Here's the report on yesteray's races:
Eli Hoenig is a dramatic skier. He fought his way up into the lead pack intoday’s race. Then, around the 11 K mark (of 15K total) he seized the lead. He had to relinquish it, but he let the other J1 boys know that Eli was in town and they should look out for him. The battle was furious to the finish and Eli hung tough for 7th place, earning All-American status (top ten). He looked horrible at the finish line with blood all over his face (did I mention drama?). He had a generous nose-bleed going and his skin was ashen. Then he commenced puking up his breakfast mixed with plenty of blood. I had to make the call that ski coaches hate to make, “Hey Peter, your son is at the finish puking up blood. Could you drop by and have a look at him?”
Turned out that he had been swallowing the blood from the nose-bleed and that had made him sick to his stomach. After a few rounds of regurgitation and a little time he was back to his old self and ready to eat and drink again. Whew.
Besides this excitement, it was another dominating day for Team New England. I feel like the other divisions forgot to send half their kids. We estimate that we scored about twice as many points as the second place team today. Yow! CSU skiers contributed many of those points.
Overnight we received about 1 inch of new snow and it snowed very lightly almost all day. With the first race starting at 8 AM, I was on the road at 6 AM with the rest of the wax crew to test kick wax. I skied around on various different waxes and different “zero” waxless skis along with Tim Caldwell. After much testing we decided that the Zeroes were the way to go. Our Head Waxer, Justin Beckwith (GMVS)) had created a Master Plan for sharing the 30 pairs of Zeroes between our 55 athletes. (Parents, if your child is serious about making and competing at JO’s, then you need to add a pair of Zeroes to your ski budget. Ouch.)
The opening race was for J2 boys. Hamish McEwen, skiing for the very first time on his specially prepared (by Zach Caldwell) Zeroes, took a commanding lead early the race and never looked back. Another National Championship! Our J2 rookies, Chris Koziel and Ian Moore had solid races finishing 27th and 31st respectively.
For J2 girls Cate Brams had her sleeves rolled up and was looking for a podium finish. When Alaskan star Marion Woods broke the race open only Heidi Halvorsen of New England could stay with her. Cate made a valiant effort to chase them down, but in the process used so much energy that she didn’t have much left for the end of the race and so fell back to 5th. A top 5 finish makes her eligible to be named to the NENSA elite team and top 10 gets her All-American status. Zoe Snow was one of two skiers that we couldn’t find a pair of Zeroes for. The waxers tried making “hairies” by roughing up the kick zone with sandpaper, but that didn’t provide enough kick. So, it was back to wax for her. Although the wax worked, I don’t think it was as good as the Zeroes. Zoe still managed an excellent 27th place and as usual a big smile at the finish. (Edit: see the photo from yesterday of Zoe's war wound!)
J1 girls did the 5K loop twice which gave us plenty of chances to watch them ski by. There was a big pack for a long time after the mass start. That gave Olivia Meyerson a chance to move up from the very back where she had to start due to her lack of USSA points. On the other hand Hannah Smith got tangled up in the crowd a couple of times and took some falls. Corey Stock meanwhile was patiently cruising along in the top 5 and biding her time. She and Heather Mooney (from SMS) wisely let a Rocky Mountain girl take the lead and they followed along. At about the 7K make Corey made her planned move on a big uphill and quickly opened up a 50-meter gap on her pursuers. They never came close to her again and she powered in for another National Championship. Corey is back on top! Olivia had hung in with the pack and skied strong to snag 20th place which scored a point for New England (and for CSU in the club competition). Hannah had some breathing problems but hung tough for 66th place.
In the OJ races our CSU veterans really showed their stuff. When Chris Stock went by at the 5K mark I knew he was going to have a great race as he was skiing very smoothly in about 10th place. He moved up steadily and finished 3rd for his first JO podium. Bravo Chris. For the ladies Olga Golovkina demonstrated her superb classic skiing with a 7th place finish and All-American status. Hilary Rich, another skier making a comeback from injury, double-poled furiously through the stadium to pull herself up to 10th place.
If you study the results you’ll notice that New England skiers are really dominating the races here. We had 8 OJ boys in the top 10 and 7 OJ girls in the top 10. It really shows just how hard it is to make JO’s in New England.
Rob
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