By Gavin Kentch
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The adage that sprints are decided on the margins was proved twice over in a span of ten minutes in the SuperTour skate sprints that marked the final day of racing here in Anchorage.
In the women’s race, Mariel Merlii Pulles of Team Birkie came from behind with an all-time surge down the finish stretch, catching up to Erica Lavén at the end of a race that University of Utah skier appeared to have in the bag. Pulles’s margin of victory was ultimately 0.03 seconds.
In the men’s race, Michael Earnhart, of APU and the U.S. Ski Team, enjoyed a far more comfortable gap of 0.53 seconds over Walker Hall of Utah… but that race hinged on a moment coming out of the course’s final U-turn where Hall didn’t quuuuite close the door on Earnhart to prevent the versatile APU skier from coming past him on the inside.
Earnhart found, or made, a gap; Hall couldn’t quite respond; and that was the race right there. Michael Earnhart, first at the line, 2:51.95 (per unofficial results); Walker Hall, second, 2:52.48. Carl Rune of Utah was 0.17 seconds back of Hall in third.
The rest of the six-deep SuperTour podium was filled out by Reid Goble of BSF in fourth, Luke Jager of APU/USST in fifth, and John Steel Hagenbuch of Dartmouth/USST in sixth.
In the women’s race, Pulles’s winning time was 3:11.63, with Lavén just back in 3:11.66. Kate Oldham of Montana State was third (+2.04), capping off a breakout week for the 22-year-old in which she won a national championship in the 10km skate, was the third American in the 20km classic, and was the fourth American in the classic sprint.
Behind them, Luci Anderson of Team Birkie was fourth, Sammy Smith of Sun Valley and the U.S. Ski Team fifth, and Maja Kjærås Moland of Denver sixth. We are talking more about the foreign nationals today because this was a SuperTour race, not a national championship, and so there is no such thing as the domestic podium. My apologies for slighting the Erica Lavéns and Andreas Kirkengs of the world through the first three days of nationals coverage.
We also have to talk about the weather (above: my driveway today). The high temp for last Thursday’s 10km skate, per the weather station in the Kincaid stadium, was 12° F, with a low of 3° F, and light winds from the northeast. Saturday apparently averaged a balmy 15° F for the classic sprint, I am surprised to learn, but north winds through the exposed stadium averaged 11mph; I would say that Thursday was actually worse. By Sunday’s classic distance races the average temp was up to 20° F, but the north wind of 10mph remained.
*record scratch*
Then a front moved in. The high at Kincaid yesterday was 40° F; the high at the official airport weather station, a few miles east on Sand Lake Road, was a record-breaking 42° F, and it was 47° F at Merrill Field. It rained three-tenths of an inch. Everything was disgusting and side roads became skating rinks. Today brought another 0.15 inches of rain, temps in the low 40s, winds from the south guesting to 38mph, and closed schools.
Considering all of that history, the course appeared to actually ski pretty well. (Disclosure, I reported today from my kitchen table, not from the venue.) Friends on site told me that the snow was saturated, maybe soft in spots, but quite edgeable. There were certainly some discolored spots emerging on the broadcast, but the base was deep. Lord knows what skiing will look like here later this week, but it held up through Tuesday just fine.
The course was reconfigured slightly to reflect conditions on the ground. You may notice a large puddle in the above screenshot from the broadcast; the course as officially set up runs directly through that puddle. For the morning’s qual, the start area was shifted to the north and east to allow for safe, and dry-ish, racing. I think that it was then moved again for the afternoon heats while the puddle expanded and generally seeped northward, but that is my surmise from the broadcast rather than sourced reporting.
In practice, the course appears to have held up quite well throughout the day. Thank you NSAA snowmaking for the massive base on the sprint course, and thank you weather gods for at least holding off on the warmth until after the distance races that slip the surly bonds of the snowmaking loop.
The women had the first final on the warming snow of the sprint loop. Anderson led the pack up the small climb out of the stadium, followed closely by Lavén and Pulles. By the top of the B-climb up Gong Hill, roughly 600 meters later, it was still Anderson in first, now with Pulles immediately behind and Lavén tracking her.
I’m not saying that the descent from the course’s high point and, especially, the broad left–right curve back to the stadium are the crux of this course, but we saw a lot of movement happen between here and the finish line all week, and today was no exception.
Anderson led the field into the waterfall downhill, with Lavén almost immediately taking the right-hand corner at the bottom tight on the inside to draw even with and then past Pulles. When the pack emerged from the broad curve and into the stadium, it was Lavén in front and digging for home. Pulles was slightly back to her left, with Oldham tracking Lavén from behind and a suddenly fading Anderson already in fourth.
This stretch can feel almost as long as the rest of the race, I wrote earlier this week. Lavén surely felt every meter of that, as she powered her way up a roughly three-percent grade toward a finish line that could not get there soon enough. Ultimately, however, Pulles got there first by roughly a boot length, throwing her Fischer-clad toes over the line ahead of Lavén’s Madshus digits.
The curve 200 meters from the finish marked the deciding point of the men’s final, too. Briefly put, Walker Hall, Michael Earnhart, and Reid Goble led the field out of the stadium. By the top of Gong Hill it was first Hall and then Earnhart, each jumpskating for all they were worth to claim the largest margin possible going into the final downhill of the course. They were tailed by Goble, with Luke Jager, John Steel Hagenbuch, and Carl Rune close behind.
When they returned to view in the stadium once more, Earnhart was cleanly in the lead, smooth off the front. Hall was now holding onto second, with first Goble and then Jager challenging to his left. Rune and Steel Hagenbuch were within a second or so, but also out of contention for the win.
Earnhart skied it in with enough time to hold up his hands across the line. Hall was second, after leading most of the race to that point, with Rune closing well for third. Goble fourth, Jager fifth, and Steel Hagenbuch sixth; the last two names on that list had a lot of racing in their legs already coming into today.
So what happened in that curve? Here’s your race right here, courtesy of the aerial drone shots on the really quite well done livestream:
Hall (red suit) leads Earnhart (blue suit) into the final downhill, the setting sun of, uh, 2:03 p.m. casting long shadows to the northeast. Both men have good skis, and Hall is probably well enough clear that Earnhart is not getting a strong draft effect from him right here.
Both men ski the final curve well, but Hall goes ever so slightly farther to the right, and perhaps stumbles for a fraction of a second. He is still probably one-half meter farther to the right than he wants to be as the course wends back to the left.
(Walker, if you’re reading this, I have never qualified for a sprint heat in my life and the last time I had sprint points they started with a 500 lol, so I am painfully aware that this is armchair quarterbacking at its finest, sorry. I guess I feel qualified to speak to this moment in the race just because I have lost so. damn. many. mass start finishes here or within 20 meters of here in my life, so getting passed in this spot is sort of my bailiwick.)
Earnhart, coming up from behind, decides that there is space on Hall’s left:
It is close, but there are no V-boards on this side of the trail, and Earnhart is not quite falling off the course into the adjoining spruce tree, so there you have it.
There is perhaps some contact here. But rubbing is racing, and whatever things may look like in this still, the two men were smiling and chatting with each other at the finish. That’s sprint racing. Earnhart gets the lead coming through this curve into the stadium, and keeps it all the way to the line.
Earnhart did not specifically have a tactic for the final, he told NSAA director Kikkan Randall, a woman with some degree of insight into how to ski a sprint course, on the livestream.
“The course kind of changes a little bit every day, like sometimes the draft matters, sometimes it doesn’t, so I wasn’t sure,” Earnhart said. “But we were watching the quarters and the draft was making a big difference, so the plan was just to try to be in the top three at the top of the hill and make something happen on the downhill.”
Earnhart was not targeting this, or any, race this week specifically, he told Randall.
“I don’t really know what my specialty is, so I was just kind of hoping that any race went well,” he said. “I ended up having four good ones, so I’m really happy with this week.”
Finally, Earnhart spoke candidly about racing against athletes whom he knows well, particularly APU teammate Luke Jager:
“It’s kind of scary, I guess,” Earnhart said. “They beat me all the time in practice. I mean, I beat them too sometimes, but you get nervous on the line and all you think about is like when they beat you, because I trained with a lot of them all summer. But it worked out all right.”
Mia Stiassny, Justin Lucas win junior finals; Sammy Smith and Murphy Kimball are top juniors overall
Sprint racing at Kincaid today stretched until roughly 3:45 p.m. In the juniors-only finals, comprising the top junior athletes who did not make the open heats, Mia Stiassny (APU) took the win for U20 women in 3:29.87, well ahead of Sammy Legate (APU, +2.02) and Niki Johnson (Tahoe Endurance, +4.42).
Also shoutout to Nordic Insights reporter Merridy Littell (APU), who returned from illness that sidelined her over the first part of the week to qualify in 18th among U20 women, ultimately finishing fifth in her quarterfinal.
Things were also spread out for the U20 men, where Justin Lucas of APU was first in 2:50.60, followed by Quinten Koch of Plain Valley Nordic (+1.94) and Noa Kam-Magruder of Alaska Winter Stars (+2.15).
Based on my reading of the results, I believe that the overall U20 women’s podium today is Sammy Smith (fifth in open heats), then Stiassny and Legate (top two in junior heats). For the men, it should be Murphy Kimball (11th in open heats), Woody West (19th in open heats), and Justin Lucas (first in junior heats). But if USSS tells you something different on this one once results are formally processed, I readily defer to them here.
Results: qual | heats | final results
race writeup from Anchorage Daily News, with tons of great photos
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