By Pasha Kahn, special to Nordic Insights
DULUTH, Minnesota — On Tuesday the much anticipated snowstorm edition of the Spring Series 40km freestyle race kicked off in unfavorable, “super blustery” conditions. Forecasts had predicted the annulment of snowfall by the morning, though it continued throughout the races. Yet for those savoring the prospect of a slog through fresh powder like Alaskan hardman Scott Patterson, who was competing in his farewell race, they would be disappointed. “I wanted it to be a race of attrition,” said Patterson, “but it didn’t quite end up there.”
Instead, the snow accumulation was largely muted by the sweeping effect of 26 mile per hour gusts belting down the alpine hill. With much of the race’s 1,140 meters (3,740 feet) of climbing done on exposed sections of the alpine area, this meant that a headwind, or close to it, faced the skiers on nearly all the climbs. “An interesting race,” said Patterson. “The wind defined it a bit.”
The variable conditions and slow snow were “challenging on the ski testing front of things,” said John Steel Hagenbuch of Dartmouth. “There were a fair number of discrepancies in ski speed, but the wind was kind of the great equalizer — as we were coming through the stadium and going up the main climb there was a ripping head wind, so it really slowed down the people leading the group.”
The 56-strong men’s field got underway with ten laps of the 3.6km course at 9 a.m. A front group of around eleven skiers established themselves, though not by much, after the first lap. Animating the race early on was the University of Utah’s Joe Davies, who did the lion’s share of the leading. “I was really impressed with Joe Davies leading a lot of it,” said Patterson.
Efforts by the distance specialists to break away were consistently foiled by the strong winds. “The longest working section was that really strong headwind,” said Patterson, “so unless everyone was spread out it was really hard to lead. Everyone just shut [the gaps] down every lap so we’d come back together and come back together.”
Even so, “Over time the race strung out a little bit,” said Jake Brown, adding, “I think everyone took some turns making some moves at certain points and eventually it strung out to a group of five of us.”
Around the midpoint of the race the field narrowed to five contenders: Joe Davies (Utah), Scott Patterson (APU), Antoine Cyr (CNEPH-CNST), Jake Brown (Craftsbury), and John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth). “We got it down to a pretty small group,” Patterson said.
“I wasn’t too worried about getting spit off the back,” said Steel Hagenbuch. “I was keeping an eye on what the leaders were doing. A number of different people were pushing the pace at different points in the course. Joe Davies was really strong, so he was taking a lot of the wind out there and putting in a good effort to try and get rid of, I think, Antoine Cyr and myself — the guys he was probably worried about in the sprint. The same with Scott Patterson and Jake Brown as well.”
With Davies unable to shake the sprinters, “the pace kind of slowed for a couple laps at the end as everyone prepared for a final push,” said Brown.
Halfway through the final lap, Brown attacked. “At the base of the big hill with three minutes to go, I tried to make a move and break up the guys a little bit,” said Brown, who managed to create some daylight between himself and all but Steel Hagenbuch. “I don’t know how successful that was — Johnny was the one guy that really stuck with me and unfortunately he passed me around the final turn into the [finishing] stretch.”
Steel Hagenbuch would demonstrate his sprinting prowess in the closing 200 meters to take the national title by 1.2 seconds over Brown. “I was confident in my ability to win the race at the end,” said Steel Hagenbuch, who claimed bronze in the skate sprint at World U23 Championships earlier this winter.
It was… noted by others that Steel Hagenbuch was conspicuously absent over the course of the race from taking a pull at the front, with Patterson affirming that “John didn’t lead much.” The NCAA Champion from Dartmouth seemed to acknowledge that he may have irked his competitors, saying, “I feel a little bit badly for doing the amount of lurking I was doing in the back of the group.”
Still, Steel Hagenbuch defended his tactics, saying, “Rubbin’ is racing, and I think all that matters is how you end up in the finish. So yeah, I was conserving a lot of energy and I knew that toward the end of the race when our group was down to five [that] I was one of the stronger sprinters in that group.”
Steel Hagenbuch explained that he “wasn’t too worried about leading or trying to break my competitors that way. I think there was ample opportunity for people to make their moves and put their cards on the table — and they did.”
In all, Steel Hagenbuch summarized the race as a “really great day and I’m grateful it worked out the way that it did.”
Craftsbury’s biathlete Jake Brown had an impressive showing in second that drew praise from his competitors, with Steel Hagenbuch saying, “It’s really cool to see a biathlete coming in to compete so well.”
In third was Canada’s Antoine Cyr, half a second ahead of Patterson. With Cyr not eligible for the national title, third in that category would go to Patterson. Rounding out the top six overall were Joe Davies in fifth and Craftsbury’s Braden Becker in sixth.
At noon the women’s race got underway. The weather did not abate.
“I think it was a little gentler conditions for the men than the women,” said Jake Brown. Indeed, the wind increased for the second race of the day, with gusts over thirty miles per hour.
“It was definitely pretty windy for the first half of the race and it was nice to ski with a group while we could,” said Sun Valley’s Mariah Bredal. “I think everybody tried to ski together for as long as they could.”
A large group remained together, skiing single file until roughly the halfway point when the field began to unglue.
“Around halfway I was feeling good so I pushed the pace a bit,” said Novie McCabe of APU, who explained that “Mariah [Bredal], Sydney [Palmer-Leger], and I were taking turns in the lead, and Mariah was the one who I think really established our gap on the rest of the field. She was really pushing for a lap and skiing super strong.”
Bredal’s push on the sixth lap would unstick Alayna Sonnesyn of SMS T2, and narrow the race down to three.
“Then [on the seventh lap] I felt good and went out on my own and tried to hang,” said McCabe, whose turn at the front split apart the front three. “It just kind of happened, and when I noticed it happened I just tried to make an effort to make it a little bigger.”
With the race shattered into solo efforts by pretty much everyone on the course, substantial wind-induced time gaps opened between competitors. McCabe said that she was “trying to have a comfortable gap and then I was getting some splits that the gap was pretty big toward the end. So I just tried to focus on skiing well and keeping things together and not cramping too much.”
She added, “I think if it had been one lap longer I wouldn’t have made it. But it was fun enough.”
McCabe would win with a time of 1:55:12.6, just over two minutes ahead of Palmer-Leger in second. Mariah Bredal would take third in 1:58:11, nearly another minute back of Palmer-Leger.
“It was the last race of the season,” said Bredal. “So you give everything you have left until the end of the line.”
Also finishing in the top six were Alayna Sonnesyn (SMS T2) in fourth, Ava Thurston (Dartmouth) fifth, and Margie Freed (Craftsbury) in sixth. Sonnesyn was the only other athlete in the field to complete the 36-kilometer race in under two hours; conditions were not fast.
For McCabe the 40km was her third victory of Spring Series; she also placed second in the team sprint with APU teammate Renae Anderson. McCabe summed up her experience: “Fun to be here, fun to be with APU, a fun week.”
Juniors contested a 20km skate on Tuesday alongside the senior athletes’ 40km national championship. Of the six women who finished this race, Evelyn Walton of Dartmouth was the fastest, crossing the line in 1:01:09.4. Marit Flora of APU (+1:15) and Lily Pannkuk of APU (+4:33) were second and third.
The junior men’s race had a dozen athletes. Buster Richardson of APU took the win here, with a time of 51:51.9. Joseph Graziadei of Green Mountain Valley School in second (+:14) and Max Kluck of Utah in third (+1:48) rounded out the podium.
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