By Gerry Furseth
CANMORE NORDIC CENTRE, Canmore, Alberta — Skiers gathered here today to ski a classic 20km mass start on a perfect klister day. Sunday morning in Canmore delivered -3C with light winds and a lot of excitement over Canada’s gold medal in the U23 World Championship mixed relay in Planica earlier that morning.
For Canada, Katherine Stewart-Jones led the way for the women in her first distance race after illness derailed her Tour de Ski. She started well before fading quickly around 7km in to finish 28th, 3:54 behind winner Frida Karlsson.
“I’ve barely done any intensity for a while so I think my body’s just not used to it,” Stewart-Jones explained. “I was feeling the cramps, I was getting some pretty bad cramps in the arms and legs so I knew I had to slow down and just kind of keep an even pace. I was able to do that so I’m just proud that I was able to finish and not blow up too much.”
She was also excited by the news from Planica.
“I was just over the moon,” she said. “I mean I’ve seen these people train so hard the last couple years and it’s been so cool to be part of it. They’ve been talking for a while about getting that U23 podium, so for them to come with the win is really really exciting and I couldn’t be prouder of them.”
This has been a season where illness has been prominent. Tiril Udnes Weng missed the entirety of Period 1 and 2 after winning the World Cup overall last year. Johannes Høsflot Klæbo missed weekends due to first Covid recovery and then flu, and then missed speed when he returned. A number of athletes who were looking forward to today’s race didn’t appear on the start list.
Athletes dropped like flies during the Tour de Ski, including Stewart-Jones, who only completed the first sprint stage.
“It’s been definitely a tough year with sickness,” she said. “Last year I was sick a couple times and was able to bounce back super quickly whereas this time it was just an illness that just kind of kept going and I was low energy and had a lot of lung issues so that’s the type of that sickness definitely takes a bit longer to get over.
“But just being patient is not always easy and trusting the process, but it feels pretty damn good to be racing at home and to actually be able to push hard today.
”I think it’s gonna be a little while until I feel fully myself I think I need some more racing in the body and a bit more intensity but now that I’m I feel that I’m over the hump of sickness so yeah I think that there’s still thankfully a whole period of World Cup after this one.“
Anna Stewart finished in 34th in her third career World Cup start.
“I actually had a really good race today. Like, one of the hardest races I’ve ever done. Six laps of that really hard course was crazy, and the really fast start was a lot,” Stewart said.
“This is only my third World Cup race. My first one was on Friday. But [today] was way better than Friday’s race.”
As expected, this was a learning weekend.
“What I was just telling my coach actually is that no matter how hard you’re hurting on the first lap to try to keep up with people and get a good position, I feel like there is chances to recover. And just because you’re so tired on the first lap doesn’t mean your race is done or you’re going to be that tired the whole time,” Stewart said.
Katya Semeniuk placed 38th in her second World Cup start, improving on Friday’s 46th. Élie-Anne Tremblay and Anna Parent did not finish, along with Nadine Fähndrich and two Americans.
For the Canadian men, Antoine Cyr and Sam Hendry skied with the lead pack for most of the race. Hendry got popped off at around 17km along with American Gus Schumacher.
Cyr held on longer to place 16th, 31.4 seconds behind.
”I was kind of dangling on the fifth lap and sixth lap of the wall, that’s what we call the big climb before the whale tail, that’s where I got popped,” Cyr said.
“Yeah, trying my hardest, but I was redlining for a long time at that point. And yeah, I just came apart. I felt good on the doublepole, but I was missing a little bit on the striding.”
Not coincidentally, Simen Krüger spoke of trying and failing to get a gap on that climb.
“Big hats off to the wax techs”, Cyr said. “They’re the ones waking up early and testing a bunch of skis. So yeah, chapeau to the wax crew today. We did an amazing job and yeah, in the end I wanted more. It’s less tactical than I thought, but overall I think it’s a good race. I would have liked to stay with the pack and fight for a top ten, but I think 16 on the day is what I could give and yeah, I’m happy with that.”
Hendry was still absorbing his 21st place an hour after.
”It was absolutely insane,” he said. “That was really not what I expected, but I felt really, really good today and was just able to hang with the lead pack right up until the last lap. I got popped going out on the climb and just kind of hung on from there and grinded it through to the finish.”
Schumacher handily outsprinted Hendry for 20th place, leaving Hendry to finish 59 seconds behind the winner, Pål Golberg.
”It was maybe the third or fourth lap that I started to notice that I was feeling really good and that the group was starting to thin out and kind of found myself right at the front, which was unexpected and a cool experience. But then Jens Burman kind of put in a push and went off the front and things started to get really hard from there on out.”
Cyr really enjoyed the home atmosphere.
”Doesn’t happen often on the World Cup that you get cheered that much and people know your name and they were yelling Tony, Tony on the side of the track,” he said. “So that’s really special. And signing autographs; we don’t do that often in Europe. They barely recognize us.
“I was skiing on the finish line here and hearing the crowd was a really special moment for sure.
“Seeing the U23’s get another world title like this, I think cross-country skiing future is super bright. And yeah, I think we got a little hole after 2019 when Alex [Harvey] retired. But man, yeah, look out for the next few years.”
Hendry’s personal highlight was his race today.
”I think just being up there with all the best skiers in the world today. It was pretty unreal. I didn’t expect to be there and looking around at who I was skiing with and the front group was really, really special. Then seeing all the fans and all the family and friends out there was something else.”
