The marquee athletes didn’t disappoint at this year’s U.S. Cross Country Championships in Houghton, Mich., didn’t disappoint. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.
Star sprinters Kikkan Randall and Andy Newell defended the sprint titles they won a year ago at Michigan Tech. as a throw-in, they added a second gold medal, too, before leaving town Monday morning – Randall for a training camp at Silver Star, B.C., and Newell returning to his home in Vermont.
The third U.S. Ski Team headliner, Kris Freeman – who has produced the best distance results in World Cup racing for the Ski Team since the Bill Koch era in the early Eighties – came down with a bug. He had been sick in Europe before Christmas and was derailed again in Houghton. After the two distance races – the 10K skate race on New Year’s Day and the 15K classic technique event Thursday, he decided to take a pass on the sprints and go home to train.
“It’s pretty simple, said Head Coach Pete Vordenberg. “When you’re sick, you don’t get to train. And when you don’t train, your fitness, your conditioning just breaks down a little…and that’s what’s happened with Kris.
“It’s important he gets some training because we’ve got World Cup races coming up [Jan. 22-26 at the 1988 Olympic venue in Canmore, Alberta] and we want him ready.”
An abundance of snow, a major about-face from last year when there was almost no snow, meant organizers could use more trails, add a couple of small hills to the short loops available last January for the championships. “They’re not big hills, but it’s more than we had last season and it adds some variety to the trails,” Randall said.
In addition to World Cup starts for Canada, the races were to help decide World Juniors Championships, Under-23 Championships and Scandinavian Cup berths. Announcements on each team were expected later this week. Registration for the races reached 474.
The events at the Michigan Tech Nordic Training Center were the short and medium distance title races. Fairbanks, Alaska, will host the long distance races, the men’s 30K pursuit and 50K classic technique plus the women’s 15K pursuit and 30K CL.
A look back at the championships (for complete results, go to www.seniornationals.org ):
Jan. 1 (Freestyle technique – men’s 10K and women’s 5K) – Defending SuperTour champion Caitlin Compton won the 5K in 13:47.1 with Liz Stephen runner-up in 14:11.8. Ivan Babikov of Russia won the men’s race (24:23.7) but medals at nationals go only to U.S. citizens, so he had to content himself with the $1,200 first prize while Leif Zimmermann, second in 24:39.3, was gold medalist. It’s his second title.
Jan. 3 (Classic technique – men’s 15K and women’s 10K) – Randall gained her seventh U.S. title while Babikov had the fastest men’s time again, meaning runner-up Lars Flora was the gold medal-winner; it’s his fifth national championship. But Babikov was $1,200 richer.
Randall, whose World Cup victory in a sprint in Russia last month was the first by an American woman, was left shaking her head when she finished 10th in the 5K. She felt better 48 hours later. “I didn’t know what happened in the 5K,” she said, “but this was better.”
Flora started well, he said, but Babikov was unstoppable. “Ivan was flying,” he said, noting Freeman was 20 seconds down after the first lap and he, Flora, was another 10 back of him. On the second lap, Flora moved up a spot and held off Alexey Golokov from Kazakistan as Freeman dropped to fourth.
Jan. 5 (FR sprints) – Newell and Randall’s tea party. Each led the qualifying round, Randall comfortably ahead of Laura Valaas while Newell led Midwesterner Garrott Kuzzy by over two seconds, too. Valaas won the SuperTour sprint crown last season (nine wins)(wow!) and took the sprint silver medal at the Under-23 Championships; Kuzzy is leading the SuperTour overall standings.
Randall almost put herself out it in the first of the finals heats. In the quarterfinal, she caught a ski tip in the snow along the trail and went down while the pack skeid away. “Total rookie mistake,” she said. “I thought ‘What have I done?'”
And then she got up, got back in the track and went out to reel-in everyone – and spank ’em! She bounced back and won by nearly two seconds. She breezed through the semifinal while Valaas was doing the same thing in her bracket.
Randall and Valas are training mates not only with the U.S. Ski Team but with Alaska Pacific University Nordic. In the final heat, Valaas couldn’t catch her teammate as Randall skied away to her eighth title.
Torin Koos is Newell’s wing man on the World Cup. The ex-University of Utah skier, who was on a World Cup podium in Estonia last January, was looking for this match-up in the final heat, but he couldn’t stay with Newell, who scooted off with his second consecutive sprint championship.
Jan. 6 (CL team sprints, each skier racing three times on a 1.3K loop) – With Randall and Valaas teamed, it looked like a battle for the silver medal. But a delay in the start of the races was coupled with warmer temperatures, which created waxing problems for some skiers. But Lindsay Williams and Lindsey (Weier) Dehlin, full of confidence and racing on smokin’ skis, had no problems.
Rivals in high school in Minnesota, they were teammates at Northern Michigan University for four years, teammates on the 2006 Olympic Team…and last March, each of them won an NCAA championship. They are very much in sync.
On the final lap, as Valaas and Randall were being torpedoed by the weather which slowed their skis, Williams took the tag from Dehlin and took off. She took the lead on a downhill out of the start and, to use her words, “went like hell.” Nobody caught her.
“Kikkan and Laura are really good, but I knew we could ski well, too. We both were ‘On’ and I knew if we were, we could do it,” Williams said.
The championships conclude March 28-30 in Fairbanks, Alaska.