Just one week after helping the United States set a speedskating world record in the men’s team pursuit event at the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns, Park City native Casey Dawson and teammates Ethan Cepuran and Emery Lehman repeated as champions in a World Cup event in Calgary, Canada, last weekend.
Dawson, Lehman and Cepuran finished the event with a time of 3:35.592, beating out Norway, Canada and five other countries for the gold medal. The big difference between the Calgary race and the world-record race in Kearns was that Cepuran filled in for Joey Mantia.
“We really treated this race like practice and wanted to get another race under our belts before the Olympics,” Dawson said via US Speedskating. “Switch our lineup, see what we can do and so forth.”
Dawson also finished 11th in the men’s 5,000-meter event and 12th in the 1,500-meter race. This was the final World Cup speedskating event before the Olympic trials in January and the Olympics themselves in February.
Fellow Parkite Winter Vinecki, an aerial skier, had a successful trip to Finland for four World Cup events on the individual side and two team events. She had two fifth-place finishes as an individual and then capped it off by helping the United States finish second in the team event on Dec. 11.
“It was super exciting to end on a high note here in Finland, we’ve had a lot of ups and downs getting in the rhythm of things,” Vinecki said via U.S. Ski & Snowboard. “It was good to get a good jump to my feet in the singles event. I was super excited to be in the Team event, it was only my second one. (We were so close) to the top of the podium there. This gave us a bit of a confidence boost for the rest of the season.”
Moguls skiers Nick Page and Bradley Wilson were in Sweden last weekend after their season’s first event in Finland. Page opened the season with a 14th-place finish and then came in 18th in Sweden. Wilson finished his first two events in 21st and ninth, respectively. Wilson also had an eighth-place finish in dual moguls in Sweden, while Page struggled in 33rd.
On Friday, Page and Wilson competed in another World Cup event in Alpe d’Huez, France. Page came in ninth, and Wilson was 13th.
Cross-country skier Rosie Brennan, meanwhile, continued to find success this season with two fourth-place finishes on Dec. 11 and Dec. 12 in the freestyle sprint and the 10-kilometer freestyle individual start in Davos, Switzerland. In the former, she was leading, but a fall moved her into fourth.
“What an absolute bitter-sweet day. … I am so crushed to have found myself face-first in the snow on the last lap after making my move,” Brennan said via U.S. Ski & Snowboard. “It was a little tricky snow with some fast patches and some slow patches and I think I just got ahead of myself. It was no fault but my own and is definitely hard to swallow.”
Even with the fall, Brennan is fourth in the overall World Cup standings and the highest-ranked American ahead of this weekend’s World Cup stop in Dresden, Germany. She’s also third in the distance standings.