson learned this week: “I learned to just accept bad races. It happens, and sometimes it happens at the biggest event of the year. That’s tough and it’s mostly about having fun. So as long as you don’t get too down on yourself, you can just move on and learn from it.”

Men’s 10 k Freestyle

The men had the now-traditional distance podium sweep by Norway, although it is the first time it has happened here.

Martin Kirkeberg Mørk won in 22:52, a full 26 seconds clear of Lars Agnar Hjelmeset. Tuesday’s 20km winner Jonas Vika was 43 seconds back, part of a second ahead of France’s Gaspard Rousset and six seconds clear of 8th place.

The top North American was Whistler product Joe Davies in 13th at 1:04. Davies represents Great Britain, but still received huge support from the local volunteers. Wearing the Stars and Stripes, Gus Schumacher was 14th at 1:06, Zanden McMullen was 15th at 1:08, John Steele Hagenbuch was 19th at 1:16. and JC Schoonmaker was 29th at 1:43. For maple leaf-wearing Canadians, Rémi Drolet and Max Hollman tied for 23rd at 1:33, Sasha Masson was 32nd at 1:46, and Erikson Moore was 41st at 2:26.

The field was distinctly clumped, with many skiers only a couple seconds from better placings. This may sound easy from the sofa, but a look at the bodies lying in the finish pen makes it clear that skiers were giving it everything already.

Kirkeberg Mørk

The day: “My day today is superb. It’s a quite tough course, you have to hold a little bit off on the hardest climbs, and then go fast on the easier terrain. Especially on the first lap, and then on the second lap, if you did that, you can push hard. And that’s what I did.”

The course: “I like it very much. A lot of the second gear [one skate/V2], and I’m good at that. It’s a good Olympic course.”

Agnar Hjelmeset

The day: “Yeah, today it was really fun to ski. It was tough, but the conditions and the course here is very good. You just have to be a warrior out here.”

The course: “The course is really fun, a lot of uphills, and a lot of technical downhills. The conditions are very good.”

Pacing: “I don’t know, go fast everywhere and push. You just have to be a warrior and push.”

Vika

The day: “It was quite tricky conditions to be skating. The snow was like, it was hard to stand safe on one ski. I felt my calves starting to cramp up, I had to loosen my shoes halfway. I think I’m third, I hope I became third.”

The course: “The course is super tough, it’s harder in skate than in classic. I felt on the classic you could relax on the downhills, but here you had to work all the time.”

Comparing courses: “Back home, we have so many different tracks. This, it definitely could be a track in Norway, it’s really high standard, the courses are wide and it’s easy to ski fast. It’s fair for everyone.”

Davies

The day: “It was okay. Definitely felt a little bit fatigued. Not quite the race I was hoping to feel, but it went all right.”

The course: “I like the course, I don’t know if I had it in me today. It’s a course that requires a lot of fitness.”

Pacing advice from a local: “Ideally, it’s best if you can control the middle of hills, not get too greedy on those, and really gain time over the top and on the gradual, flattish climbs.”

U23 Championships at home: “It’s cool. It’s really nice that there’s so many people coming out to cheer that I’ve grown up with, or just skied with my whole life.”

Lesson learned this week: “I’ve learned that my fitness is good, but sometimes the mental game can get in the way.”

McMullen

The day: “It was good. It’s a really hard race. As a team, we decided the best way to race it is to take it conservative the first lap. I was getting some splits, I was pretty far back, but I had in the back of my head not to freak out about that. I was hoping for a little more time, but overall pretty happy.”

The course: “It’s hard, I really enjoy it. It’s pretty deceiving, you think you’re going to get some rest on the second half of the course, the last 2k, but you’ve got to work all of that downhill and flat. There’s very little recovery on this course.”

Lesson learned this week: “I gotta get a little more fit. I’m coming out of the championships motivated as per usual. I’ve got one more year of U23’s, so I’m excited.”

Hagenbuch

The day: “Not great. I was trying hard, and I think the Americans were fighting the skis a little bit. I was pushing far inside on that first downhill after the fast steep pitch and slid out a bit. I’m happy with the effort, it’s hard racing out here.”

The course: “It’s a great course, I didn’t have the legs to push the hills the way I wanted to, but it’s still fun.”

Lesson learned this week: “I’ve had the big push of racing I’ve been doing catch up to me a little bit. It will be nice to get back and do a little bit of training, and hopefully get back into shape.”

Drolet

The day: “I think it was not very good. It felt like I didn’t have anything to give today. No matter how much I tried, I started going one pace and couldn’t go any faster.”

Lesson learned this week: “That preparation is really key. I haven’t had the greatest preparation for a lot of the season. I have had better races here than earlier, but the preparation still was there. I need to be better prepared because everyone at these events is really strong and it takes your best shape to complete.”

Studying theoretical physics at Harvard while training: “I’ve been at school a lot of the year. School is good, I’m enjoying it a lot. I’m maybe falling a bit behind these couple weeks [Tour de Ski, Trials in PG, Whistler]. Overall, I’m enjoying it a lot, and really happy where I’m at with that.”

Hollman

The day: “It was good. I woke up this morning, kind of scraped it together. The skis were amazing, absolutely rockets today. Shout out to the wax team for sending those out.”

The course: “It’s a hard course, you’re never going to feel amazing on it.”

Differences from last March at nationals: “The corners are definitely nicer, because you can actually get an edge, they’re not just pure ice into slush, that was super nice, you could really rip down it.”

Lesson learned this week: “This week? I need to do more volume before these races, that’s my big takeaway from this.”

Schoonmaker

The day: “It was good. I didn’t have the best body feeling day, but I executed everything I had, and I’m happy with the performance overall.”

The course: “It’s a hard course. I knew it was going to be hard, but it ended up being harder that I even thought. I got to the top of the first climb and I was just almost already shot from there. It’s fun, a flowy course.”

TV commentators say you are only a sprinter: “I would say it’s true right now. I’m definitely better at sprinting than distance. It’s definitely something that I want to change. I want to get better at distance skiing and hopefully, it’s coming along.”

Lesson learned this week: “I’ve learned we have a kick ass bunch of American juniors and U23’s. We had the best week, lots of energy, and I’m really excited for the future, for everyone here.”

Masson

The day: “It was not bad. The techs did an amazing job with the skis, we really had some rockets out there. I think personally I’m missing a little bit of energy. I think I drained myself in the last two weekends in Prince George and Whistler, but really motivates me for next year to be in top, top shape.”

The course: “This course is deadly. It’s one of the hardest courses that there is out there. You have so little recovery and you really have to place yourself to not blow up.”

Lesson learned this week: “I learned that we have a lot of work to do. We’re very much there, we just need a little bit more detail in training. I’ve learned a lot from this week, and going on to next year, I’m really motivated to get there.”

Results, live timing, and livestream/saved video are here at the event website. Keep scrolling to on the livestream page for older videos.

Day five of racing at Whistler Olympic Park delivered with an interval start 10km free technique race in great conditions and intermittent sunshine. The tracks were fast and almost silky, the corners held up all day, the glide was exceptional, and (if anyone cared to classic on a great skating day) VR45 was magic.

Early on, North American skiers spent quality time in the leader’s chair before the top ranked skiers took over. Norway put four skiers on the podium today, somewhat to the surprise of their head coach.
“Beyond all expectations,” Kristian Dahl said. “We didn’t think about all these medals.”

Like many countries here, Norway sees this Junior Worlds as a development opportunity first. Reflecting this, our coverage will quickly go through the podiums and then get into the North American experience.

Norway’s Milla Grosberghaugen Andreasson collected her third medal and second gold today, winning in 26:55. Her US-based teammate Tuva Anine Brusveen-Jensen was six second back in second while Switzerland’s Marina Kaelin got her country’s first medal of the week at 15 seconds back.

For the US, it was Samantha Smith in sixth at 41 seconds back, Haley Brewster in 10th at 1:16, Hattie Barker in 14th at 1:38, and Nina Schamberger in 36th at 2:40.

For Canada, Alison Mackie was 15th at 1:34, Alexandra Luxmoore was 29th at 2:30, Marlie Molinaro was 39th at 3:19, and Maeve Macleod was 44th at 3:48.

There were 60 finishers and one DNF. There isn’t much an author can add about individual start races; here are the athletes words instead.

Grosberghaugen Andreasson

The day: “It was really good, but it was a tough race. I had to fight the whole race, I felt a little tired in the legs but the head was on fire today.”

The course: “It’s a very hard course, but I like a hard course so it was good for me.”

Visiting Canada: “Gold, gold, silver, so that’s good.”

Brusveen-Jensen

The day: “It was tough, but first of all it was good. I felt I pushed everything and did what I could, so it was good.”

The course: “For me, it was to start tough. It’s a long uphill in the start, everybody gets tired. You just have to have the motivation and stay positive. And keep the speed high.”

Visiting Canada: “Canada is amazing. The nature and everything around the stadium. It’s always sunny here. The course is so nice. We live in Whistler, and it’s very nice there too.”

Kaelin

The day: “I was really surprised with the good weather and the nice conditions, because yesterday the slopes were pretty slow and well it was a little harder to ski. It was surprisingly good and I thought it might be a good day.”

Visiting Canada: “I’m really proud to win a medal for Switzerland and it’s so cool to be here on the Olympic tracks. It’s also my first time in America and Canada, and it’s really, really cool.”

Smith

The day: “Very challenging. I’m hoping my time holds up, but we’re waiting for the fastest skiers to come in.”

The course: “I felt pretty good, I think I started out a little too hard. Second lap I was hurting a lot. It was a ton of fun, and certainly difficult.”

Lesson learned this week: “Just try your hardest out there, you can’t control what the other racers are doing. As long as you put your best foot forward, that’s all you can do.”

Brewster

The chair: “It was awesome [sitting in the leader’s chair], and really nice tagging off with Heidi Barker. Definitely a little awkward with that camera pointing in your face.”

The day: “It was good. I’m happy with it. Really fun to have all your teammates cheering who are done racing for the week. And my dad came out which is really special to have him here.”

Lesson learned this week: “There’s a lot of stuff to work on. Strength and speed, a lot of strength, a lot of these girls are really strong out here.”

Barker

The day: “It was amazing. I’m so thankful to have this opportunity. The course was really hard but really fun and it’s a beautiful day of skiing.”

Lesson learned this week: “It’s a really good team to be part of, and you ski your best when you are surrounded by friends and family, and a really good community.”

Mackie

The day: “It was really rough. It was a really, really hard course. A really hard race, but I did a good job of focussing on my technique and my race plan and I think I executed it quite well.”

Lesson learned this week: “This is my third international start and I really surprised myself with how I can compete with the best juniors in the world.”

Luxmoore

The day: “It was super fun, nice warm weather, the course was awesome, the skis were fast. I think I had a good race, I felt pretty strong.”

Lesson learned this week: “I had a great experience racing with people from other countries. I had fun skiing with people who are the fastest in the world.”

Molinaro

The day: “It was okay. The course is super hard, there’s a huge climb out the stadium, obviously that’s hard. Lots of pushing, trying to make up time on the flats, that was my goal out there today. I think I did a good job on that.”

Racing at home: “I grew up in Whistler, so these are the home trails and it’s super cool to be racing World Juniors here. The weather all week has been gorgeous, because lots of the time it’s pouring rain in Whistler, so I’m super stoked that everyone gets to experience nice weather.”

Lesson learned this week: “It’s been super cool to see all the other skiers from all the other countries and how fast and strong they are. Also, my own teammates, we’ve have some really good results.”

McLeod

The day: “It was super good. It’s a tough course out there, you’ve got to work hard all the time, but the skis were super killer, so thank you waxers, the skis were amazingly fast.”

Lesson learned this week: “It’s so inspiring seeing all these super strong skiers. There’s just so much of a journey from here, you can always go harder. It’s pretty inspiring.”

For the men, it was another two Norwegians on the podium but Finland’s Nico Anttola took the win in 23:35. Lars Heggen was second at 6 seconds back, followed by Thomas Linnebo Mollestad at 7 seconds.

For the US, Jack Lange was 11th at 47 seconds, Adrik Kraftson was 30th at 1:48, Anders Weiss was 33rd at 2:00, and Jack Conde was 51st at 2:46.

For Canada, Xav McKeever was 28th at 1:43, Luke Allen was 31st at 1:56, Garrett Siever was 54th at 2:59, and Noah Weir Chaba was 57th at 3:16.

Anttola

The day: “It was very good. I had very good skis. The staff has been working really, really hard and I’m glad the skis was good, and the day was awesome.”

The course: “The course was very tough, but I think it’s good for me.”

Comparing this course to European ones: “I think this is one of the toughest ones, it’s very hard.”

Heggen

The day: “It was good, really nice conditions in the slope, really good.”

The course: “I like the course very much. It’s pretty good, but fun and very nice course. I’m from Lillehammer, and it’s pretty much the same as Lillehammer, really tough.”

Visiting Canada again: “Yeah probably. But when I come back, I ski downhill.”

Linnebo Mollestad

The day: “It was great. The form was good, I had really good skis, and I think I had a very good opening speed and managed to keep it for 10km so I’m really happy.”

The course: “I think it’s a great course. It has some long uphills, which I like, and also the stadium here is really, really beautiful. In this weather, it’s just great.”

Visiting Canada again: “I hope so. It’s really beautiful here, so I hope they will host some big ski competitions in the future, that would be great.”

Lange

This event is more casual than a World Cup. A journalist can walk up to the leader’s chair and grab an interview before the athlete catches his breath. Raw and unedited.

McKeever

The day: “Yeah, pretty rough today. Just the body was not firing on all cylinders. One of those days you want to forget about.”

The course: “The course was definitely a hard one. A lot of climbing right off the start, for the first 1.5, 2 km, and then some gradual rolling sections where you have to push hard.”

Lesson learned this week: “I’ve learned the extent of how a big championship at home feels. I’ve learned how I react to things, and handle different stresses and self-pressure. I’ve learned some stuff in general in training. Some deeper things for sure, from early in the season and training year that correlate to today’s poor performance. Just a lot to unpack and definitely a lot to learn.”

Kraftson

The day: “It was tough out there. I tried to race a smart race but ended up going out a bit too hard and paid the price towards the end.”

The course: “It was a lot of fun. It’s a lot of climb in the first 2km and rolling downhill for the next, for the most part.”

Lesson learned this week: “Just how fast the world is. That’s my biggest takeaway from the week. We’re trying to put in a bigger summer next year and try to compete with these Europeans.”

Allen

The day: “It was good. Skis were really fast and definitely went out hard on the first lap and lost a bit of energy on the second lap. Super fun course and what a nice day for it.”

Lesson learned this week: “Guys are fast from Europe. Competition is pretty stiff out here. Definitely eye opening to see all these fast guys from international countries coming together.”

Weiss

Direct from the leader’s chair:

Siever

The day: “Honestly, it didn’t go very well. I’ve been dealing with some lower back pain, and I generally didn’t feel good out there.”

Lesson learned this week: “There’s lots of work to do to compete on the world circuit.”

Weir Chaba

Second to the finish line, first into the leader’s chair.

Lesson learned this week: “Gotta be patient. Gotta know what your plan is.”

Day four of the Junior Worlds at Whistler Olympic Park brought new weather and more excitement in mass start racing.

The day dawned with a light snowfall at -8C. The wax techs were as secretive as ever, but it was clear at the finish that most athletes were on hard wax. While Norway, Germany, and France owned the podiums, it was also a good day for North American skiers.

Women’s 20 k Classic

The women’s race started fast, with Norway’s Margrethe Bergane animating the race. After the first of four laps, 15 women were skiing together, including USA’s Sydney Palmer-Leger and Canada’s Liliane Gagnon. At the halfway point, Palmer-Leger and Italy’s Martina Di Centa were working together behind a lead group of eight, while Gagnon had been joined in pursuit by teammate Jasmine Lyons and USA’s Novie McCabe.

Bergane continued to push the pace, reducing the lead pack to three in the final lap. Norway’s Kristen Austgulen Fosnæs attacked on the final hill, opening a gap she held to win in 1:01:40.0, 2.3 seconds ahead of Germany’s Lisa Lohmann. Bergane was very happy with third, 7.2 seconds back.

Fosnæs was unable to stop smiling half an hour after adding a gold medal to her sprint silver on Sunday.

“It’s unbelievable,” she exclaimed. “This is getting better and better. I feel like I’m dreaming.”

“I felt like it was really hard from the start, Margrethe she put up some really fast speeds. I tried to lay back and save some power to the end.”

Fosnæs liked everything today, laughing with joy: “I love [the course], I love being in Canada.”

Lohmann was also smiling. “My day was simply perfect, because I won a silver medal.”

“My tactic was to follow the Norwegian guys, it was a good plan to not be in the front.”

Bergane was on a different plan: “I tried to go fast from the start and I’m happy with the bronze.”

“The two other girls, they were very strong in the finish.”

Bergane was happy, but picked the Alpe Cermis stage of the Tour de Ski as her favourite race this year. Because it was fun? “Yeah, it was hard.”

The battle for top North American wasn’t really a fight, as US and Canadian skiers worked together to pick off skiers who had pushed too hard following Bergane.

“I had an incredible day,” Palmer-Leger said. “I was right in the lead pack, top ten from the start, stayed relaxed and up there the full time.”

After Bergane put in a concerted effort that reduced the lead group to eight, Palmer-Leger and Di Centa worked together to chase. Palmer-Leger led the flats with her better glide and Di Centa led the climbs with better kick before Palmer-Leger won the double pole sprint for 8th at 1:25.9 behind.

“I’m a first year U23, I’m only 20 years old, I didn’t have any expectations,” Palmer-Leger told FasterSkier during her cooldown ski. “I just wanted to go out there, go hard, enjoy the race. That’s what I did, and it was a pretty incredible day.”

The next North Americans were Canadians Gagnon in 12th at 1:40.7 and Lyons in 13th at 1:48.2.

“It was a slower start, got caught up in there, but then made my way up, slowing catching up to those other groups,” Gagnon said. “I definitely tried to be more chill in the beginning, keep the technique good, try to catch my breath in the downhills, and it really paid off the the last lap, I was able to push to 12th place.”

“I’m definitely pleased,” Lyons said of her 13th place. “We had super-great skis from our wax techs, they’ve been working so insanely hard all week. I got to work with my teammate Liliane.”

“The grinding double pole sections are pretty hard. We skied with so many North Americans, we tried to match each other’s rhythms and work as a team to catch some people ahead.”

Asked about skiing with Gagnon for much of the race, Lyons said “Definitely working together, exchanging the lead. We’re great friends, definitely working together.”

Lyons and Gagnon will continue to work together as they are both headed to Planica for senior World Championships.

McCabe finished 14th at 2:01.6, and was visibly disappointed with her day. She was working with the group, but was short of grip later in the race, causing her to yoyo off the back.

Canada’s Emilia Wells was 27th in her first international race, 4:20.9 back.

“It’s being an amazing experience, being part of Team Canada,” Wells said. “All the coaches and staff are amazing, and the races have been so much fun.”

Teammate Anna Parent was 30th, a little ahead of USA’s Anabel Needham in 33rd.

“It was kind of hard, my first mass start at a big event,” Needham said. “There was a point where I just wanted to finish the race. I’m happy I stuck with it, and I really liked my coke feed.”

Like so many athletes here, Wells, Parent, and Needham were here to gain experience. Judging by the enthusiasm of their coaches, they are getting it.

Sophia Laukli, who started with bib 2 to match her ranking, was one of five who did not finish the demanding course.

Men’s 20 k Classic

The men’s race was also animated by racers who didn’t want to sprint at the finish. Early in the second 5km lap, Gus Schumacher and Zanden McMullen were leading side by side into the long climb. On the final lap, it was a group of 11, with Switzerland’s Nicola Wigger and Cla-Ursin Nufer pushing the pace with help from Schumacher.

In the final kilometre, it was Norway’s Jonas Vika who attacked up Hermodt’s hill and entered the stadium with a gap. Norway’s Edvard Sandvik closed the gap to 1.3 seconds with Julien Arnaud collecting the first medal for France at 3.6 behind. Two packs of four sprinted for the minor places.

In an interview that is completely inaudible due to wildly celebrating Norwegians, Vika was very happy, described a Norwegian plan to keep the pace fast but save energy for the final hill, and admitted to practising the right hand turn into the stadium where he spectacularly saved a bad line choice in Sunday’s sprint.

“I had a nice day today, sadly second behind this guy,” Sandvik said, pointing to Vika beside him. “but I’m happy.”

“We figured that there was no breakaway [coming], so the last two laps were save energy and move cheap around the pack,” Sandvik explained. “I missed a bit of the start of the last sprint uphill and Vika got a good lead and it was all about the second place.”

The European athletes are much more experienced with working in larger packs in deeper fields, and it showed today.

“To take the third place was just fantastic,” Arnaud said, “and I am very happy to share that with my teammates and coaches who make incredible wax on my skis.”

His tactics were simple: “I just follow the first place … I want to put all I have in the last kilometres.”

Schumacher was in the next group of four, finishing seventh at 6.3 seconds.

“I got to start in bib 3, which is nice compared to 30 on the World Cup,” he told FasterSkier at the finish. “The start was pretty chill, the hills were solidly hard every time, but [the group] stayed together.”

“My skis were really fast, so I knew I could give up a little time on the top and just ski back through. The Swiss guys put a big push towards the top, strung it out a bit, but again it came back together. Positioning down those last hills was pretty big and I thought I did a good job of finding a spot, but I didn’t have enough kick in the end.”

“I’m happy with it, it was really fun to ski at the front and not just, like World Cup, where I stay on the line the whole time. That’s what I remember loving about racing, the tactics, and being able to keep your head out there.”

The top Canadian was Whistler’s own Joe Davies at 46.5 seconds back in 15th. Unfortunately, he was representing Great Britain. More on him Friday when he skis his favourite format on the trails he grew up on.

Rémi Drolet was dropped on the third lap, hanging on for 17th at 1:18.5, just ahead of McMullen.

“I made a couple of mistakes in the first few laps that cost me energy,” Drolet said. “You had to be a little bit lucky to be in the right position, or position yourself, and I wasn’t quite able to do that. It was a good learning experience.”

“I was definitely starting to slip a little bit,” Drolet said of the last two laps. “I’m not sure if it was the skis or I was just getting tired and having trouble skiing them properly.”

“I definitely blew up there, trying to chase the lead pack. Overall, I had pretty good skis today. If the body was there, they were good enough have a result.”

Drolet raced his first Tour de Ski this season. “A good experience overall. I did get pretty sick once I got there. I think it’s on the mend now, and this race felt better than previous ones this year, and I’m optimistic that there will be more good races to come.”

“It was rough,” McMullen said. “I had higher hopes, shooting for the top ten, but I just didn’t have it when the pack made that move.”

From there, it was John Steel Hagenbuch in 23rd at 1:38.2 back, then Max Hollman in 25th, Luke Jager in 33rd and Erikson Moore in 40th out of 58 finishers.

Canada’s Sasha Masson had a good ski despite a crash: “First lap felt really good and then coming out of the feed zone, got caught up with some skiers and went head over heels. Did a little front flip and got back on skis, tried to reconnect.”

Masson did not get a good result as he was disqualified later, possibly for skiing outside the v boards just after the start. The coaches from Canada, USA, Norway, and Chile have all been emphasizing that this a development event, with learning the priority, and here is just one example of an extra lesson.

The event page has more links, including the full results for the eight days. Update: The livestream videos are not disappearing after a day, they simply move to the very bottom of the page under ‘rewatch the action’.

The World Juniors rolled on in Whistler with sunshine, easy classic waxing, and a new distance.

Most skiers had done a 20km event before today, some had done two, but it was a new pacing experience for many. Add in a 5km loop that an athlete from Holmenkollen described as ‘hilly’ and you have a recipe for good racing and a pretty good day for North American skiers.

Team USA’s Samantha Smith led the way for the continent, tying for 8th place, while both Alison Mackie and Xavier McKeever earned 13th place finishes for Canada.

In the women’s 20km, it was the same names as the sprint on Saturday, but with different medal colours. Sweden’s Lisa Eriksson and Norway’s Milla Grosberghaugen Andreasson pushed the pace from the start, splitting the 52 starters into small groups. By the halfway point, those two were alone in front, maintaining a 30 second lead over the first chase group. Andreasson went hard on the long climb on the final lap, breaking Eriksson to win alone in 1:01:17.6, 21.2 seconds ahead.

“I think Lisa was a little bit tired today, and I was very strong,” Andreasson explained. “I felt good on the second last round, so I tried to go a bit faster.”

“Hard today,” Eriksson said. “From the beginning, I was a little bit tired. I do the best I can do today, but Milla was super strong.”

A group of four was chasing hard, with sprint winner Eevi-Inkeri Tossavainen confident in her ability to take bronze.

“It was quite tough,” she said. “I didn’t have a chance, it was Milla and Lisa, they was too strong today, I was only fighting for the bronze.”

“I knew I would be the best one at the end, with the double poling, that was my only plan.”

That plan worked, and the podium was set. Smith had skied in what was the third group for much of the race, and tied for second of the four survivors, joint 8th place with Sweden’s Tove Ericsson, at 1:39.8 back.

“I was happy with the result,” Smith told FasterSkier. “Another top ten, so I’m really excited about that.”

“It was a pretty fast start, like I had anticipated. Luckily I did the 15km skate in Lygna [last year at U20’s] so I knew what to expect.”

“That was my second 20km, so I don’t have a ton of experience with pacing a race like that,” she expanded. “I was with skiers, [thinking] just stick with them, they probably know how to pace.”

Mackie skied in an ever changing fourth pack competing for 12th and held on through the final hill disintegration to get 13th, 2:09.8 behind.

“It was amazing, this was my best race of the season so far,” Mackie told FasterSkier. “It was so much fun to work with a group of girls in such a big mass start. I’ve never done anything like this, this is my second international start.”

“I love the atmosphere,” she said. “I’m really lucky my first world juniors is here, I’ve race here a couple of times before.”

Mackie may only be 17, but she has been listening to her coaches: “I want to thank my techs, I had great grip and great glide.”

Constance Lapointe was the next Canadian in 21st, in her first world juniors days after her 18th birthday. “Definitely one of my best races ever,” she said.

Lapointe came in without any expectation except gaining experience, but she has already learned what to say in interviews:”My wax techs just nailed the wax.”

Ava Thurston was the second US finisher in 28th, 4:52.4 back: “It was pretty solid, it was definitely a very hilly course, but the four laps went by surprisingly faster than I thought they would.”

“Skis were great, had plenty of kick, just really nice classic skiing. The corners were pretty good today, no treacherous downhills for me anyway.”

Canada’s Anna Stewart and Alexandra Luxmoore were 34th and 40th in what was expected to be a learning week.

USA’s Rose Horning was 42nd while Nina Schamberger did not finish after skiing the second lap in obvious discomfort.

For the men, it was the same countries on the podium but new names.

Early on, it was Finland’s Niko Anttola driving the pace with all four Norwegians staying in the top five. Canada’s McKeever skied close to the front for the first lap and a half, but looked like he had good skis on a day when the Germans and Norwegians had great skis.

Anttola and Norway’s Mathias Holbæk pulled clear on the third lap, leaving three Norwegians to be caught by a chase pack of five. Anttola looked like he was driving the pace, but it was Holbæk who skied away on the final Hermodt’s hill into the stadium for victory in 53:05.7. Anttola was 7.7 seconds behind, with Norway’s Kristian Kollerud winning the sprint for bronze at 28.1 seconds.

“It was a great day, I feel strong. My tactic was to be behind and take it in the last sprint uphill,” Holbæk said. “We go very fast [on the third lap] and got a little split. It was fun.”

“It was good day, good weather, and tracks were very nice,” Anttola said. “I tried to go hard in the uphills, but Mathias a little bit too strong today.”

“It was a great day, a tough race. I’m really glad that I came third,” Kollerud told FasterSkier. “The two guys in front of me were too good, so I need to focus on third place.”

If it was a hard race for the podium finishers, it was harder for the rest of the field. For most of the North American skiers, the coaches were talking about learning and developing, not results.

“A bit of a tough one, the pace was really hot off the start,” McKeever said. “I redlined a bit in the second lap, but came alive for the end.”

“I was still happy I was able to come back … and fight for 13th. Obviously, not quite what I wanted, but there are takeaways from being able to recover.”

McKeever had come in with expectations from outside and inside, allowing him to be disappointed with a top 15 in his favoured race at a home country event. While this is his fifth World Juniors, he is still a U20 and working on the mental aspects that lead to success. A big part of his thoughts ten minutes after finishing: “How I react to having this big event in Canada, and how I react to some added self-pressure from a championships at home.”

Luka Riley was the top US skier, 34th at 4:24.6, just ahead of Canada’s Luke Allen in 36th.

“It was really fun other there,” Allen said. “Super hard race, super deep field out there.”

“Tracks were remaining pretty hard, the kick was solid throughout, the corners were fast but not sketchy. Honestly, just a beautiful day in Whistler. Sun was out, can’t really ask for much more here.”

The US trio of Adrik Kraftson, Jack Lange, and Max Kluck were 39th, 41st, and 57th. We could quote them, but it’s more fun to watch the video that shows the team.

Canada’s Raleigh Tarte finished 47th while Garrett Siever did not finish after a start that looked strong.

Full results for the week and live timing are here. Livestream video for upcoming races is on the same link.

Day two at Whistler Olympic Park was similar to the first: sunny, fast, and exciting.

The excitement started early, with pre-race favourite JC Schoonmaker crashing spectacularly on the sweeping right-hand drop into the stadium during the qualifier. Seeded second, he was quick to be back up and skiing, but 150m of double poling with one pole cost him more time on top of the loss of time and speed from the fall. Schoonmaker would fail to qualify for the heats.

That corner is pretty easy when cruising on a long slow training day, but it has also ended many dreams over the years. FasterSkier asked Schoonmaker to explain what is different at sprint pace.

“You’re just going in with that extra little bit of speed, it makes it a little more tricky, and you have tired legs going into it,” he explained. “And that’s why you have to have your head in the game, and mine wasn’t there today.”

The two downhill corners would generate a lot of excitement in the heats. The left hairpin after the longer opening climb changed during the day. The “defensive” line, starting inside and finishing outside, got scraped smooth in the quarters. The “fast” line, entering very wide and exiting inside with much higher speed held out much better, despite many more skiers using it today after Xav McKeever’s well-executed demonstration of the gains was featured on the livestream video from Saturday.

In the women’s heats, the only two North Americans who qualified exited in the quarterfinals. Sydney Palmer-Leger qualified 30th and wasn’t able to match pace in a stacked first heat that produced both lucky losers. She finished sixth in the heat and 30th overall. Novie McCabe qualified 24th and finished fifth in heat 2 for a 23rd place.

Finland’s Jasmin Kahara was on a mission to upgrade her 13th place in last year’s U23 sprint, winning the qualifier and leading out all three heats on her way to the U23 title. Norway’s Kristin Austgulen Fosnæs moved up in the final 200 m to take second with teammate Sigrid Lesotho Føyen in third.

“Amazing, I have been waiting for this for many years and it was a perfect day,” Kahara told the livestream interviewer Tom Stephen at the finish. “I wanted to be in the front and do my best and ski as fast as possible.”

The simplest way to stay out of trouble is to go to the front and stay there. Kahara was the only skier on the day who could make that strategy work.

“It was amazing, I really didn’t expect to be that good today. The waxers did an amazing job,” Fosnæs said with a smile. “I tried to follow the Finnish girl’s track and try to keep her as close as possible, and then try to hold on to the finish line.”

“I got the bronze medal, and I’m really happy with that,” Føyen told FasterSkier. “I was really afraid they were going to slide me in from the top, but they didn’t.” Føyen entered the stadium in third, drafting Fosnæs, with just enough of a gap on Sweden’s Moa Hansson and Italy’s Nicole Monsorno to prevent a slingshot.

For the men, Norway’s Lars Agnar Hjelmeset won the qualification and his first quarterfinal in style before getting boxed in the semifinal. In the final, it would be fellow Norwegian Ansgar Evensen surprising the field with an attack on the second climb. Sweden’s George Ersson won a photo finish for second, 0.02 ahead of teammate Emil Danielsson, and 0.80 behind Evensen.

“In the heats, I tried to save as much energy as possible on the hill, and go really hard when I got into the stadium,” Evensen said. “I just decided on the [second] hill… but when I got the free track and felt good, I just went for it.”

Evenssen exploded the field, with only the two Swedish skiers staying together but not close enough to draft.

“It was amazing,” Ersson said.” I had amazing skis, body felt good, couldn’t be any better. I’m really satisfied with my second place.”

“I didn’t want to be first before the downhill to the stadium. It worked in the quarterfinals, but in the finals, Ansgar had a gap.”

“Amazing,” Danielssen said afterward. “Nice weather, good shape, good skis, on the podium with my friend, it couldn’t be better.”

There is a theme to the Swedish interviews on the first two days, seemingly channeling the great Marit Bjørgen who collected five medals on these tracks in 2010. “The shape is good, the skis are good.”

The fourth place finisher, Norway’s Jonas Vika, completed the corner drama for the day with a spectacular maneuver after his aggressive line choice backfired.

“There was about this much space outside the v-board,” Vika explained, holding his fingers about 8 cm apart. “I don’t know how I stayed on the skis, but I’m really glad I did.”

Three North Americans made the heats. Gus Schumacher and Luke Jager came in with high expectations. Canada’s Sasha Masson did not.

“It was quite a big surprise that I qualified this morning, knowing there’s so many fast athletes out there,” Masson explained. “The techs did a really good job for the kick and the glide, and I just made it happen this morning.”

After qualifying 26th, Masson found his attempts to move up in the quarterfinal blocked, leaving him happy in 23rd for the day.

“For the heats, it was a good experience. A little more international experience would be fun.”

Schumacher qualified 24th and was happy with his heat.

“It was good, my plan was to make the time as fast as possible,” he said after getting eliminated. “I slotted in behind the fastest bib in our heat, led over the top, kind of lost an edge a little bit in that icy corner.” “I got spit wide, came around the corner here in third, and maybe not close enough to slingshot.”

“I was pretty proud of it, my classic sprinting has never really been my best. It was a good way to start the week and really fun to be in a heat again.”

Jager, like Schoonmaker, was expected to compete and even feature in the final.

“It was kind of a mixed bag. My qualifier, I finished and thought it was pretty good, but the results told a different story,” Jager said, after qualifying 20th and reaching the semifinals as a lucky loser.

“My quarterfinal was really tight, really fast, and thankfully Lars was pinning it from the front the whole time. I had to sit anxiously for four more heats.”

“I was hoping to try the same thing in the semi, just stay back and avoid trouble, but I managed to find trouble anyway.”

On the first short steep turn up out of the stadium, the tight packed group got out of the tracks and Jager found himself with a broken pole at the start of the diagonal stride technique zone.

“That’s a good reminder, not matter how hot you think you are, stuff happens.”

Jager, like Schoonmaker, was philosophical and still upbeat. “Anyone can do it, once you’re in the heats, but definitely some people can do it with less energy than others.”

The last word goes to Ersson.

“If you were to wish for one condition to compete in, this would be it. Sunny, hard tracks, it couldn’t be any better.”

Full results for the week are on the FIS website, including video replays of the first two days and live video for the remaining events.

The U20/U23 World Championships kicked off in Whistler Olympic Park with classic sprints on a bluebird day. While the finals were filled with athletes from Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Italy, it was a good day for many more nations.

Coaches from Canada, the US, Andorra, and Taiwan were agreed on one thing: U20 results won’t make or break your skiing career, but what you learn here can change your life. That said, results are what every athlete is chasing.

The 1.2km course would look very familiar to the women who raced here in 2010 and the men who raced the 2009 World Cup. A moderate climb out of the stadium, a fast drop into hairpin, and a short climb before dropping into the stadium. The air temperature rose to -1C by the heats, but the snow stayed fast and firm at -4C.

The results page on the FIS site includes the cached livestream video of the heats. Choose one of the ‘video’ events. This page also provides live timing and live video for the rest of the week.

The women skied a tactical final, won on the long, long stadium loop by Finland’s Eevi-Inkeri Tossavainen. Norway’s Milla Grosberghaugen Andreassen was second, followed by Lisa Eriksson.

“It’s been an amazing day, I can’t say anything else,” Tossavainen told FasterSkier at the finish. Many of the skiers were enjoying the day, but becoming a World Champion seems to add to the glow. She employed a tactic that worked well for some, sitting in the group until the last 200m.

“I know that the stadium was quite long and I tried to be the fastest one there,” Tossavainen explained.

Three US and two Canadian skiers qualified for the heats. Samantha Smith lead the way, 7.31 seconds back in 10th, followed by Alison Mackie in 22nd, Ava Thurston in 26th, Nina Schamberger in 27th, and Alexandra Luxmoore in 30th. Hailey Brewster, Anna Stewart, and Constance Lapointe missed the top 30.

Smith moved into the semifinal and an 8th place result. Most of the North Americans had raced a sprint here last March at Nationals.

“It felt like a pretty different course,” Smith explained. “Especially this year we got to go a bit further down the hill. Last year, for spring series, the females cut off a tiny bit. I think it’s great we are racing equal distances.”

“It was a lot firmer and faster, and the long double pole finish was a lot shorter than last year, so there was less time to be made up.”

“I didn’t have any hard expectations for today, it’s a U20 race,” Nordiq Canada’s High Performance Director Chris Jeffies explained. “U20, it’s about development, it’s about opportunities, it’s about process. I think our athletes went through all that and learned a lot today.”

For the men, Sweden’s Anton Grahn made the win look comfortable after qualifying fourth. Fellow Swede Elias Danielsson was second, followed by top qualifier Eero Rantala from Finland. The three Norwegians who animated the first two thirds of the final weren’t able to keep pace in the stadium.

Grahn was all smiles after: “I had great skis, and a great body, and I felt like today was unstoppable.”

He had a two part tactical plan: get safely around the one tricky corner and then let others lead down the drop into the stadium.

“Be first at that curve, that 180 curve,” Grahn said, pointing to the sharp hairpin left, “because I didn’t have that great of a turn technique, and then take it all on the home stretch, because I know I had a really strong finish.”

Canadian Xav McKeever, competing in his fifth (5th) U20 Championships, was the only North American to make the heats, qualifying 23rd.

“I’m happy to make the heats at World Juniors for the first time,” he said. “I’m little disappointed with the final result, but I did my best today and I’m looking forward to the distance races.”

“I knew I didn’t have to be in the front in the first climb, so I was trying to conserve energy and ski smooth. I knew I had a good line around that corner I could take and gain a few spots. It almost worked too well as I came out tied for the lead. I had to slow down to get someone else to lead the downhill.”

After moving up from 5th to 1st on the hairpin, McKeever used a slingshot to get the inside line in the lead on the backstretch, but couldn’t keep Switzerland’s Ilan Pittier from passing outside and boxing him in for the final corner.
“Overall, I skied it how I wanted to and just didn’t have enough power in the end.”

On day one of World Juniors, young skiers had good days, bad days, and learning experiences. This writer was reminded of an old coach’s favourite phrase: “The only purpose of racing as a junior is to use up your mistakes before the results matter.” Enjoy the sunshine, learn from the rest of the day.

U20 Classic SpriNT (M/W) RESULTS

The pressure was on at Caledonia Nordic in Prince George, BC, for the trials that would be used to select athletes for World Championships in Planica, Slovenia, and U20/U23 World Championships in Whistler. The three days of racing is also a Nordiq Cup, which is a FIS tier 1 event equivalent to a US SuperTour or Scando Cup, but the focus was on earning a spot on one or more of the teams.

The snow conditions were trickier than usual for January. Prince George is the geographic centre of British Columbia, and is better known for cold weather than rain, but the atmospheric river that damaged California delivered warm and wet weather over a large part of the west. The weather also added excitement to travel, with some skiers missing ski bags after cancelled flights. Chelsea’s Tory Audet, a 17 year old who collected three open category wins in Eastern Canada Cups in December and represented Canada at U20’s last year, received her skis Tuesday night, with no chance to test in advance of Wednesday’s sprint.

For Planica, three athletes were preselected from World Cup results: Katherine Stewart-Jones, Antoine Cyr, and Graham Ritchie. That left five to nine selections open, with selection guaranteed for the top Canadian racer in each of the three races.

For Whistler, the team size is four to six athletes in each of the four groups (male/female, U20/U23), with no athletes preselected. The selection order is 1st place Canadian in the classic sprint, 1st place in the 10km free, and 1st place in the 20km classic mass start, then cycling through 2nd, 3rd until at least four athletes are selected.

Full details are in the selection criteria.

While most competitors were Canadian, a few younger international athletes stopped in on their way to Whistler. World Cup fans will have seen Poland’s Izabela Marcisz and Monika Skinder along with Estonian twins, Kaidy and Keidy Kaasiku.

Quotes are from interviews by Nordiq Canada’s Nathaniel Mah, unless otherwise stated.

Classic Sprint, Wednesday

It was +4C and klister for the sprint day. The top 30 qualifiers from both U20 and Open automatically went into the Open heats. Fondeurs Laurentides Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt won the 1.1km qualification in 2:47.09, 0.98 ahead of Skinder and Whitehorse’s Dahria Beatty. In the final, Bouffard-Nesbitt, Skinder, and Marcisz got a gap on the other three before a collision took Bouffard-Nesbitt down. Marcisz won ahead of Skinder, with Beatty dropping Katie Weaver and Liliane Gagnon to take third and the Planica selection.

“[It was] soft conditions, the tracks were completely gone by the time the heats came around,” Beatty told NC. “Try to be as efficient as possible on the climbs… It was really about being tactical in your positioning on the downhills, trying to give as much as possible on that final plateau and a draft into the finish.”

Beatty was feeling the fatigue from the Tour de Ski, and skipped the final two race days to get an early start on the pre-Planica altitude camp at Apex (at 1,800m elevation, near Penticton, BC).

Marcisz was a little surprised to win a sprint, as she sees herself as a distance skier, but the challenging course suited her.

Gagnon, in fifth, was the top Canadian U23 to book her trip to Whistler, along with Edmonton’s Alison Mackie who was top U20 in 8th.

For the men, it was Thunder Bay’s Julian Smith, who won the qualification in 2:20.62 and then won each heat from the front. Foothills’ Xavier McKeever was second and top U20 with Black Jack’s Julien Locke taking third.

“The course was so fun,” Smith said. “Caledonia did a great job putting on this event.”

Tactics were straightforward; on all three heats, I came into the downhill in third … and my skis were so free today,” Smith said. “Before the last little kicker, I would find myself in the lead, and from there it was just going as hard as I could to the finish.”

McKeever was happy in second, confirming selection for Whistler and (probably) Planica. “I definitely had some fun on this course, there’s a lot of good turns, and really technical sections. I just went out and enjoyed myself today.”

“It’s definitely a good downhill to slingshot on,” he said. “I got a slingshot into second, that’s where I wanted to be to get some draft, but Julian was really strong today.”

Whitehorse’s Sasha Masson, 6th in the final behind Orford’s Léo Grandbois and Canmore’s Russell Kennedy, was the top U23 finisher.

20km Mass Start Classic, Thursday

The men raced first, with Orford’s Olivier Léveillé and Kennedy getting a gap. Léveillé arrived late on Tuesday night and took Wednesday off to recover from travel and lost baggage.

“We started pretty hard, Russell and I, the second lap was even harder and that’s when we broke away, just the two of us.”

“We exchanged the lead for a little bit, but the last lap I was pretty dead,” he said. “I punch as hard as I could on the last uphill, and I made a little gap, just enough to hold him to the finish line.”

The winning time was 51:51.4, with Kennedy at 0.1 back and Grandbois taking third alone at 1:40.1 behind.

Léveillé is U23, but he may not accept the Whistler invitation.

“I don’t know yet, where I’m going to go next. I need to talk to my coach. Senior World Champs is a big goal for me this year. I got a top ten last year in World Cup and I really want to prepare myself to do well.”

Léveillé admitted that he is still feeling his Tour de Ski finish and after last year’s U23 individual podium, it makes sense for him to be looking ahead.

For the women, Nakkertok and U of New Hampshire’s U23 Jasmine Lyons grabbed the win in 1:02:10.4, 25.5 ahead of Gagnon and 48.1 ahead of Bouffard-Nesbitt. Lyons, Gagnon, Bouffard-Nesbitt and Keidy Kaasiku got a gap early and skied together for three of four laps.

“The last lap we picked up the pace a little, and I just tried to hammer up the hills,” Lyons said. “We were trading off [earlier]. Olivia was doing the brunt of the work a lot of the time, and especially on the downhills… She would often pull away and really push the pace.”

Lyons has been racing in NCAA and didn’t have a comparison to other Canadians going in, but that cuts both ways.

“Yeah, I just skied my own race. I really had no idea where I was compared to other people.”

Bouffard-Nesbitt was processing after Wednesday’s crash and now third.

“I’m trying to qualify for the world champs, and the only way to do that is to win a race.”

“I was just trying to track whoever was trying to lead the race, trying to save energy. When Jasmine started pushing the pace, I went with it and then I just blew up in the last lap.”

Mackie was top U20 again, finishing 9th at 3:13.2 back.

10km Individual Free, Saturday

The final day brought falling snow and extra pressure for athletes who hadn’t earned selection targets yet.

Marcisz again showed her form on the way to Whistler, winning the two lap 10km in 26:05.8.

“I really like [the skate course], I think it’s quite similar than Planica,” she said on Wednesday.

Keidy Kaasiku earned second, 30.3 seconds back, just edging out top Canadian Lyons at 33.0 behind. Gagnon continued her strong results in 4th at 56.0, followed by Kaidy Kaasiku and then Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt at 1:09.2.

Before the start, Bouffard-Nesbitt was absorbing two races that hadn’t gone to plan and focussing ahead.

“I think the skate course is a lot of fun, and I’m just going to go into it …  and hope the result is what I’m looking for.”

With only the top Canadian guaranteed a trip to Plancia, hope would depend on the High Performance Committee and the more intricate parts of the selection criteria document.

Australia’s Zana Evans was the top U20 in 9th while Revelstoke’s Alexandra Luxmoore locked down her selection in 10th at 2:07.6.

For the men, Kennedy locked down his Planica selection with the win in 23:20.6. TBay’s Max Hollman took second and top U23 at 15.3 behind. Masson was third at 16.8 followed by Black Jack’s Rémi Drolet at 26.0 to put three U23 athletes in the top four.

“I like to leave it to the last day, I’ve done it with everything,” Kennedy said jokingly. “I think it’s a really good team going to World Champs, I’m excited to see what the young guns can do. Olivier’s looking good and we’ve got Max over here, he’s skiing really fast.”

Kennedy and Drolet both completed the Tour de Ski, with Kennedy wanting some recovery and training time before the next race.

“I’m just so happy to do a whole race without falling over,” Hollman said of his race. He fell in the mass start Thursday, but no one remembers any previous crashes, surely…. Hollman wasn’t sure he had qualified for Whistler, which means he spent less time than most with the selection criteria.

Masson knew what he needed to do to get to Whistler and was showing his excitement in the finish interview. “I think it’s going to be awesome,” he said. “I’m really excited [to go back to U23’s] because the gang of boys is really fun.”

Full Results, Event Website, Kelly Bergman Photo Gallery

Selections

The Planica announcement shows the maximum of 12 athletes were nominated.

The Whistler announcement confirms that Léveillé declined U23’s and will likely join the Planica altitude camp at Apex.

Nordiq Canada has selected the maximum number of athletes for both trips. This fits well with the stated goal of building experience for the 2026 and 2030 Olympic cycles.

There are a few missing names that readers might have expected to see. This is partly from having a high stakes selection in a four day period. One athlete had a minor injury in Prince George and missed all three races. With only six or seven recovery days between the last missed trial to the first Whistler race, it is probably not a surprise that the High Performance Committee didn’t use the injury or illness provision for a discretion selection.

Many athletes came to measure themselves and went home with lessons learned. The top athletes came with specific result goals and some of them are headed home with missed goals to digest.

“Cross country skiing is the greatest sport for life,” Head Coach Robin McKeever told FasterSkier last week en route to Prince George. “But we still need to absolutely understand what is high performance and what we’re up against on an international level. Because there is it’s about seconds that matter, 10ths of seconds in sprints. and it’s a hard environment to be successful in.”

Hard work, pain, and missed opportunities abound at the top level of this sport. All the more reason to celebrate the successes when they come.

Canada is in the rebuilding part of the success rollercoaster, with many changes to the High Performance team and the development programs.

Since May 1st, Chris Jeffries has joined Nordiq Canada (NC) full time as the High Performance Director, Robin McKeever has transitioned from the extremely successful Para program to become the Olympic Stream Head Coach. NextGen coach Eric de Nys and Dev coach Matt Smider are in their first full year in those roles and have shifted modes from planning to delivering.

This season, Canada returned to the Tour de Ski with three top ten finishes and is hosting the World Junior/U23 Championships.

The Tour de Ski was an obvious highlight, with all of the nine athletes and six of eight support staff experiencing the Tour for the first time.

“Yves Bilodeau has obviously has done a few Tour de Ski’s and Simon Boisvert was on the trip with us as a wax tech,” McKeever told FasterSkier, “but yeah, everybody else was pretty much rookies there, I think just the tech, so we were following the tech’s lead to learn from them as much as anything.” For non-Canadians, Bilodeau represented Canada at two Olympics before becoming a wax tech and VW bus driver for the Beckie Scott generation.

Asked to pick just one highlight, McKeever chose one result and one process goal: “My personal highlight from the Tour has to be Tony’s fourth place and coming ever so close,” he said, referencing Antoine Cyr losing a photo finish for a podium spot in Val di Femme the day after finishing 6th in the sprint. “That’s I think beyond some of our expectations through this year, but at the same time, it is belief in the system and belief for the younger up and coming athletes and others around him that it is possible. We need to get that back in the system. We’ve lost it since you know that Beckie, Chandra [Crawford], Sarah [Renner] years of Olympic medals, and with Alex Harvey’s retirement, things were kind of frayed. So it’s time to rebuild that and get positive focus forward and making sure that we’re looking at growth mindset and looking for positive solutions, rather than always complaining about the issues.”

Katherine Stewart-Jones, who has this season scored her first top 10 plus six top 20’s, and joined the red group as the 15th ranked distance skier, is another obvious highlight for Canada.

Canada will select athletes for U20/U23 Championships in Whistler and World Championships in Planica at the Trials event at Caledonia Nordic this week, with many younger skiers expecting to qualify. There is also a good field of older skiers planning to hand out some learning experiences on their way to Planica, which should result in exciting racing. Live timing and full results will be here.

For Planica, three athletes were pre-selected: Katherine Stewart-Jones and Tony Cyr met the standard of two top 20s on the World Cup this season, and Graham Ritchie earned a discretion pick with a 17th, a 21st, and two top 20 sprint qualifiers. Everyone else is at Caledonia.

When FasterSkier was interviewing NC staff this season during race weekends, the phrases “that’s Julie” and “Julie does” got used a lot. Julie Beaulieu is in her second year at NC as Development Director. What does that role entail? It appears that it is mostly enabling the more visible staff members to succeed. The most visible of those is McKeever.

If asked about McKeever, most ski fans will remember his time guiding his younger brother to Para glory, or his leadership that brought Canada to the elite of the Para-nordic world. This has eclipsed his own history of podiums, multiple national titles, and Olympic experience since he joined the Junior National team in 1990. McKeever has been part of the National team system every year since then: the good, the bad, and the Nagano ugly.

From the outside view, McKeever never produces inspirational speeches that would make Hollywood proud. If he shouts, it is encouragement to a racer on course, and he is most often seen having a quiet one-on-one conversation. Every conversation loops back to “moving forward” and what can be learned to be better in the future.

So what makes McKeever a leader? He is surrounded by inspired people. Athletes produce year over year improvement. Retired athletes look back with a smile at their team memories. And there are a lot of “team” moments, among both the athletes and the staff.

Para athletes often talked about lessons learned from teammates and the support they felt. Asked how to bring the Para success to the rest of the team, McKeever focussed on culture.

“Para … it’s it’s a small community overall. Tiny,” he said. “So it’s a lot easier to create that team environment and attitude around our culture.”

“So the funny thing is, we think Nordic or cross country skiing is such a big community overall but compared to the world, it’s actually a fairly small community. I still remember a lot of people [on the World Cup circuit] from when I raced back in the late 90s, early 2000s. So this is a small community overall.”

And the next step is change.

“So changing the culture within Canada is about being open to others’ ideas. And we have gone to a decentralized program where athletes are training within their home environments. And then we’re camp-based. So we create our team environment in camps and on the World Cup in the winter. Bit more similar, probably, to what the US system is right now under Matt Whitcomb.”

While McKeever listens to others, he has a solid core of philosophy.

“And that culture is about being a positive influence on the program, always forward. No, we’re not always going to have successful days,” he explained. “But to come in and improve on the tough days and look at the positives, but also look at where we can improve every single day. And I think that just that philosophy and the culture that is behind that creates a safe environment where athletes are free to express themselves as they will. And they’re not scared to speak openly. And so when they do that, we can create a space where they can be happy to operate in, so that creates the smiles. Cohesion as a group and a team becomes the number one key focus that I try to look at.“

With the decentralized structure, athletes work primarily with their club/personal coaches with support from the national system. This adds continuity as skiers enter and exit the World Cup and the National Team; it also helps knowledge trickle down into the clubs.

This fits in with an overall goal of integrating the National Team system more tightly with the clubs.

Next up in the Canadian series is the NextGen and Development changes, along with an explanation of why the USST’s Bryan Fish and Greta Anderson were using the same phrases as Jeffries and de Nys at the combined Nordiq Cup/SuperTour at Sovereign Lake in December.

The world of skiing is changing and Canada is changing with it.

This season, Canada has a new head coach and is hitting the Tour de Ski for the first time in four years.

New head coach Robin McKeever is bringing nine athletes, five wax techs, an osteopath, a coach, and a wax truck to Val Mustair. This is less bodies than Norway’s wax team, but it is still a big commitment from a country that has traditionally brought smaller groups.

“One, it’s not the same Tour de Ski that it used to be. Seven races in ten days versus a whole whack of them, and a lot shorter distance overall than what it used to be,” McKeever told FasterSkier during his Christmas break back home in Canmore.

Devon Kershaw’s podcast has talked a lot about how much easier the current Tour de Ski is compared to the early days. It is now down to three venues, with only two short travel days that are also rest days, and the race days are much shorter. Gone are the days of Canada renting a rock star bus for Alex Harvey, Kershaw, Ivan Babikov, and Lenny Valjas so they could get massages while driving to the next venue. Gone are long races like 30km over the mountain pass from Cortina to Toblach, while the women raced the downhill half.

McKeever’s second reason is the timing and the compact nature of the trip.

“We have a lot of our top athletes in the NCAA program and the one time that they can potentially come and race and not miss that much school is this time.“

Sam Hendry (U of Utah) and Rémi Drolet (Harvard) will take advantage of this for their first World Cup starts of the season.

A possible third reason for Canada’s return to the Tour is cost.

“It’s just expensive to compete against the best in the world and Norway showing up with two wax trucks,” McKeever said.

While neither McKeever nor Nordiq Canada’s High Performance Director Chris Jeffries directly said that the trip cost to athletes and the National Ski Federation is lower than the trip cost of World Cup period 3, it is tempting to read between the lines of what they did say.

McKeever: “We are not doing p3 unless we have red group qualified athletes, because we just don’t have the current funding levels to operate the entire year.”

The free Thursday to Sunday accommodation and per-diem for red group athletes is a small thing to rich nations like Norway and Russia, but it is a game changer for Canada. And a game changer for athletes who have to pay trip fees. For a longer discussion on this topic, check out Kershaw’s podcast from the Davos weekend.

Canada’s much-loved wax truck is distinctly smaller than either of Norway’s trucks, and was the Swedish truck until 2011. At that time, one Swede (name withheld to protect the guilty) said that this vehicle was ‘no longer useful’ at the World Cup level. It may not be ‘useful’, but it is hard to imagine producing competitive skis without the facilities it contains (vented wax benches, a grinder, ski storage).

All nine Canadians will experience their first Tour de Ski: Dahria Beatty, Katherine Stewart-Jones, Liliane Gagnon, Antoine Cyr, Graham Ritchie, Olivier Léveillé, Russell Kennedy, Drolet, and Hendry. Six of these have a World Cup top 20 result on their palmares, while Hendry is getting his first World Cup start, and Gagnon got her first starts in Davos before Christmas.

Long time ski fans will know McKeever from his athletes’ success as the head of Canada’s national Paranordic program, some skiers will remember his time as his younger brother’s guide, but you have to be Canadian to remember the junior who fought his way onto the National Team in 1990. Here is a teaser from an upcoming detailed look at Nordiq Canada’s direction.

“My whole goal in coaching, and this was from my upbringing, is about not only trying to create Olympic champions, but it is about creating good people. And if we support the people for who they are, and how they are, and try to guide them through that, as well as get them to Olympic podiums, then I think we’re on the right track.” — McKeever

Mont Sainte Anne (MSA) held the final pre-Christmas races in Canada over the weekend, with a 20km freestyle mass start Friday, freestyle sprints on Saturday, and 10km individual start classic on Sunday.

Fresh snow, steep hills, and temperatures comfortably below freezing greeted 400+ racers at a continental cup hosted by Skibec, Centre National d’Entraïnemente Pierre Harvey (CNEPH) , and Club Nordique MSA.

MSA is a popular racing destination, as Nakkertok’s Bronwyn Williams explained: “I love racing at MSA because the trails are amazingly challenging! For some other race courses you need to work hard to bury yourself but at MSA the courses go out of their way to destroy you and if you’re not careful they will. That’s what makes it so fun though because you are not just racing your competitors, but you are also trying to survive the courses.”

Friday

Sasha Masson (CNEPH) kicked off the weekend with a win in the 20km skate, finishing in 47:44.9, 6.2 seconds clear of four skiers: Orford’s Léo Grandbois, Montériski’s Alexandre Bourque and Xavier Lefebvre, and Big Thunder’s Conor McGovern.

“It was a good day overall,” Masson wrote to FasterSkier. “I played it safe and skied with the pack for a bit, then used my legs to work my skis on the flats and the downhills. Today, pushing over the top and in the downs was essential and allowed me to win.”

For the women, it was the U20 show with Kanata’s Helen McCulligh winning in 59:08.5, followed by MSA’s Ophélie Grandmont at 8.9 seconds and Whitehorse product Constance Lapointe at 9.8 back.

“It was a very fast day out on the course,” McCulligh told Nordiq Canada. “It was my first ever time racing a 20km, so I didn’t know what to expect going in.”

As in Davos two days later, the new distance caused some learning moments and a change from ‘normal’ tactics.

“We had a really big group of girls, a big pack stuck together for a long time.”

Saturday

Saturday brought a 1.1km skate sprint and a deeper field with the addition of many student athletes.

Chelsea’s U20, Ry Prior, now training with the Alberta World Cup Academy, won the Open men’s final in 2:20.53, ahead of CNEPH teammates Felix-Olivier Moreau at 1.58 back and Guillaume Pelchat at 3.25 seconds.

Chelsea’s U18, Tory Audet, continued her domination, skiing away from the group in each heat on her way to win in 2:35.94, 10.13 seconds ahead of Nakkertok’s Bronwyn Williams. Katherine Mason was third for Nakkertok, 12.54 behind.

Audet went with a straightforward tactical plan: “I didn’t think much about tactics,” she said. “I just tried to ski the course as fast and efficiently as possible due to the fact that it was a very short course.”

A very short course at MSA? There was a course change announced at 7:30am race day.

“The course ended up basically being a short 1km loop that had one really big uphill followed by a downhill and a loop of the stadium,” Williams explained in an email. “It was a wind tunnel through the end of the stadium and the snow wasn’t really fast because it was snowing. I found out pretty quickly that if I got out in front at the beginning, skied controlled until the middle of the big hill and then accelerated over the top of the hill and into the downhill that no one would be able to draft off me on the downhill and through the windy stadium. This tactic really helped secure my spot in the A final.”

Sunday

The 10km classic brought more fresh snow but the same women’s winner. Audet won in 36:15.9, ahead of Williams in second again at 25.6 back. Lappe’s Hannah Shields was third at 1:37.0.

“The 10km classic race yesterday was definitely one of the hardest races I’ve done,” Audet wrote to FasterSkier. “The course had some epic climbs and with the fresh snow we got, there weren’t any tracks going up any of the hills making it very difficult. I felt good, I think I paced my race very well, and my skis were awesome!”

Williams, one of three athletes older than U23 to reach the podium this weekend, was not expecting to repeat her 10km victory from the previous weekend.

“The race was two times a crazy challenging 5km course that had huge hills and finished with about 1km of flat double pole…the bane of my existence. Tory Audet, my friend and an incredible athlete, started 30 seconds behind me, so I decided my goal was to see how long I could stay ahead of her.”

The strategy worked to the end, with Williams finishing with 4.4 seconds to spare.

For the men, Moreau moved up a step on the podium, winning in 32:13.1. Orford’s Nicolas Beaulieu was second, 4.6 behind to improve on his 6th in the sprint. CNEPH’s Mats Halvorsen was third at 12.7 back.

This brings Canadian ski racing to a holiday pause, with lots of positives to look back on: all the Canadians who raced World Cup period 1 have at least one top 30 result, first-year senior Liliane Gagnon earned her first World Cup weekend in Davos, eight days of FIS racing happened at three Canadian venues, the Para National team collected a suitcase worth of World Cup medals, and Nordiq Canada has signed on with Abuse-Free Sport, a significant upgrade from the previous SafeSport program.

Results

Friday 20km freestyle mass start

Saturday 1.1km freestyle sprint (heat brackets)

Sunday 10km individual classic

Full Weekend

Photo Galleries

Raphaël Payo: Saturday, Sunday

Mario Walker: Friday, Sunday

The OC has Instagram content, with more photos, videos of sprint finals, and more.

Canadian racing continued with the Eastern Canada Cup #1 at Nakkertok Trails on December 10th and 11th. The event is hosted by Évènements Nordiques Gatineau Nordic Events (ÉNGNE), a collaborative organization that leverages the skills and volunteers of four local clubs: Chelsea Nordiq Ski Club, Nakkertok Nordic Ski Association, Club Skinouk and the Gatineau Loppet.

Canada recently divided the Canada Cup series into Eastern and Western to reduce the need for travel and to make the sport more accessible financially. The previous week in Sovereign Lake was a Nordiq Cup (World Cup starts on the line), US SuperTour, and Canada Cup combined. Despite being a “smaller'”race, there were 580 racers on the Nakkertok trails to discover surprisingly good skiing.

The large field comes in part from geography: FasterSkier once calculated that 12 million Canadians live within a weekend’s driving distance to Nakkertok, which is just outside Gatineau, Québec, right across the river from the national capital, Ottawa, in Ontario. That is almost the same number of Canadians as live in the entirety of Western Canada (2016 census numbers). Thunder Bay was not included in those “nearby” Canadians; nevertheless, a large group made the drive this weekend.

The “surprising” part of the good skiing conditions stemmed from lowered expectations after mid-week rainfall that destroyed much of the manmade snow, shortened the race loop, and dampened expectations. More on that later, but the pictures and the racer’s comments make it clear that a big thank you is owed to the grooming team and volunteers.

Classic Sprint Saturday

Centre National d’Entraïnement Pierre Harvey (CNEPH) athlete Léo Grandbois won the 1.3km sprint in decisive style, qualifying first and winning all three heats to finish the day in 2:23.11. Sasha Masson, Grandbois’ teammate at CNEPH and the NextGen National team, was second, 2.35 back. Thunder Bay’s Conor McGovern was third, at 5.41 seconds.

In what would be a theme of the heats all day, the time gaps were large, with the winners blowing up the pack well before the finish was in sight.

“I’m happy with my race today, I felt good,” Grandbois said in an official interview. “It was nice weather, and the volunteers did an excellent job on the trails. I didn’t race strategic at all; I trusted my form and it worked really well.”

For the women, it was a similar situation, with local product Tory Audet winning everything. Audet, who is a U18 skier for Chelsea Nordiq and a member of the National Development team, is “racing up” in U20 this season which allows her to qualify for Open heats. Audet followed up her good results the previous weekend with a win in 3:02.84. Carlton U’s Maggie McClure was second, 7.64 behind, with CNEPH U20 Élie-Anne Tremblay placing third at 10.98 seconds back.

Audet’s official quote to the OC shows her growing professionalism, with a shoutout to the waxers: “[The race] was great, it’s so nice and warm here, compared to Sovereign Lake B.C. where I raced last weekend. My skis were fast, big thanks to my wax techs for a great day.”

In an email to FasterSkier, Audet expanded on her day.

“Skiing at home feels great, my kick was amazing which helped a lot, thanks to my wax techs!  It felt great to win a race in front of my family and close friends.”

Free Distance Sunday

The men raced first again on the 1.64km loop, doing six laps to complete 10km. Grandbois continued his hot weekend, winning in 21:00.7, 10.2 seconds ahead of Montériski’s Xavier Lefebre, and 29.1 seconds clear of TBay’s Julian Smith.

“Today was a lot harder than yesterday I thought,” Grandbois revealed. “It was a course that I had to ski well because there were not many hills, but I am happy with the effort I put in.”

Last year it was Smith in total domination mode in December;this year it is Grandbois. How does a ski fan tell the difference between a “Christmas Star,” to paraphrase the Norwegians, from a skier having a great season? We will know by the end of January.

Bronwyn Williams grabbed the victory in the women’s 10km on her home course, finishing in 24:59.1.

“Super, super fun race today,” she said. “I really enjoyed skiing the six laps and tracking down the other skiers. I always love racing on my home trails at Nakkertok, there is always lots of people cheering me on.”

Williams’ Nakkertok teammate Shilo Rousseau was in second, 10.4 behind.

“The race today was hard, six laps is definitely a lot to count,” Audet shared with FasterSkier. “Conditions were great, and my skis were fast! It wasn’t the results I was hoping for, but this was my first completed long distance race since world junior championships last year, so it is a great feeling to be back in it and on the podium!”

Audet, who missed the end of last season through illness, is enthusiastically making up for lost time.

“This season I was selected to be part of the National Development team [and] with this team I was given the opportunity to attend many camps and meet so many incredible strong athletes where I was able to work with some of the best coaches in Canada! These camps were definitely my highlight of this year!”

Snowmaking

This race weekend—and the two weeks of training on snow that preceded it— wouldn’t have been possible without the Nakkertrak snowmaking project.

In a country with early season racing in October (Frozen Thunder in Canmore), November (Sovereign Lake), and a lot of groomed trail before December, it might seem like one more venue with snowmaking is not important. Is another 3km of trail important when 150km has been open for a month?

What matters here is not snow, but skiers. Most of the early season skiing is in the mountainous parts of BC, Alberta, and Labrador, which are all less populous areas.

Having a top racing venue 30 minutes from the national capital also makes cross country skiing a nationally important sport. People, including federal employees and elected officials, focus on what they can see.

“Getting in the training and racing early season for me is so important to prepare for bigger races later on in the season! With snow usually falling later around here, Nakkertrak is so helpful for all our eastern athletes!” — Tory Audet

Audet has set the goal of 2023 U20 World Championships in Whistler, and time on snow is a crucial factor in snatching that spot from motivated 19 year olds.

Organizing early season races is very similar to other races: make plans with the local ski community, negotiate courses and distances with the National Ski Federation, recruit a lot of volunteers, recruit chiefs to organize those volunteers, and a high level event appears in a puff of snow.

Without reliable snow, every part of that gets harder. More time is spent on  contingency plans, money can’t be spent until the last minute, and volunteers are less enthusiastic if they aren’t sure they will be proud of the final result.

Long time Nakkertok and Cross Country Canada volunteer Toni Scheier explained the significance to FasterSkier:

“The Outaouais region has had only a couple of inches of natural snow so far this season. We have been able to ski on a part of our Nakkertrak artificial snow loop for two weeks, but pouring rain on Wednesday put even that in jeopardy. Fortunately, a cold snap Thursday allowed for some touch ups on Thurs that provided excellent conditions for the 580 racers skiing our 1.64 k track. Special mention to Kathy and Marty Hall for their Hall Mark of Excellence contribution of $25,000, to upgrade our snowmaking capacity this year and $4,000 cdn towards the prize money.”

Scheier was one of the volunteer team that brought Nakkertrak to life in 2016: planning, fundraising, promoting, and then expanding. New money this year has expanded the artificial snow loop again, introducing more hills.

Even with Nakkertrak, the first Eastern Canada race this season is the same weekend as the third World Cup in Europe. If Canada wants to see more athletes like Nakkertok’s Katherine Stewart-Jones banging out top 20’s in period 1 on the World Cup, bringing snow to skiers is essential. Just ask Audet.

Results

Saturday Sprints Overall, Heat Brackets, Qualification

Sunday Individual

Full Weekend

Photo Galleries

Robert Smith Saturday, Sunday

Race day four at Sovereign Lake was a 10km individual start classic in the sunshine. With humid new snow at -10C all day while the air warmed up to -4C, all the teams found fast skis and solid kick on a great day for striding.

Once again, the Open and U20 categories skied 2x5km first, followed by U18 and U16 who skied 2×2.5km, for a total of 385 starters Sunday.

Individual start races are about skiing fast, but also about pacing. Keep reading to the end to see the different pacing ideas from top skiers.

At the end of a hard week of racing, only 102 men of 118 would finish, with University of Denver’s Andreas Kirkeng (NOR) taking his second win in his second race, completing the 10km in 27:17.7. Bridger’s Finn O’Connell (USA) was second, 53.1 seconds back. Dartmouth’s John Steel Hagenbuch (USA) was third at 1:08.6.

Canada took the next three spots, with AWCA’s Scott Hill at 1:09.6, U of Utah’s Sam Hendry at 1:23.5, and National team member Xav McKeever at 1:25.3 (and top U20).

Kirkeng was pleased with his racing, having skipped Wednesday and Thursday to complete a volume block here.

“Today, I was really good. I felt super strong and my skis were perfect. They were like real good kick, more than enough to do the hills here and the speed on them in the downhill were just insane. So perfect day.”

Here is Kirkeng’s second time up the final ‘kicker’ climb with 500m to go:

O’Connell was more moderate about his second place: “It was pretty solid I’d say. The goal is always to go out there and fight for to win and I felt good today, skis were really good. Thanks to both my coaches and yeah, gave it everything I had.”

So many skiers commented on having great skis that it would become repetitive to quote each one.

“It was good,” Hagenbuch said. “It was definitely quite hard after a long week of racing and a lot of cold air that has been breathed so far this week. So like the lungs are definitely feeling that but I tried hard.”

On the women’s side, APU’s Hailey Swirbul (USA) continued her solid week with a third win, skiing the 10km in 31:55.9. U of Colorado’s Hanna Abrahamsson was 23.6 seconds back with U of Utah’s Sydney Palmer Leger (USA) taking third at 1:12.5. AWCA’s Sonjaa Schmidt was top Canadian, in sixth at 1:33.5.

Swirbul was happy: “Today was a really good one for me. I felt like I paced it well and tried to race really smart for me. And I think that paid off.”

Abrahamsson was all smiles on Sunday and FasterSkier has the video evidence:

FasterSkier missed Palmer Leger, but did get some video on the final ‘kicker’ climb:

The women’s field was also diminished by a hard week, with only 75 of 87 starting. There were a lot of smiling faces on those that persevered.

Results: Interval Start (click on Time, then All Times, to see all 28 splits!), Full Week

The Course and Pacing

For some, the Upper World Cup 5km is a course they can ski in their sleep. Or nightmares. For others, it was the first visit. The course looks simple on paper, with only 154m of climbing in 5.2km. With 14 splits per lap, there is endless opportunity to compare pacing.

Kirkeng won by 53 seconds. Almost a minute in a 10km with a deep North American field. Which means when he talks about pacing, FasterSkier records video:

Kirkeng took a different view of the course than most of the others and maybe that made the difference.

“I knew with fast skis that some of the downhills and flats that were tracked I would be able to rest quite a bit. So I really just pushed the hills and got up with as quick as I could, knowing that there was rest ahead.” — O’Connell

“It’s at altitude. And it’s there’s a lot of sustained climbing on this course. So I think you have to start out the first lap almost in threshold. And that actually is race pace on a course like this. I also had the benefit of, honestly, some of the best skis I’ve had in years. And my coaches did an amazing job with skis today. So that really helps to have good kick and also enough glide through the double pole you can make up time because there’s a lot of time to be made on those transitions. ” — Swirbul

“I started out a bit easier on the first lap, especially because it’s a lot. There’s a lot of uphill the very first half of the first lap. So I started out a bit easier. And then when I came around for my second lap, I really started to dig deep and give it all I had.” — Schmidt

“Oh, just crush it up hill and double pole like a maniac in the flatter part. I would say and just survive.  Yeah, enjoy a little bit of a nice view, it was so beautiful out there today.” — Abrahamsson

“You got to really keep it controlled in the first k. I almost feel like I’m warming up the first climb and then kind of get into the race. But yeah, thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve raced a race course in any part of the world more than this course, I’m used to it. ” — Hill

“It’s always hard to race at Sovereign because it’s high altitude. Always hard racing. So yeah, it’s probably one of the tougher spots to race in Canada.” — McKeever

“Just kind of settling into a rhythm on the long climb there [pointing to the first A climb] and just working it and then making sure you save something for those last two punchy climbs into the finish.” — Hendry

How Was Your Week

After a long five days that both Swirbul and her coach Erik Flora compared to the start of the Tour de Ski, FasterSkier asked skiers for their impressions.

“Oh, I absolutely love SilverStar. And there’s no better day like today to finish off this really good week of racing and just well, well put on races by everyone here.” — Swirbul

“I really like this place. I don’t want to go home. We’re flying back to Boulder tomorrow. And I don’t want to do that. I want to be here. It’s like, it’s so amazing. The skiing is so good. And yeah, so beautiful.” — Abrahamsson

“It was great. I’ve never been to SilverStar [before] but the conditions have been unbelievable and races have been very, very well organized. The volunteers and race organizers did an amazing job and I look forward to coming back sometime.” — Hagenbuch

“I live over in Canmore, so as soon as Sovereign gets snow, I’m hopping in the car and coming here [and] did a two week training camp leading into these races. So yeah, the SilverStar magic is a real thing.” — Hill

Day 3 of the Sovereign Lake race week brought a skate sprint on a shorter course and warmer weather:  -10C with no wind and occasional light snow.

Wednesday and Thursday were Nordiq Cup events, with only U20 and Open categories. Saturday and Sunday are Canada Cup races, with the addition of U18 and U16 categories, resulting in 402 racers across the eight groups. All four race days are part of the US SuperTour.

All groups completed the 1.2km qualifiers first, starting at 8:30am, and the heats ran from 11am until 4pm, finishing 1 minute ahead of schedule. Though today’s skate course incorporates one meter more of climbing than Wednesday’s classic course (37m total skate climb, compared to 36m on the classic course), many athletes described the feel of skate course as flatter. For comparison, the fastest women’s qualifier on the skate course—APU’s Hailey Swirbul (USA)—finished in 2:46.77, significantly faster than her 4:10.99 win in Wednesday’s classic sprint on a slightly longer 1.3km course.

Men’s Freestyle Sprint

The men raced first today, with University of Denver’s (DU) Andreas Kirkeng (NOR) taking the victory in 2:20.30. Dartmouth’s John Steel Hagenbuch (USA) was second, at 0.07 back, with Black Jack’s Julien Locke (CAN) in third at 0.54 seconds behind. Tom Mancini (U Utah, FRA) who won Wednesday’s classic sprint was fourth, followed by Bridger’s Graham Houtsma (USA) and teammate Finn O’Connell (USA).

Kirkeng liked the course: “It’s a flat course, but you don’t have any rests so every small uphill, over the top, transitions, turns, everything matters in this course. The finish is really hard . . . 25 seconds with slightly uphill and a long flat section to the finish line. So the finish is really hard and that’s coming after like two minutes with all out flat skiing so it’s a challenging course, not like in terms of steep hills and a lot of climbing, but just because you have to ski fast and be on top of everything all the way.”

As with many of the podium finishers, Kirkeng tried to save energy for the end.

“For the final, I plan to stay like in third, fourth position and go all out from like the last turn, up and under the bridge, and it worked out real well,” he told FasterSkier. “[Hagenbuch] was coming real fast like the last 100 meters but I managed to stay in front of him.”

“I actually did better than I thought considering I’m usually a distance skier,” Hagenbuch said. “And it was super fun out there. I think, tactically, I was kind of doing the same thing, where I was sitting back a little bit for the first part of the course, and then really pushing on the final hill through the finish.”

Hagenbuch liked the course: “it’s super fun. It’s fast. And obviously a very competitive field here today.”

Locke was the top Canadian, expressing satisfaction with the day as he builds back from injury. He pushed hard into the ‘hole’ descent and led the climb back to the bridge.

“My tactics in all the heats was just cruise the first half and then try to have some good punch at the end,” he said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have great legs in the finishing straight. But it was not a bad day; a step in the right direction for me.”

Many racers would be happy with a SuperTour/Canada Cup podium under any circumstances, but skiers reach the top by always chasing the next target, each success leading to a higher goal.

Women’s Freestyle Sprint

After the men’s open and U20 heats completed, it was the women’s turn. “It was a really fun and exciting day,” top qualifier, Swirbul, told FasterSkier. “It’s a shorter sprint course than last time so it was fun to do some real sprinting and tactics.”

Swirbul wanted to try something new today: “I’m normally a racer that will kind of hammer from the gun. So today I challenged myself to try to play more strategy and try and sit behind people into that last downhill. In the last downhill, I’ve tried to free skate as hard as I could and carry as much speed into the final corner and up into the last climb into the drag race in.”

Swirbul won the final in 2:43.02, 0.87 seconds ahead of Bridger’s Sarah Goble (USA). U of Colorado’s Weronika Kaleta (POL) completed the podium, 1.17 seconds back.

Goble was happy with her hard finishing tactics in the earlier heats: “I tried to do that again in the final when I was in third, and I pushed over the top of the hill to put myself into second and kind of control the race through there,” Goble said. “And then Hailey had a really good final push to the finish but [I] couldn’t quite hang.”

Kaleta was very happy with her racing and sticking to her plan: “I wanted hard to be controlled, make sure that I save some energy for the last part. So I tried to do it and I guess I did it quite great.”

U of Utah’s Sydney Palmer Leger (USA) continued her solid week in 4th at 3.49 behind, followed by top Canadian Liliane Gagnon from CNEPH and Team Birkie’s Erin Bianco (USA).

U20 skiers who qualified in the top 30 were automatically moved to the Open heats. Sun Valley’s Samantha Smith (USA) and Chelsea Nordiq’s Tory Audet (CAN), both born in 2005, ‘raced up’ in the U20 group, and qualified into the Open heats where they were eliminated in separate semi-finals.

Asked about the challenge of racing in the open heats instead of U18, Audet was direct: “I love it. I love the competition,” she told FasterSkier. “World juniors would be probably the biggest goal this year. And then a national title would be awesome. Due to COVID and then a concussion last year, I wasn’t able to attend.”

As Canada ignores the U18 championships, Audet is targeting U20 World Championships in Whistler in late January.

Many of the skiers appreciated the race volunteers at these Sovereign Lake events, but Hagenbuch may have phrased it best: “Sovereign put on a great event. The volunteers have been great. I think they’re gonna be out here for something like nine hours today. So pretty Herculean effort. So big thanks to all the volunteers for their hard work and another day of racing tomorrow.”

Results: Qualification, Qualification with 14 splits, Heat Brackets, Full Week (with live timing)

Continental Cup racing at Sovereign Lake continued Thursday with a 10km mass start skate for both genders, using the traditional Upper World Cup 5km course. The weekday races are U20 and Open categories only, with ‘smaller’ fields of 87 women and 127 men registered Thursday.

“I think this is probably the most competitive race in North America this year, so there were a lot of really strong and talented skiers.” — John Steel Hagenbuch, Dartmouth Ski Team

Mass start races at this level usually run in two modes. The group at the front has a tactical race, with most of the group skiing in control and making plans. Behind this group, all the skiers are drilling it, pushing hard to reduce the time gap to the leaders. Many of the men experienced their first 10km mass start today, as this has traditionally been a distance offered primarily in women’s racing.

The day was cloudy and cold, with temperatures hovering at -18C.

The women raced first, with APU’s Hailey Swirbul (USA) setting the pace to reduce the lead pack to 15 skiers by the end of the first 5km lap. The video is at the mid-point of the first A climb, just short of 1km into the race.

“I often find it comforting to be able to ski my own pace and take my own line,” Swirbul told FasterSkier. “I did that. And yeah, it ended up not working out for me, but that’s the way it goes.”

Swirlbul estimated that she led for 9.5km: “I tried making a move,” Sydney Palmer Leger (University of Utah, USA) said, “and then right at the finish, I ended up sliding on my butt.”

Palmer Leger stepped on a ski at the Tree Island turn leading into the finish straight, but was able to sprint back to take second place to U of Colorado’s Anna-Maria Dietze (GER). Dietze finished in 29:59.0, 0.6 seconds ahead of Palmer Leger, with U of Utah’s Karianne Dengerud (NOR) 1.1 seconds back.

“I feel like always kind of sitting in the back for the first loop,” Dietze said, “trying to figure out like which downhills I can take where I can like draft a little bit and was trying to stay relaxed and then when people started to attack, just trying to stick with them and then putting everything on the finish line.”

“I was just trying to take the [last] turn really well,” Dietze continued. “My legs were hurting and I was like I’m just gonna send it and I felt pretty powerful. Felt like I had few metres on them. I thought that was gonna be it and it was awesome.”

Dengerud followed a similar strategy: “I managed to stay like quite far up in the front from the beginning of the race and that helped me save a lot of energy so I had a lot towards the end. And then I wish I’d passed one girl earlier, but except from that, it was great.”

Dengerud skied the loop for the first time in her pre-race warmup and liked the course: “It’s really good. I didn’t ski it before this morning and I heard that it was really hard. But I skied it on my warm up and I figured out that it was as many downhills as uphills, as it should be.”

Dengerud, who grew up near the famous Holmenkollen venue, prefers this course which was built for a 2005 World Cup: “I like it better when you can work the flats a little bit more and it’s not only downhill or uphill, and this course has it all.”

Liliane Gagnon from the Centre National d’Entraînement Pierre Harvey (CNEPH) was the top Canadian in 6th at 9.8 seconds back, trailing Bridger’s Sarah Goble (USA) and Swirbul.

“It was pretty fast at first,” Gagnon said, “but then it calmed down a bit, but on the second lap, the pace got picked up. So you really had to be in the game for it to finish strong.”

The men’s race played out in similar fashion to the Women’s, with 22 men finishing the first lap together, passing through the stadium at a comfortable pace.

“I will say that a 10k skate mass start is definitely fast and pretty hectic,” Hagenbuch confirmed. “So there was definitely some carnage out there.”

Wednesday’s winner Magnus Bøe (U of Colorado, NOR) broke a pole in the first kilometre, losing the advantage of his second row start.

Canmore’s Russell Kennedy (CAN) was one of the people pushing the pace, shown here at the top of the second A climb, about 2km into the race.

“[It was] a lineup of guys ripping it and then Johnny [Hagenbuch] started moving up and I saw the attack coming but I wasn’t sure when he was gonna go,” Kennedy said. “And then the second last hill, he pushed super hard. I got boxed in and then tried to make up time but I couldn’t see really what was going on in the finish for them.”

Ten skiers reached that second last hill, known locally as the ‘Wall’ climb together.

“There’s a pretty big steep kicker hill, about a kilometer and a half out from the finish,” Hagenbuch said. “I kind of felt the moment there and I went for it. And luckily, I was able to drop most of the field. But Tom Mancini, he was able to stick on me after that. And then we kind of duked it out towards the end, but I knew going up against Tom in the finishing stretch probably wouldn’t go my way given that he’s such a strong, older skier and obviously a 2018 World Junior Champion.”

U of Utah’s Tom Mancini (FRA) took the win in 25:24.2, 0.6 seconds ahead of Hagenbuch and 4.7 seconds clear of Kennedy.

“Yesterday, I was disqualified [for micro-skating], ” Mancini said. “I wasn’t totally agree with this decision. But so, today, I wanted to race nice. And also just enjoy my first race here. And this is what I did.”

Mancini moved to Utah in the fall and still thinks in French grammar. He also was seeing this course for the first time, unlike Kennedy who has years of experience here.

“I noticed that they have a nice finish,” Mancini revealed. “So I was like, I just need to stay in this game until the last two kilometres. And so the pace was hard since the beginning. So it started pretty high, so pretty fast. So at the beginning, it was a bit hard for me and then after maybe one lap, I felt better. And I was like, alright, no, just have to keep focus and wait until the end.”

It was a challenging day for clothing selection, with many athletes struggling to stay warm on course. “I think we got prepared by being in Alaska last year and Canmore two weeks ago,” Dengerud shared, “so had a lot of clothes on, for sure.”

If the Alaskan skiers (names withheld to protect the guilty) are complaining about the cold after the race, that is a sign that others suffered more.

Results: Mass Start, Full Week (including live timing)

North American racing hit high gear today with the opening of the combined Nordiq Cup and SuperTour series at Sovereign Lake with classic sprints. This week brings together the top skiers from all of North America, Mexico included, and Wednesday’s qualification was kicked off by the top ranked skiers: USA’s Hailey Swirbul and Canada’s Russell Kennedy.

Many teams arrived two weeks in advance to enjoy some elevation training on corduroy while teams with good early skiing—like Alaska Pacific University (APU) and University of Utah—rolled in just in time for official training.

Race day dawned with heavy snowfall and strong winds at -11C. Roughly 20cm of snow fell while the grooming team was preparing trails, starting at 3am. The snowplow got stuck before clearing the Sovereign Lake access road, forcing a one hour delay. The wind and snow ended about 10:30, half an hour before Swirbul started her qualification. As the day rolled on, skiers saw clouds and sunshine, but ended under the lights as the sun set on the men’s final.

APU’s Swirbul qualified first, completing the 1.2km course in 4:10.99. University of Colorado’s Anna-Maria Dietze (GER) was second, 3.29 back, followed by University of Utah’s Karianne Dengarud (NOR) at 4.29.

For the men, Sun Valley’s Peter Wolter (USA) was fastest, completing the same course in 3:32.38. U Utah’s Noel Keefe (USA) was close behind at 0.86 seconds, with national team member Kennedy third at 1.78 back.

Canada has joined a number of countries in automatically shifting U20 athletes into the open heats if they qualify in the top 30 overall. National team member Xav McKeever (CAN) was the fastest U20 male in 9th, 3.29 back, 

Mexico’s Karla Schleski Shepard did not qualify for the heats, but her presence made this a truly North American event.

In the heats, racing progressed smoothly with a minimum of jury intervention, although many racers commented on how long the 1.2km course felt.

Swirbul won all three heats on her way to victory, leading the final in 4:02.05. Sydney Palmer Leger (USA) was a close second at 0.35 with Dietze completing the podium at 1.05. The final was distinctly international with Germany, Poland, and Norway represented.

Swirbul and Palmer Leger talked about their races and the full North American field, watch it here.

“It’s definitely a hard course,” Dietze told FasterSkier, “it was really tough to do four of these loops all out. A lot of fun.”

Canada’s top woman was CNEPH’s Liliane Gagnon in 10th, followed by AWCA teammates Katie Weaver and Sonjaa Schmidt in 11th and 12th.

On the men’s side, U Colorado’s Magnus Boee (NOR) won in 3:23.83, with APU’s Zanden McMullen (USA) at 0.46 and McKeever leading the U20 contingent at 2.70 seconds back.

U Colorado’s Will Koch (USA), Kennedy, and Bridger Ski Foundation’s Graham Houtsma (USA) completed the final heat, with U Utah’s Walker Hall (USA) scoring the same 3:28.68 lucky loser time as Houtsma, but losing out on a tie breaker.

FasterSkier reporters didn’t locate race winner, Magnus Bøe, in the post-race darkness, but we caught up with the other podium finishers.

“I think it was important to keep your energy low early, in the first half of the race, and then coming around the last turn, you want to be in a good position,” McMullen said. “Make sure you really gunned it from there.”

“It’s amazing to be here. SilverStar is beautiful and Sovereign Lake here. This is my first time here, only second time in Canada,” McMullen continued. “So yeah, no complaints. I’ll definitely be back again.”

“I had a pretty spicy semifinal there, broke a pole going into the biggest climb of the course,” McKeever said of his lucky loser path the final. “I just tried to ski as best as possible in the final and just try and be tactical and position myself well and came out third.”

Thunder Bay’s Julian Smith was the third Canadian, going out in the semifinals for 8th.

Athletes will spend a lot of time combing through results from these first high level races, and comparing those with results of Canadian NextGen skiers from Bruksvallarna earlier in November.

“I was happy with my races overall and was happy to come back here to SilverStar, as it’s one of my favourite places in the world to ski and compete in.” McKeever said. “I had a good time in Europe, just warming up with some first races of the season, competing with some really strong people, had some good sprints.”

The “strong people” mentioned by McKeever included a list of stars like Sweden’s Calle Halfvarsson and Ebba Andersson , who moved on to the World Cup in Ruka. Many domestic racers will be looking at the NextGen results in Bruksvallarna and Sovereign Lake to get a sense of how North American racing compares to Scandinavian speed.

Results: Qualification, Brackets, Heats, Full Week (including live timing)

Look for some action video on Nordiq Canada’s social media, because Nathaniel Mah is raising the bar.

SilverStar/Sovereign Lake

Confused about the Sovereign Lake versus SilverStar thing? Sovereign Lake Nordic Club has 50km of trails hosting races in Silver Star provincial park. SilverStar Mountain Resort has lodging, an interconnected 50km of trail, and an alpine resort, but isn’t in the park.

The 1.2km loop used today is nicknamed the Beckie Scott course. In December 2005, Beckie Scott earned her first World Cup win in a skate sprint here. This was also Canada’s first dual WC podium when Sara Renner snatched a bronze medal. Nothing brings the passage of time into focus like realizing that both Scott’s and Renner’s children will be racing in the U16 group this weekend. 

Disclaimer: The author skied both days and was one member of the large S2S organizing committee. This may seem like a conflict of interest, but also allows a more detailed look behind the curtain at how a new event was built.

Click here to learn more about the origins of the Sovereign2Silverstar Ski Marathon, and to take a look at the successful first year of the event.

***

The motto for S2S was ‘finishing is winning’, a phrase that also served as the touchstone for the bigger decisions.

The members of the Organizing Committee (OC) had a lot of experience hosting ski races, from local loppets to Canada Cup/SuperTour weekends to World Cups, and even a combined Nationals plus SuperTour Finals that got cancelled by a pandemic in 2020. A destination event is a different beast, however. High-level events under the FIS umbrella don’t need marketing: athletes follow the events calendar. Local loppets are advertised with a few posters at the neighbouring ski areas. FIS events have required distances, homologated courses, and rules for everything.

A destination event, by definition, has to entice skiers to travel. In the midst of a pandemic, this is not as easy as it once was, even to a destination with quality late-season snowpack and a mountain backdrop. The question then becomes, ‘What can be done to make the event attractive?’ Immediately followed by ‘how can we keep the participants, volunteers, and local community safe?’

Year 1 went well, with lots of smiles generated.

Which skiers?  

The club already hosts high level events in nordic and biathlon, which led the OC to a focus on inclusion for the new event.

To get a larger number of skiers, it is necessary to look outside the group of committed competitors and attract recreational skiers. Thus, the motto ‘Finishing is Winning’ was chosen to both appeal to non-racers but also give the OC a vision to follow.

The motto led to a list of goals: Inclusive. No time limit. Small waves. No technically difficult course features. A minimum of climbing, but enough to discourage classic racers from double poling on skate skis.

When?

One of the original goals was to show the trail system at its best, which means late March and early April. March is most often the big snowfall month and has been the choice for the annual 30km for two decades. The elite skiers always visit in early December or late November for Continental Cup races. As a result, generations of racers have visited just before the skiing gets really good. 

The OC wanted to add to the season calendar instead of competing with existing events. Choosing the same weekend as the American Birkie, for example, would limit future growth.

The early 2021/2022 international calendar had no events for April 2nd and 3rd.

Using historical data, there is a 70% chance of blue hard wax skiing on the first weekend of April. Unfortunately, history doesn’t account for climate change and the increasing risk of extreme weather. In 2021, the Vernon area set new records for lowest precipitation in March, April, and May, based on data going back to 1904. In June, heat records were broken all over BC and Washington state. Then, an atmospheric river in November washed away all four highways to Vancouver and dramatically thinned the snowpack.

With the extreme 2021 weather as a backdrop, there was some nervousness about hosting in April. Club members are usually committed to cycling and paddling by mid-March. An entire web page was devoted to showing what April skiing looks like.

The final choice also became an effort to change perceptions. In a year where many people were limiting travel and pandemic rules changed monthly, success would depend on persuading local skiers to keep skiing into April. Early data suggests there were more skier visits in late March and early April than previous years.

Shortly after the OC committed to the dates, the Fossavatn moved to the same weekend and in December the Alex Harvey Classic was announced. The worldwide calendar is crowded, and there really aren’t any ’empty’ weekends.

Course Design

At this venue, a long flat double pole route is simply not an option. Sovereign Lake is a small pond and the flat trail around it is less than 1km long. Spectacular mountain views like Canmore or Toblach require nearby mountains and the twin ski areas are just part of the Interior Plateau that was eroded less after the glaciers receded. What the OC does have is twisting, rolling trails through a coniferous forest, tonnes of snow, and a few beautiful viewpoints.

Many of the OC had skied in events with fast downhills, wild corners, road crossings, and chaotic starts. To be inclusive to newer skiers, the course would avoid tight switchbacks, avoid steep climbs, and be relatively flat.

Starting in the Sovereign Lake stadium and finishing on Main Street in SilverStar village were the main selling points. With that decided, the Alder Point loop was essential, with views of the Monashee mountains on one side and views of many alpine runs busy with skiers on the other. That decided, it was a matter of building a route with no repeats, no technical sections, a moderate amount of climbing, and exactly 42km long.

There were many candidate routes that met the requirements, but there was also a 40km route that was more fun to ski.

After some debate, the OC decided that the fun 40km course fit the ‘Finishing is Winning’ motto best. The first 10km is a flat warmup before the climbing starts. There are three ‘long climb’ sections with about 70m gained over 3km. The finish is a gentle 3km downhill leading into a ‘feature’ finish onto Main Street.

Exact distances can be important. While every long-time skier has done events that are very different than advertised, some participants want precision. And precision usually means that their watch or phone records the exact advertised numbers.

There are two common causes of GPS accuracy errors: mountains and trees. As the venue is well equipped with both, the OC quickly learned that only the homologated loops had accurate mapped distances. A sub-team was recruited to get more accurate map data using LIDAR data.

Scanning through Strava on April 3rd, most of the 40km skiers posted distances between 38km and 41km. The measured elevation gains varied even more. 

The 21km course splits from the long course at the 5km point, heading directly to SilverStar while the 40km skiers ski a 17km loop to arrive at the same intersection from another direction. The 21km course also skips the final climbing section up Howie’s loop and on the Bergstrasse alpine run.

Making the 21km a subset of the 40km course and using the same course both days resulted in a huge reduction in volunteer effort.

Small Waves

Many of the OC had skied in major events where there were queues at the first pinch point. To be inclusive to non-racers who aren’t used to skiing in a pack, the decision was made to spread the skiers out so they could watch the scenery instead of the butt of the skier in front. The final choice was a series of waves, spaced three minutes apart.

The largest wave had 42 skiers and it spread out quickly. The telephoto and steep hill combine to compress the B wave group above, which is actually spread out over about 100m of the short climb.

The first pinch point on the 40km course is at 21km, where the packed trail is only 6m wide and there is just enough room to skate two abreast. The lead pack on classic day was three skiers here, mostly because the short climbs in the Zumas tend to explode packs. 

A few skiers didn’t like the small waves while most participants loved the space to ski at their own pace. The elite skiers were indifferent to wave size, possibly because they would immediately ski away from any size of group.

Working Together 

SilverStar Mountain Resort is a commercial alpine ski area answering to shareholders, with trails for nordic, snowshoeing, and fat biking. Sovereign Lake Nordic Club is a 3,200 member ski club set in a provincial park, answerable to the nordic skiing members and BC Parks. Twin nordic areas to be sure, but fraternal not identical.  

The differences between the areas can sometimes make it challenging to reach win/win consensus, but the desire to work together gets there in the end. 

The local community has dreamed of a joint nordic event for years. In 2021, three people came up with a vision that both areas could say yes to, resulting in the birth of the 50/50 event committee. That name was abandoned, as it was quickly apparent that any 50km course would be more epic than inclusive (see an example course profile here).

The local snowmobile club loaned us 500m of one of their trails for five days, allowing the removal of two tricky hairpins and giving locals a new experience.

Learning From Others

The US Birkie and the Gatineau OC’s provided example budgets, registration advice, examples of what can go wrong. And then each event provided a top OC volunteer to spend an hour answering questions from the S2S OC. The nordic skiers on the OC thought this level of assistance was extremely helpful, but not unexpected. The alpine skiers on the OC were surprised that major events would actively help their ‘competition’. 

Cortina-Dobbiaco is a good example of a fun event: point to point, one day for each technique, and a big effort to create an experience beyond the race.

The Vasaloppet is an example of how to grow big, but also an example of crowd management. 

Other events the OC took ideas from include the Birkenbeiner, Engadin, Hoppet, Merino Muster, Moonlight Classic, and Ski To The Sun.

The decision to join the Visma Ski Classics challenger series was a surprise. One of the Cortina-Dobbiaco OC had explained the economics of the ProTour series, which put that idea on the year six or later list. Then it was discovered that the chief of volunteers knows every skier in every country, which led to a Norwegian friend of his making a pitch for the Ski Classics Challengers series and a cost-effective way to connect with a worldwide group of skiers who like to build vacations around ski events.

The Region

Vernon is an unusual place. The three lakes are just under 400m above sea level. The mountain bike trails at Kalamalka lake sprawl up the east ridge to 1,400m. Some years, the lower mtb trails are good all winter. Other years, the snow level is lower and bikers are waiting for April for the trails to dry. The nordic trails are higher, ranging from 1,500m to 1,915m. Skiing starts in October, with grooming beginning in early November. In April, the grooming stops when the supply of skiers runs out. In non-pandemic years, the Spring Fling snow camp in May provides an opportunity to start the new training year on groomed snow. SLNC and SilverStar have a combined 105km of nordic trails, groomed daily.

Vernon is a ‘small town’ of 40,000 people with strong sports communities and a high proportion of retirees. Silverstar village has a smaller population and an even larger sense of community. Some of the volunteers that committed hours as course marshals on the alpine run crossings are alpine skiers who have never tried nordic skiing.

Charitable Partner

Our target audience of adults who travel to ski events could be called privileged. With so many skiers who appreciate what sport has given them, the OC wanted to find a charity that could give sport to others. KidSport is an organization that helps financially disadvantaged youth participate in organized sport and the local chapter was a good fit for our goals.

The first year of any event is financially challenging and breaking even can be difficult. With an unknown event during a pandemic that wasn’t ending as quickly as hoped, there was uncertainty around raising a significant amount of money for the cause. Thanks to strong support from sponsors, volunteers, and skiers, the event raised $8,000, about 20% of the local division’s annual budget.

It turns out that partnering with a charity makes it easier to attract sponsors and volunteers, an unexpected but welcome benefit.

Promotion

There is a popular quote: ‘if you build it, they will come.’ A more useful version would be ‘if you invite people, they will come.’

Partnering with an alpine ski area comes with some significant advantages here. SilverStar has a marketing team with skills far above what is common in the North American nordic community. A stunning logo, word mark (that ‘text’ brand image), event colour scheme (based on both areas’ existing colours), and a branding document allowed the OC to present a consistent and attractive package to skiers, volunteers, and sponsors.

While ‘branding’ has always been an essential element in creating a successful business, it is equally valuable in building a new event. Many of the participants commented on how much this first event felt ‘organized’ and ‘polished’. A big part of that comes from providing a good athlete experience, but the polish is a direct result of that branding document.

Volunteers

Last on the page, but not last in importance. Over 250 volunteers worked tirelessly to bring energy and enthusiasm to the event day experience. Dozens of skiers made the effort to find someone wearing an ‘OC’ bib to talk about the atmosphere generated by the volunteers.

How much did the OC value the volunteers? When the financial team had to make hard choices to be ready for a last minute cancellation by any of three levels of government, one of the expenses eliminated was a toque for each participant. Because if you spend all the entry fee money in advance, how will you provide refunds?

The Volunteer team worked with one of the sponsors to give every volunteer a toque (a toque is a ski hat to Americans, a beanie to Brits). Thanks to supply chain constraints we all are living with, the sponsor had to pay the expense months in advance. Another sponsor provided food and drink for a volunteer party on Sunday afternoon. Many of the elite skiers and past Olympians known to FasterSkier readers made the effort to connect with the volunteers at the party.

In the end, the volunteers are what brought smiles to the participants faces. The event will need those people next year, which means showing volunteers the love is one of the biggest steps towards a successful second year.

Disclaimer: The author skied both days and was one member of the large S2S organizing committee. This may seem like a conflict of interest, but also allows a more detailed look behind the curtain at how a new event was built.

When the moment comes to create a new destination ski marathon, how would you compile all of your dreams and mould them into a single cohesive weekend?

A group of Canadian skiers was faced with that question in the spring of 2021. And they found an answer.

Start with twos. Two interconnected ski areas. Two days. Two techniques. Two distances. Two finish line parties.

Using that model, the first annual Sovereign2SilverStar Ski Marathon was a success, at least as measured by smiles. 

The weekend kicked off with a classic day on Saturday, April 2nd. The first wave for the 21km course left at 8:30 am, followed by the 40km waves at 9:05. Predicted weather was cloudy with afternoon snow, but the first flurries hit about 8 am, setting the tone for the day.

Of the 195 finishers on Saturday, the majority were on skin skis. Many of the skiers who chose grip wax were fooled by the race date into waxing for ‘typical’ spring skiing. However, when the groomed track is set at  -5C, with fresh, cold snow overnight and more dry snow falling, blue hard wax is a better choice. Three of the six athletes on the 40km podium chose VR45 covered with VR30. The Organizing Committee (OC) posted a recommendation of Swix VP45 or V45 (the event encouraged fluoro-free waxing) on Friday afternoon. Early Saturday morning, the wax recommendation was updated to VP45 covered by VP40, except that this update didn’t get shared. Oops! Add that to the list for next year.

Benoit Chauvet last skied on the World Cup in 2010 and now coaches at Toby Creek, in BC. And he did place higher in the skate 40km.

Skate day on Sunday was overcast without significant snowfall, resulting in faster conditions and a larger field of 255 finishers.

As on Saturday, the 21km waves started first at 8:30, followed by the 40km waves at 9:05. This added a fun twist as the faster 40km skiers were passing the average 21km skiers coming into the finish. Despite the number of finishers, the largest of the nine waves had 42 skiers, which meant there was a lot of room to work with.

The course crossed a number of alpine runs on the final long descent to the finish. The course marshals, who were tasked with preventing collisions, were also ringing cowbells to energize the passing skiers. Many alpine skiers and snowboarders stayed on to cheer when the marshals signalled they were free to move. It was a new experience for many participants to see spectators 4km away from the finish, cheering and recording phone videos.

Participants who skied both days were prepared to be greeted at the finish by a dance team, lead by a hot dog. Some people were smiling because they were excited to have completed the distance, and some were smiling at the welcome.

The pandemic has greatly reduced international travel, with many skiers choosing to defer trips. S2S had one Europe-based skier registered, a Norwegian-born Swede who happened to be in Canada for a vacation.

“It’s a very fun course,” Asbjørn Grøvlen said after finishing the 40km classic. “I would recommend this one.” He went on to explain that many Ski Classics courses in Europe are just double poling and it was a nice change to stride more. Grøvlen, like a number of others, chose to do both 40km days.

The overall podiums went to elite skiers, many of whom volunteered to present medals to the age group podiums.

Dahria Beatty was the first woman to the finish on the classic day, followed by Katherine Stewart-Jones, Novie McCabe, and Mariah Bredal. Bredal had registered late and started in the second wave, which left her 0.3 seconds behind Beatty for second place overall. Another learning moment for year two, save a few extra bibs in the elite wave for last day registrants.

There was a rumour on Saturday morning that Luke Jager would double pole on skate skis, as he “always does that on long classic courses.” Jager, found before the start while applying grip wax to his skis, disagreed.

In a world where ‘us versus them’ often creates divisions between similar communities, it was fun to watch alpine skiers and snowboarders stopping on Main Street to cheer on nordic finishers.

“That is so cool,” one twenty-something snowboarder said to his friends. “We are doing this next year!”

Mike Mandli, an American master who has travelled the world to ski, summed up the weekend: “This was a skier’s dream. One of the best dreams ever.”

For results, more videos, Andy Newell’s waxing advice, and over 2,000 photos, visit the event page.

Canada was successful in delivering the team to Beijing and getting them on snow in Zhangjiakou. The decision to go above and beyond in isolating athletes before a carefully planned drive to a charter flight worked, although other countries also succeeded with a more laid-back approach.

What can fans expect from the Canadian team in Beijing? It all comes down to qualifying and performing.

Qualifying

Canada had an Olympic quota of four women and three men, with a pretty high probability of gaining another woman and man in reallocation. The size of the quota depends on World Cup/World Championship performance and domestic FIS races; the top countries earned the maximum team size of 8 per gender. As Canada cancelled all races last season and only took a small team to Europe for a six week visit, the only path to a larger team would have been more athletes getting top 30 results in Europe last season.

Three men (Tony Cyr, Olivier Léveillé, Graham Ritchie) and one woman (Katherine Stewart-Jones) met the world cup results standard for Olympic qualification during period 1. The Trials in Canmore (January 6th to 11th) would then select three women, and possibly one woman and one man who would have first dibs after reallocation.

Dahria Beatty, an Olympic veteran from Pyeongchang, was one of the skiers who now had to qualify through a rigid qualification document at Canmore trials.

“Yes, it was definitely different last time. I was qualified for the [2018] Games a season in advance, essentially,” Beatty explained at the Prep Camp at Sovereign Lake.

At the Canmore sprint, Beatty qualified third and finished the heats in 4th, which meant Laura Leclair earned her first Olympic berth and Cendrine Browne her second.

For Beatty, selection came down to Saturday’s 10km individual classic. If she won, or placed second to Stewart-Jones, she got the spot. The latter happened, with Beatty 0.5 seconds behind and 20 seconds clear of third.

“Honestly, I don’t think I’ve had to qualify for a team specifically like that since U23 World Champs so it’s been a long time definitely.”

Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt was ranked 5th after trials, waiting on the reallocation process. Her journey has been longer than most, with injuries, training setbacks, car accidents, and bad luck. In 2014, she recovered from a back injury just in time to compete at Olympic trials. She won the qualifier on her first race day of the season. While lining up for the A-final heat with selection on the line, she was told that the jury had disqualified her for micro-skating during the quarter-final earlier. This year, the pieces came together.

“​​It’s hard to find words. It’s something that I believed in, like my whole life, I believed that it was possible. But then throughout the setbacks, the doubt kind of built up. And, increased and I thought it wouldn’t happen, maybe and that I just had to grow up and face that reality. But there was still like, a little voice inside me that thought it was possible. And just to have– persisted, and trusted that with patience like things would line up for me. It means so much, it means so much for me but also for the people who helped me get here because it feels like I know that they would support me no matter what but it just feels like doing them justice as well. Like putting all the time into this project that is me trying to get to the Olympics was worth it.”

Jasmine Drolet was next, with only the faint hope of moving up through a positive COVID test for an athlete above. Jasmine does have the consolation of earning a start at U20 World Championships.

Russell Kennedy finished 27th in the Ruka 15km classic in November, enough to help Canada’s World Cup quota for next season. Kennedy would have needed to ski 15 seconds faster to take the 20th place from Federico Pellegrino and earn the 4th Olympic spot. The next day he moved up to 21st in the pursuit with the 24th fastest time of day, again just outside the criteria.

The reallocation spot would be decided in the 15km individual start classic on January 8th. Whoever finished highest, after excluding the three already qualified men, would be on tenterhooks until the 17th and then be officially announced on the 19th.

Cyr won, surprising no one, with Rémi Drolet edging out Kennedy by 10.8 seconds to take second. Every skier in the top ten had either a WC top 30 or a Canada Cup podium this season. Every one of those skiers could believe that their best effort would end in selection.

Rémi is a second year senior who chose to take a gap year from Harvard to focus on getting faster on the World Cup and qualifying for Beijing. He didn’t get selected for Period 1, but did get some good results in early season Continental Cup races in Finland and Sweden.

“For me, it was important to try really hard to make it this time around, because I think it’ll be an important stepping stone in my career,” he told FasterSkier during the prep camp. “To be able to, I guess, be a leader in the team, with so many strong guys coming up.”

Rémi is getting good results for his age, but also looking over his shoulder at juniors like Tom Stephen and Xav McKeever, who are already collecting senior wins at Canada Cup races. These three teamed up with Léveillé to collect a relay silver at U20 Worlds two years ago.

Kennedy is now 30. His ‘day job’ is with Canada’s Para National team, one of two guides for Brian McKeever. After PyeongChang, his goal was not just to qualify, but deliver at Beijing, and that dream ended with an invitation to train as a spare.

“Well, I mean, for me, it’s been a rough two weeks. I spent three years working for this year. I was focused on the Olympics, and not really as much qualifying I guess.”

Asked about sharing a bubble for two weeks with the four men who are living his dream, Kennedy didn’t shy away from truth.

“And yeah, it’s been hard. But I’ve been trying to put on a good face around them. Because it’s sweet [for them]. They’ve done it, they’re going to the Olympics, it’s a huge goal and a huge achievement. But for me, it’s definitely hard. I’m really fast right now, which just makes it harder. But that’s part of sport.”

Performing

For some people, just reaching the Olympics is the pinnacle of their dreams. And it is a major achievement, even more so now with smaller quotas. In 2006, Canada had five women who earned Torino quota spots, in addition to the ten nations spots, allowing Canada to select 15 women. 

What distinguishes the athletes who deliver results from those who participate?

“Some people believe, and some people want to believe, but [it’s] the ones that really believe.” Dave Wood explained to FasterSkier in July of 2021.

Going back to 2006, three Canadian women came home with medals: Chandra Crawford, Beckie Scott, and Sara Renner. Each of these women had individual World Cup podiums in the final two months of preparation and came into Torino with confidence. 

The current team of nine Canadians has only two members with Olympic experience: Beatty and Browne. It will be much harder for this team to dream of podiums.

Stewart-Jones, Cyr, Léveillé, and Ritchie can find confidence from their period 1 results. Drolet can find confidence in beating Léveillé and Kennedy at trials as both have World Cup top 30’s this season.

The others? They will have to find confidence inside themselves.

Expecting

One of the common expectations of sports fans is that Olympians should produce their best performance of the season on the biggest stage. Athletes work their whole lives to get to an Olympics and it seems obvious that they should be peaking at precisely the right moment.

“The results came from those that started their Olympics in May or April.” – Dave Wood, talking about Vancouver 2010.

Wood was referring to athletes who qualified for the Olympics during the previous season, allowing them to build the entire training year around performing during a two week period. Athletes who have not qualified in advance have to focus their season plan on earning selection.

Kennedy was one athlete who missed that balance.

“Because sometimes I feel with sport, you have to choose if you want to go or if you want to do well. It’s the one thing that I’ve been struggling with. And also, it’s hard because like the people making the decisions don’t really have any repercussions for their choices. So the repercussions fall on athletes, and unfortunately, this year fell on me. Yeah. It sucks, but it’s part of it. I knew what I signed up for.”

Once selected, each athlete can then reset their priorities. Four Canadians hit that point in December, three more on January 8th, and the last two on January 17th. With the first race on February 5th, which feels like the 4th after crossing the international date line, the one big thing athletes can do is not catch COVID-19.

Back in 2010, Canada had four men performing on the world cup and when it came time to pick four men for the 50km on the final day, there were five names. Ivan Babikov, George Gray, and Alex Harvey had placed 5th, 8th, and 9th in the skiathlon and were obvious choices. The final place had to go to either Brian McKeever, who had qualified first at trials in Canmore, or Devon Kershaw, whose best individual result was a 16th. Unusually for Canada, there was outside pressure on this selection, as McKeever would have been the first person to compete at the Olympics and Paralympics in the same season.

“The way the other four boys had been skiing, there was no decision, there was no discussion,” Wood explained. “Brian didn’t beat Kershaw and Alex and Ivan and George [at trials], he beat the others.”

The coaches chose Kershaw, which paid off with a 5th place finish, 1.6 seconds from gold. In 2022, there will be no difficult decisions for the men, but there are five women and four starts per individual race.

FasterSkier asked Beatty what races she was looking forward to.

“Well, if I get a start in the team sprint, I love team sprints, I love team events. So I’m definitely hoping to be doing that race, I’m looking forward to that. I’m also really looking forward to the individual sprint and the 10k individual.”

This may not be the Norwegian or Swedish level of choice, with eight skiers and four starts, but expect Canada to hold some time trials during the Olympics to inform the coaches’ choice.

Beatty and Browne were in PyeongChang, and will have experience to share with the neophytes.

“​​The races themselves, even though they will be the most stressful part, are also going to be the most fun because that’s what we dream of,” Bouffard-Nesbitt speculated three days before getting on the plane.

“I’ve never been to an Olympic Games, and especially a COVID games. So I don’t know what the rest of the time will be like.”

Early evidence is athletes will be killing time in their rooms and finding virtual fun with your teammates.

Dreaming

FasterSkier asked a number of the athletes a simple question: when you first dreamed of the Olympics, what sport were you dreaming of?

“I have to say, probably hockey with that one. For sure. I didn’t know I was gonna end up as a cross country skier.” — Ritchie

“Cross country skiing. Yeah, it’s always been that.” — Stewart-Jones

“I definitely think it was probably cross country skiing. That’s always been the sport I’ve been strongest at, even as a kid. I did a bunch of different sports. I always loved watching figure skating at the Olympics, but I knew that I was never going to pursue that long term, definitely was not flexible enough.” — Beatty

“I don’t know. I guess when I first really thought about the Olympics was back when I was playing hockey. But at that time, it wasn’t really, it was kind of just like, whoa, it’d be cool to go to the Olympics. But I didn’t really think of what sport I might make it in. It’s only really four years ago, I started thinking, this is what I need to work towards, to make the Olympics in Beijing.” – Rémi Drolet

“That is such a good question. Because around the time when I became really inspired by the Olympics was the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, and I think Simon Whitfield winning the triathlon was the really big moment at that Olympics. And at the time, in my youth, I was just obsessed with soccer, but also skiing, so I dreamt of either/or soccer or skiing.” — Bouffard-Nesbitt

“Oh, man, I didn’t really have a sport I was dreaming of, exactly. But I thought maybe skiing because I was on skis at two years old. More downhill racing.” – Kennedy

“I was the dreaming to go to the Olympics as a cross country skier. It didn’t happen as a cross country skier but as a technician.” — Simon Boisvert

“Ah, to be honest, I’ve always been into cross country skiing with my dad and my sister, my older sister ahead of me, but always been into cross country skiing, and I thought that maybe mountain biking, but a few years ago, I knew I was not. I wasn’t going as an athlete, but I’m pretty pumped to go for my first time as a wax technician.” — Félix-Antoine Vezina

The Canadian Prep Camp in Sovereign Lake and SilverStar, BC prior to the 2022 Beijing Olympics sounds like a nordic skier’s heaven.

A two-week ski vacation with 100 kilometres of perfectly groomed snow. A private room above a great coffee shop (pain au chocolate!) and next door to some great beer. January weather just below freezing with enough falling snow to make every day a hardwax day. Two weeks of what locals call superhero snow. A whole lot of sunshine.

The reality was a little different: COVID stress, travel uncertainty, and outside pressure combined to make this very much a work trip, not a vacation.

The camp, which ran from January 12th to 25th, included nine athletes, the high-performance manager plus two coaches, two wax techs, a massage therapist, and a cook.

The athletes included the majority of the 2022 Olympic Team: Katherine Stewart-Jones, Laura Leclair, Dahria Beatty, Tony Cyr, Olivier Léveillé, and Graham Ritchie. Alternates Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt and Rémi Drolet would officially join the team after the quota reallocation during the second week. Second alternate Russell Kennedy will not add to his Olympic CV and will instead go to his third Paralympics as a guide, supporting the well-decorated visually impaired athlete, Brian McKeever. The only Olympic team member not in attendance was Cendrine Browne, who chose to train in Canmore, while second alternate Jasmine Drolet returned to school at Dartmouth and earned her first collegiate wins.

World Cup coach Erik Bråten, Next Gen coach Eric de Nys, Team Lead and high performance manager Joel Jaques, techs Simon Boisvert and Félix-Antoine Vezina, massage therapist Stephen Waterreus, and Zoe the cook made up the support crew. Everyone except de Nys and Zoe are going to Beijing.

When this writer asked for last names, the response was always, “Zoe? You know Zoe.” In the end, it was revealed that Zoe is Zoë Roy, who retired from racing in 2014 as a founding member of Team Ninja. Yup, we all know Zoë.

All interviews were done on snow, from a distance, with FasterSkier wearing an N95 mask.

On Snow Training

The on-snow part of the camp was reported to have gone very well. The coaches were able to find times and trails that allowed training races that closely matched the Olympic course for profile and elevation while keeping distance from the local skiers. 

The Zhangjiakou 5km course elevation range is 1639m to 1696m. The Sovereign Lake upper World Cup 5km is 1651m to 1708m, with the stadium at 1660m.

The Friday sprint course worked fairly well, despite a layout that would give any technical delegate apoplexy. As Bråten explains above, the coaches chose to do four qualifiers instead of heats to manage risk.

The Sunday skiathlon course ended up being 13km for the women and 17km for the men, with some flat sections removed from the 5km loop to better mimic the Olympic courses.

Bråten was often seen working with athletes one-on-one.

As the days counted down to departure, skiers were working on filling their bags with seconds gained: a tweak in one skate (V2) poling, free skating further on a fast flat section, experimenting with pacing on courses that simulate Zhangjiakou.

The mood of the camp seemed slightly tense, at least to a journalist who was careful not to pierce the bubble. The change on Tuesday morning, 12 hours after everyone passed the final COVID test, was dramatic, with smiles everywhere.

“It’s been fantastic conditions and just a really nice camp all around, it’s always nice when you get some sunshine,” Kennedy told FasterSkier. “So yeah, especially after a [World Cup] Period One in Finland in the dark.”

COVID Management

A positive test would be the end of one person’s Olympic dreams and a logistical nightmare for the support team. Any close contact of the infected person would not be able to travel. Any replacement person, athlete or not, would need to follow the same testing protocol. If that replacement wasn’t ready for the scheduled flight, the complexity of travel planning might be insurmountable.

In order to travel to the Olympics, the athletes, coaches, and techs would all have to pass two PCR tests less than 24 hours apart in the final 96 hours before boarding. Once at the Calgary airport, there would be another PCR test, with a fourth upon arrival in China.

Nordiq Canada chose a more restrictive plan than some other countries. Each person (athlete, coach, tech, cook, massage therapist) had their own room and didn’t enter other rooms. Meals were delivered. Grocery shopping was done by local resident, de Nys, scheduled for 7am to avoid crowds. No one entered coffee shops, bars, or restaurants. Each morning, everyone would do a rapid antigen test in their room. Athletes skied from their accommodation at SilverStar to the homologated trails at Sovereign Lake to avoid close contacts in vehicles. Only de Nys and Zoë the cook had contacts outside the bubble, and neither is going to Beijing.

The goal behind this aggressive protocol was twofold. First, to prevent exposures. Second, if one person tested positive, there would be no close contacts forced into isolation or removed from the Olympics. The two wax techs (Simon Boisvert and Félix-Antoine Vezina) inevitably had a shared bubble as they shared a private waxing room.

Was this the right answer? We got three answers to that.

Drolet found the camp harder than usual: “We were still able to ski together a little bit, but it was definitely a little bit lonely at times.”

Kennedy, entering with a mentally tough prospect of only making the team if disaster struck a friend, found the positive. “The guys have been playing, like hanging out online together… And we’ve been skiing together. So it’s separate, but at the same time, not too lonely.”

“Ask me on Monday afternoon when we get all the results back,” Jaques told FasterSkier on Sunday morning. “We’ve taken the right precautions so we’ll just see. But I think it’s looking good.”

A number of athletes mentioned feeling comfort in knowing they were doing everything possible to protect their Olympic dreams. 

The system has worked. Everyone tested negative and the entire team is now on snow in Zhangjiakou.

The Eastern Canada Cup series wrapped up in Mont Sainte Anne (MSA), Québec, with distance racing for over 300 skiers each day. As with Westerns, the second weekend brought results and execution a little higher in the athletes’ focus, but the almost universal use of the words ‘fun’ and ‘excitement’ remain a reflection of a return to racing after a season without.

MSA is just outside Québec City and is very accessible for most population centres in the province. It is a destination venue that is famous for challenging trails and a few brutal climbs that reflect 1991 homologation standards. Races are hosted by Club Nordique Mont Ste Anne on trails owned by the alpine resort. This is the home base of the Centre National d’Entraînement Pierre-Harvey (CNEPH).

“The race organizers and volunteers did a great job today, the course was challenging but fun and the conditions were good despite the rain we got the day before.” — Étienne Hébert

Saturday: Individual Start Classic 5km/10km

The women kicked off the weekend with a 5km race of truth and it was CNEPH’s U20 Liliane Gagnon setting the standard in 14:00.7. Chelsea’s U18 Tory Audet was second at 7.5 seconds back, collecting her second senior podium of the season. Last weekend’s double winner Laura Leclair was third (+16.7), putting a second CNEPH suit on the podium.

“I had a very good day!” Gagnon wrote to FasterSkier. “I surprised myself which is awesome. I knew the form was good, but I didn’t expect the race I pulled off. 5km classic individual starts are usually my biggest fear and I proved myself wrong.”

Gagnon was one of many who had process goals top of mind.

“I usually have trouble with individual starts because I don’t start fast enough. Today my goal was to start off quick and ideally keep that speed all through the race and I think I did a pretty good job. I really tried to stride long on the “false flats hills” and push hard on the top of the hills and I think it paid off!”

“I had a great race,” Audet wrote. “We had awesome glide but our kick was not ideal. The conditions were fast, which made this specific course very exciting. This course had a lot of uphills, which are my favourite! Uphills gives me the feeling of accomplishment every time I crest a new hill, and that motivates me for the next one!”

Enthusiasm flows from Audet, who at sixteen was affected more than many by a season without learning from real races.

“During my race, what stayed in the back of my mind was that a faster and more experienced skier started one minute behind me. I was driven to maintain that one-minute gap between us.”

That skier starting one minute behind Audet was Leclair, who wrote “Today was an overall good day. I think I lost seconds in the last portion of the race but I’m happy with the first half. Skis were good and conditions were super fast. Happy to be racing at my second home.”

Leclair is a Chelsea member, giving her the chance to race at both ‘home’ courses this month.

National Team Development Centre Thunder Bay’s Julian Smith his strong start with a third win in the new season, finishing the 10km in 23:51.7. CNEPH’s Phil Boucher was 24.7 seconds back, edging out TBay’s Pierre Grall-Johnson in third at 30.3.

Boucher was fresh from the US SuperTour in Cable, where he was third in the 15km classic and won the 15km free.

“My day was ok,” he wrote. “I was just not fast enough to win. Skis were good and my pacing was too. I just didn’t deliver the result that I was supposed to.”

Grall-Johnson had a more optimistic outlook on his day.

“Fun day today,” Grall-Johnson wrote, “first 10km of the season. Those are always hard distances, I am definitely feeling the fatigue of the past few months but still happy with how I pushed today… I think today was all about maintaining a high speed through the full lap, keeping the power high on the false flats and really pushing hard into the downhills. Our NTDC skis were awesome today, so looking forward to tomorrow.”

5th place Étienne Hébert, another CNEPH skier, explained the ‘return to racing’ experience.

“Definitely not a bad race in any way, my distance racing has clearly improved this year and getting consistent top fives and podiums early on helps build up confidence for the rest of the season.  The race organizers and volunteers did a great job today, the course was challenging but fun and the conditions were good despite the rain we got the day before.”

What made the difference between 5th and the podium? “The guys in front on me just had a better day on Saturday.”

Classic Results

Sunday: Mass Start 10km/15km Free

Sunday was a sun day on the course and delivered the first mass start in 20 months for most of the skiers present. The excitement and the broken poles were real.

Antoine (Tony) Cyr, who returned from World Cup Period I with two top twelve results and a cold, pushed the pace early before finishing alone in 37:48.3.

“Tony started with a strong pace,” Boucher wrote, “and after that we just tried to drop each other by a big enough gap in the hills so that the other didn’t catch up on the flats. I bonked first, so I got second…”

“[The] skate race was good!” Grall-Johnson wrote of being the only non-CNEPH skier in the top eight. “It was one of those races that just flowed through. Antoine took it out a hard pace and then by the top of the first hill there were only three of us with a gap to the next pack, and then we just created a bigger gap over the rest of the first 5km. Tactics weren’t the deciding factor yesterday, I was very content to let Phil and Tony do most of the work and I just had to respond whenever they picked up the pace or tried to attack. At the beginning of the third lap Antoine and Phil pulled away from me on a long working section. I managed to catch back up to Phil who also had a little bit of an explosion and we skied together until he broke me going up a very steep hill with just about 1km to go.”

Behind the trio, there was a lot more action.

“Sunday’s 15km mass start was simply really fun,” Hébert wrote about his fourth place from a trio of chasers. “I skied the two last laps with my teammates Leo Grandbois and Felix-Olivier Moreau.  Those laps were very strategic and exciting, lots of tactics involved to fight for that fourth spot.  The start of the race was terrible for me, I got tangled up with other skiers and boxed behind which meant that the first lap was only about getting back in touch with the chasing group.”

***

Gagnon won the women’s 10km in 30:42.1, continuing the CNEPH Sunday domination with Leclair second at 12.9 back. Nakkertok’s Zoë Williams was alone in third at 25.6 seconds behind.

“My day was awesome!” Gagnon wrote. “Really did not expect taking another win today, but very happy that the race feeling is coming up strong.

“My teammate Laura and I really worked through this one together,” Gagnon continued. “Maybe not the best tactic all through the race but it ended working out pretty well and we got a lot of experience from it. I knew when I was going to ‘attack’; I was ready to go hard in that last hill, last kilometre and did exactly that.”

Williams had a plan for the mass start.

“Tactically my plan had been to chill for the first lap behind the leaders,” she wrote to FasterSkier.

Plans change, especially in mass starts.

“Unfortunately my pole got broken right off the start which separated me from the lead pack, but I had a lot of fun working with Bronwyn to reel people back in! (And big shout out to Gilles Bérubé for the super smooth pole hand off!)”

The ‘Bronwyn’ mentioned is Bronwyn Williams, 4th today, 3rd in the Nakkertok sprint last weekend. She’s also Zoë’s younger sister.

Audet pulled out early after experiencing back pain. Her youth didn’t stop her from making the wise choice as Trials approaches.

“Being up in the mix with the senior racers has been a goal of mine and I’m surprised that this is what I am doing,” Audet wrote. “I really enjoy racing with them, they have a lot more experience than I do and it is a lot of fun to race and learn from them.”

Brazil’s Jacqueline Mourao was the leader of a large group of ‘other nation’ athletes vying for an Olympic quota spot, finishing 6th (+1:28.1). Mourao, now 46, is a seven-time Olympian who rose to prominence as a mountain biker and started skiing in 2005 while renting a basement suite from Pierre Harvey.

Mass Start Results

Finding the Bar

After a season without racing, we now have four Canada Cup weekends to use to judge the state of skiing in Canada.

With male athletes who have raced the US SuperTour and World Cup period 1, there is a basis for speculation on where Canada fits into world rankings.

Boucher left the Cable SuperTour with a 1st, 3rd, and 16th results, the last coming in the sprint. Cyr  recorded 11th, 12th, 32nd, 56th, 42nd, 36th, and a DNF in three World Cup weekends. Antoine Briand skied two SuperTour weekends, finishing 2nd and 26th in sprints, 27th and 33rd in distance.  Boucher, Cyr, and Briand all train together at CNEPH which gives Boucher a unique perspective.

“Tony is in a league of is own in Canada right now,” Boucher wrote. “He is skiing well and his race efforts are so consistent. He is skiing at a World Cup level, which I have been struggling to do over the past year. That being said, I don’t need to compare to Tony to know if I am at a World Cup level – my results from last year speaks from themselves and, sadly, the answer is no. I don’t feel fast enough to get a decent result on a World Cup event.”

We can already see that splitting NorAms into Western and Eastern Canada Cups has reduced travel, and travel costs for racers and teams. This is good.

“I think it is pretty clear that splitting the Canadian field in two circuit results in a less competitive field,” Boucher wrote.  “We can compare the 15km mass start skate in Cable since it was pretty much the same kind of course. In the super tour, we had a leading pack of approximately 15 guys and this weekend we were 3 battling for the win.

“So I’d say splitting the Canadian circuit is bad for the depth of the field of our Canadian races, but it doesn’t mean that the level of competition is not high. We still have great skiers in both Canadian circuits. It would just be more fun and more exciting to race against all the best skiers in the country.”

Less depth in fields, especially in sprint heats, is probably not good. FasterSkier is following this closely.

Up Next

There are both new and familiar faces to watch from December, but the real test will be when the entire country meets at the Olympic Trials in Canmore from January 6th to 11th. This is the selection event for Beijing, U23/U20 World Championships, and World Cup period 4, which means most athletes have something to chase.

Canada has Olympic quota spots for four women and three men, and unofficially the three men’s spots were allocated based on World Cup period 1 results. With so few Olympic berths up for grabs, the focus will shift to earning World Cup starts for older skiers.

“I’m feeling reassured for trials, simply because last season was kind of a black period and I didn’t know we’re I stood. Now I know the shape is there, it’s going to be very stressful weekend, with a lot at stake but I’m confident the preparation is good and I’ll be ready.” — Gagnon

“Only thinking about racing, I think it will be an incredible event and I can’t wait to race for the win on the tough Canmore courses.” — Hébert

“With Trials being held in Canmore, I am sure the volunteers will put on another great event. The courses are something to behold in Canmore with demanding climbs and technical descents. I am sure the athletes will all be excited to race hard, and the spectators will surely be there looking on with anticipation. I think as long as everyone follows covid protocols and respects regulations, everyone should be able to compete, coach and spectate while feeling safe.” — Smith

For most of the roughly 600 individual skiers who have raced one or more Canada Cups this month, the return of racing is the return of measuring progress and the return of learning.

“I had no clue how to pace myself, there were tough climbs and I don’t have a lot of experience, and hadn’t raced on a course this difficult in 2 years.” — Audet

Racing in Canada, Racing at Home

“Racing in Canada is always fun! Skiing with teammates and with family and friends cheering you on is always fun. It’s a familiar feeling and it’s feels good to start off the season that way and hopefully later moving on to the big races in Europe.” — Gagnon

“A lot of excitement again this weekend.  There was good support from parents and friends cheering on the side of the course which brought good vibes through the weekend.  We also got lucky with weather, especially on Sunday with a beautiful sunny day.  In Mont Sainte-Anne, the race organizers always have to deal with RCR, the group that owns the mountain, who often don’t even do the minimum to give skiers decent trail conditions all winter.  So, the Club Nordique Mont Sainte-Anne organizing an event like they did last weekend really shows the commitment of the volunteers and the community around the mountain.” — Hébert

“It feels amazing to be back on the race course again! I have really missed racing and with a couple tough years of sickness and injury simply getting back on the start line is an incredible win. Some things have for sure changed, but honestly, at the heart of things it’s still the same. It doesn’t matter who’s on the race course for me; the goal is always to go as fast as I can between the start and finish line and figure out what I can change for the next race to go even faster!!” — Williams

“The weekend in MSA was exciting. The conditions were superb and the race organizers did a great job. There were lots of spectators respecting covid precautions and cheering loudly! The 10km classic interval start was fast and furious with quick conditions and great waxing by our staff! Sunday was fun to race a mass start and started off with a blistering pace and a course full of long uphills!” — Smith