Renae Anderson had never been here before. Luke Jager does this seemingly all the time. Both athletes skied with authority all day long, winning the qual, both their heats, and then the final to take wire-to-wire victories in the Lake Placid classic sprint Saturday morning, the opening race of Period 3 of the 2023/2024 SuperTour season.
It was a notably strong day for two clubs from opposite ends of the country, APU and Craftsbury. Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center had four athletes entered in the senior men’s field today and put all four of them through to the final: Jager won, Michael Earnhart was second, Hunter Wonders was fourth, and Garrett Butts was sixth. And Anderson, as noted, won the women’s race, giving APU three of six podium finishers on the day. Craftsbury Green Racing Project, meanwhile, represented a full half of the women’s final. Michaela Keller-Miller finished second there, Margie Freed was third, and Alex Lawson was fourth.
Jager and Earnhart are also on the U.S. Ski Team. Wonders objectively qualified for this year’s national team, but declined the nomination when he thought he was retired. He is less retired now.
Other athletes in the women’s final were Lauren Jortberg (SMS) in fifth and Hannah Rudd (BSF) in sixth. Other athletes in the men’s final were a pair of Canadians: Julian Smith (Georgian Bay Nordic) was third, and Pierre Grall-Johnson (Nakkertok Nordic) was fifth.
(Disclosure the first, I have trained with APU Masters for a decade now, although on a daily basis I have nothing to do with the APU Elite Team athletes discussed here. Disclosure the second, I had asked Anderson in advance of this race weekend if she could take podium photos for this publication, which she kindly did. We had this conversation before she won the race today. I paid her a small amount for the photos.)
Back to how Renae Anderson did on the race course: she skied very well! Anderson won the qual, in 3:26.03. Alayna Sonnesyn (SMS) was second here, less than a second back in 3:26.91. But third in the qual, Nina Seemann (Dartmouth), was another 6+ seconds back, and Keller-Miller and Jortberg were each another second-ish in arrears in fourth and fifth.
Heck, Anderson in first was 14 seconds ahead of Lawson and Freed in sixth and seventh. I don’t know if this was sound strategy on the part of the Craftsbury skiers to conserve a small amount of energy before a full day of racing in cold temps, or if Anderson was just that much stronger today (or: skis were that much better, structure call was that much faster, etc.; there’s a lot of variables out there), but the qual results do send a statement.
The heats brought, well, much of the same. Anderson slowed things down to nearly 3:40 in her quarterfinal, the first… and still won by seven seconds, over Katherine Mason (Carleton University). In the second quarterfinal, CGRP teammates Freed and Keller-Miller skied away together for a strong victory, nearly six seconds ahead of third. There were some substantial gaps out there today.
There was more competition in the first semifinal, which Anderson took by less than two seconds over Jortberg. Keller-Miller, in third, and Freed, in fourth, both advanced out of this heat as well; fifth in the first semifinal would have won the second semifinal outright.
Then in the final, it was more of the same: Anderson took the win in 3:41.60, with Keller-Miller second in 3:46.91. Freed was third in 3:48.17. These are — and I say this with all respect to the rest of the field — some not-small gaps for a sprint final. Anderson was not going to be caught today.
Anderson has long had the speed to do this in the qual, but has not always quite mirrored this performance in the heats. In her last two national championship sprints, for example, she was second in the classic qual in Soho two weeks ago, then “only” 11th in the final. In Craftsbury last March, she was 11th in the skate sprint qual, then 14th in the final. There are some examples in her FIS profile going the other way that would tend to lessen the contrast I’m setting up here, but I don’t think it is offensive to note that Anderson has seemed like a stronger qual skier than a heats skier over the past few seasons.
Until today.
“You’re right” wrote Anderson to Nordic Insights when gently asked about this qual/heats dynamic. “I think the biggest difference today was my confidence or mental approach through the heats. This course has a long hill at the end that suits my strengths in kind of a running-style of climbing, so I knew if I could be in a good position before the hill that I could finish well. I had a lot of mental energy today that helped push me through the whole day.”
“I also have some good racing memories on this course,” Anderson added, “which helped! It was a fun day.” (In her most recent race at this venue, Anderson won a silver medal, with Finn Sweet, in the classic team sprint in the FIS University Games in January 2023, ahead of a who’s who of largely foreign nationals attending RMISA schools.)
I don’t mean to take anything away from Luke Jager’s performance today — it is hard, actually, to win a ski race, at any level, let alone against a deep national field from both the U.S. and Canada — but also the APU and USST skier has more of a history here. He has finished 18th in a World Cup classic sprint, in Ruka. He had a dominating win in the last classic sprint he contested, the Soho SuperTour that wrapped up U.S. Nationals. The “top 3 finish in sprint or qual” section of his FIS profile has a healthy 19 entries on it, which will become 20 once today’s sprint final gets logged. So he’s been here before.
But Jager still had to execute today, and he did that in impressive fashion. He won the qual, narrowly, by 0.02 seconds over Smith and 0.10 seconds over Earnhart. He won his quarterfinal, the first, just ahead of Wonders in second, but several seconds up on the rest of the heat. He won the first semifinal in a similar fashion, slightly ahead of his APU teammate Wonders in second. (If you were, ahem, wondering about a certain athlete in this race, Wonders officially retired from pro skiing this spring. He then unretired this fall. “I just felt like I left a little too much on the table,” Wonders told me following his podium finish in an Anchorage SuperTour last month. “I decided to get back into it and see what I can do.”)
Things were closer in the final, which was by far the fastest heat of the day for any athlete. Jager took the win here in 2:59.86. Earnhart was second (+0.93), and Smith third (+2.89).
In this morning’s classic sprint, Jager was the only athlete posting times under three minutes. The last time he did this, in Soldier Hollow two weeks ago tomorrow, Jager was the only athlete posting times under four minutes. This is a very big difference in the world of sprint racing.
“I definitely had to recalibrate to the shorter sprint and sea level feelings,” Jager wrote to Nordic Insights. “I was sort of taken aback in the qualifier by how fast things were going by, so nice to get that out of the system before hopefully starting some more World Cups later this season!”
Turning to the race itself, Jager wrote, “Things felt very cold but good. Such a crazy legit venue and course and they did a fantastic job making things go off with out a hitch despite painfully cold temperatures. Our team made some awesome skis that were kicking and gliding great all day!”
The ever-gracious Jager added, “Thanks to all the nice volunteers/staff who braved the cold to put on the race! I’ll need to put in many hours of frigid stadium volunteering later in life to give back enough for how much I’ve benefited from people doing that.”
Racing continues at Mt Van Hoevenberg tomorrow with a 10km classic mass start for both men and women.
Results: women’s qual | men’s qual | women’s heats | men’s heats
— Gavin Kentch
