Last weekend’s World Cup classic sprint in Östersund, where the winning time in the women’s final was 3 minutes and 39 seconds, drew critiques from some quarters for taking too long.
“When you approach 3:45 in a sprint, it is no longer called a sprint in my eyes,” Tiril Udnes Weng told NRK, according to an auto-translation.
Östersund, meet Anchorage. Skiing over what has already been called a World Cup–level course, further slowed by fresh snow and blustery north winds, the fastest women’s time in this morning’s qualification round for the 1.4-kilometer skate sprint came from Sammy Smith (USST/Sun Valley), in 3:39.24. Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt and Liliane Gagnon of Canada were second and third, in 3:40.64 and 3:42.80. (These are all unofficial results and times.)
Olivia Soderstrom (Alaska Winter Stars) was the last athlete into the heats, with a 4:03.01. Soderstrom was a U16 national champion in the skate sprint at this year’s Junior Nationals in Fairbanks. Tough going out there.
In the men’s field, Jack Young (Craftsbury) led the way in 3:06.65, with Walker Hall (USST/Utah, +1.71) and Hugo Hinckfuss (Colorado, +1.97) close behind. Young sprint phenom Murphy Kimball (second at JNs, made the senior heats in Houghton at 2023 U.S. Nationals) has a good excuse for skipping classes at Anchorage’s West High School today, as he was fourth in the qual (+2.11).
Fin Bailey of SMS T2 (second from left above), an agèd 18 years old at present, was the last athlete into the men’s heats, in 3:16.93.
The winner of the qual is of more than academic interest, given the terms of the selection criteria for nation’s group World Cup starts in Canmore and Wirth later this winter.
On the one hand, these criteria (which you can read in full here) “will only consider qualification round finish placing” when it comes to assigning athletes points for their performance in a SuperTour sprint. So Smith or Young could break a ski in their quarterfinal heat and limp in to a 30th-place overall finish for today, or even a DNF — and they would still take home the maximum number of points possible under internal USSS qualification criteria.
On the other hand, the qualification document is worded so as to very heavily weight an athlete’s performance in the two sprints in Soldier Hollow next month (Nationals + SuperTour) over any other race in the 2023/2024 SuperTour schedule. So today’s qual results probably don’t matter too much in the long run… but depending on who races and does well when, they could. Stay tuned.
Heats go off at 1:30 p.m. today Alaska Time.
— Gavin Kentch
