Durango Nordic Ski Club: January 2011

The Junior National Qualifiers continued this past weekend as the Durango Nordic Ski Club travelled to Granby, CO to compete in the second weekend of four Junior National Qualifier’s. These races where hosted by Boulder Nordic Junior Race Team at Snow Mountain Ranch. “As a team, this was our strongest showing so far this year.” said head coach Josh Dalley. “We had 20 skiers racing at the event, with ages ranging from 11 to 18. This weekend also solidified some Durango athletes spots on the Junior National Team, putting 13 DNSC athletes within striking distance of making the team.”

On Saturday Boulder hosted a five kilometer freestyle technique race. The J1 and OJ classes all raced together (ages 16-19). Leading the way for DNSC was Gino Pastore in 7^th place, followed by Sepp Kuss in 10^th, Gunter Ott in 16^th, Haakon Samuelson in 18^th, and Ben Capelin in 23^rd. The Junior Women’s race was lead by DNSC skier Rachel Hampton in 4^th and Hannah Madden in 9^th. Haakon Sigurslid lead the J2 Men age group (14-15) for Durango with a 3^rd place finish. Following Sigurslid were John Rhoades in 18^th and Abe Ott in 20^th. In the girls J2 age group, Durango was lead by Amy Katz in 2^nd place, Hannah Peterson in 6^th, Lily Oswald in 9^th, Kaylee Blevins in 11^th, and Emma Greenberg in 18^th. DNSC had two J3 boys (12-13) compete. Charlie Greenberg skied to a eight second victory and Jared Webster placed 12^th. In the J3 Girls race, Durango’s Avra Saslow placed 11^th. Dylan Williamson placed 5^th and Stan Ott placed 9^th in the J4 Male age class. In the J4 Female class, DNSC skier Marit May rounded out the podium with a 3^rd place finish.

The racers went head to head on Sunday in a mass start classic race. The J1 and OJ Girls skied 10 kilometers with Rachel Hampton again leading the way for Durango in 7^th, followed by Hannah Madden in 13^th. The J1 and OJ Boys raced 3 laps for a total of 15 kilometers. Gino Pastore moved up a spot to 6^th place, followed by Sepp Kuss in 10^th, Gunter Ott in 14^th, Haakon Samuelson in 16^th, and Ben Capelin in 23^rd. The J2 Girls stuck to 5 kilometers, with a close race between the top 3. Amy Katz from Durango was in the final sprint for the finish line and captured 3^rd place. In that age group she was followed by Hannah Peterson in 8^th, Kaylee Blevins in 10^th, Lily Oswald in 11^th, and Emma Greenberg in 20^th. In the J2 Boys, Haakon Sigurslid lead the race from the beginning, finishing 1^st with a 15 second gap over the rest of the field. He was followed by John Rhoades in 18^th and Abe Ott in 19^th. In the J4 Female class, Avra Saslow placed 8^th. Charlie Greenberg held on to a podium for the second day in a row, placing 3^rd in the J3 Boys group. He was followed by Jared Webster in 19^th. Marit May also held on to two days on the podium, moving up to 2^nd place in the J4 Girls race. In the J4 Boys race, Dylan Williamson proved himself to be a force, placing 3^rd on the second day. He was followed by Stan Ott in 7^th. Full results can be found on www.fourcornerstiming.com or www.durangonordic.org.

Next, the Durango Nordic Ski Club athletes will be racing this coming weekend in the Tour de Ski, hosted at Durango Mountain Resort. The race courses wind their way around the Hermosa Valley, with challenging climbs and epic views.

Distance Races start tomorrow! Yes, it’s finally going to happen and we are ready for it. With another good day of training at Great Glen, they kids are ready to go out and rock tomorrow in the distance classic race. Everyone is felling good, upbeat, and…ready. This is US Nationals and we brought our A game. And us coaches are ready as well. We did a lot of klister testing today and even race a lap of the race course to check it out. We did our homework and we’ve determined that tomorrow is going to be a good day for Rocky (esp DNSC).

Conditions update. The gun show has been happening. Not the muscle “gun show” or the actual Gun Show that we had at JNs last year. I mean the snow guns. They have been out in force and cranking out enough snow to cover a 2.5k loop that will be used for the races tomorrow and most likely the rest of the week. I took some pics today on my phone: