By Gavin Kentch
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KINCAID PARK, Anchorage — It ain’t over till it’s over, as they say. But sometimes it ain’t really over until another 15 minutes after it first appeared to be over.
The men’s skate sprint final, the third race in the 2025/2026 SuperTour season, started here at, in round numbers, 1:55 p.m. It was 12 degrees above zero, with light winds of three to five mph. Humidity was 90 percent, because Kincaid (the stadium lies 500 meters from the Pacific Ocean). People who had not been at the venue last weekend said it was “cold.” People who had been here said that it was “warm,” also that it was “not a wind-blasted icy hellscape with a windchill of roughly 15 below evocative of Hoth and/or Alpensia Nordic Centre.”
Approximately two-and-a-half minutes later, Ari Endestad, of APU, and Zach Jayne, of Utah, came thundering down the finish stretch on the western edge of the cavernous Kincaid stadium. Endestad was on racer’s right, Jayne on the left. At the 800-meter mark of the race, Jayne had been soundly in the lead as the pack crested the high point of the sprint course. A hundred meters later, Endestad had used the Utah athlete’s slipstream, and some adroit positioning coming down the sweeping righthand curve off of Gong Hill, to move past him as they entered the final fourth of the sprint course . Now they were side by side once more.
Endestad V2ed. Jayne V2ed. Endestad surged forward. Jayne surged forward. Endestad possibly impeded Jayne slightly, but he would earnestly tell me later that he hoped he had not. Jayne would be deeply unconcerned, saying of the moment (in which Endestad probably did impede him a tad), “That’s just sprint racing. No foul play whatsoever.”
Endestad threw a lunge. Jayne threw a lunge. At precisely two minutes and forty seconds after the heat had begun, one of the men’s boot tips crossed the line. Precisely two minutes, forty seconds, and one one-hundredth of a second after the heat had begun, the other man’s boot tip crossed the line.
Endestad crashed into the finish zone in a cloud of snow. Jayne crashed into the finish zone in a cloud of snow. I thought that Jayne had it. Endestad thought he might have it.
Time passed. Both men got up off the ground and dusted themselves off, reassured that they had not broken a ski or a pole in the tumult. They had their bibs removed by volunteers and thanked them. They passed by the drinks cooler; at Kincaid I would typically say that it was Tang coming from the venerable yellow and red NSAA coolers, but I saw a raven poking at a red spot in the stadium snow today, so perhaps it was stronger stuff than that. They returned to the athlete clothing area and put on multiple very warm layers. Endestad accepted congratulations from his coach and from friends, and began a media interview (with me, but shoutout to Josh Reed with the Anchorage Daily News for also coming out today. We love our skiing here.)
A full 15 minutes after both men had crashed across the line, stadium announcer Adam Verrier’s voice rang out over the P.A. system, passing on the official results from the timing team: “First place today is Ari Endestad of APU.”
(And before I go any further: Second place was Jayne, of Utah, by a centimeter or two. Third went to Michael Earnhart, of APU, and fourth to Keelan Durham, of Craftsbury. Fifth place today was Hunter Wonders, also of APU. Sixth was Buster Richardson, also of APU. All of Jayne, Earnhart, Wonders, and Richardson have previously been on the national team. The level of American men’s domestic skiing is high right now.)
This announcement sparked joy among the APU contingent, which realistically speaking was about half the people still left in the stadium at this point. Endestad was swept up into the arms of his jubilant teammates, who hoisted him off the ground. “That’s my roommate!” yelled one man.
There was much rejoicing. Ari Endestad is an easy kid to root for. He is younger than my rock skis, slash my stepfather was racing against his father around the time I was born, so I get to call him that.
“Zach was going fast today,” said Endestad after the dust had settled. “In my semi, he went really fast to the top, and again in the final. I thought I had it in the bag, but he came up really close behind me, and it was a lunge for my life. I thought I broke my ski when I lunged, but had to do it.”
What do you do in that moment, I asked. You’re already going really fast; do you have another gear when you sense someone coming up alongside?
“I don’t know,” said Endestad. “I think I was kind of in my do-or-die mindset. Hopefully I didn’t impede him at all.”
“Honestly I’m just kind of in disbelief about the whole day,” continued the 24-year-old APU skier in between congratulatory hugs from friends.
“Because I went out here and felt strong, and I said, I have a mindset now that I shouldn’t be scared of these heats. I should just go out here, enjoy it, smile.
“And you kind of have to go into the mindset that you’re the best in the heat and earn your space. And honestly, that was hard today because everyone was starting really fast and taking their room. So I kind of had to weasel around. I had some good skis, was able to get the good drafts and take the lines in the — I’m going to call it ‘powder,’ but it’s like manmade-snow powder — and try to take the lines around that to be a bit faster on the downhill to use that to my advantage.
“I came away with a win today, and I’m really, really excited. And I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”
This was the second career-best result for Endestad in as many months, following his first career FIS-race victory in the Anchorage Winter Start 10km skate in November. At some point he may start believing it.
“I think this spring at SuperTour Finals, I didn’t even qualify in the skate sprint,” Endestad noted today. “I think I was like 40th. So to come back and qualify fourth and win today is just unreal.”
So what made the difference I asked, predictably but relevantly.
“I just think I have a really awesome team,” said the Fairbanks product who alternately skied for both APU and the University of Alaska Anchorage in undergrad before rejoining APU as a pro skier following his graduation from UAA. “It felt like a team time trial today in that final” (which also featured teammates Richardson, Earnhart, and Wonders. Jayne, of Utah, and Durham, of Craftsbury, were the only non-APU men in the final.)
“I have awesome teammates. And there’s a lot of guys [currently racing] in Europe as well who really helped push me this year under the great guidance of Erik Flora at APU. So I can’t thank them enough for everything they’ve done.”
It was fun to be in a final so dominantly APU blue, Endestad said. “It just felt like the pressure was off a bit. Like, I know these guys, I’m not scared of what they’re going to do. I mean, I am, but I’m not scared they’re gonna like hurt me. We’re just gonna go out and try to win.
“We practice this a lot: We go down the hills as a team and try to see who comes out first. It felt like we just were doing a warmup yesterday all together, having a good time and pushing ourselves.”
I should arguably segue to APU teammate Michael Earnhart at this point, but it was Zach Jayne who was second, so over to him.
“It was definitely up there” said Jayne, when I asked him whether this was his closest finish ever. “I’ve had some pretty close finishes throughout my career, but that was definitely the highest-stakes one.”
“He slingshotted me on the downhill,” recounted Jayne of the down-to-the-wire finish stretch. “I just really wanted to climb my way back. It was definitely a close finish, and we both fought it well.”
I asked Jayne if he liked the sprint course.
“Yes and no,” he said, not the first time this week I had heard a variation of that sentiment from an athlete. “The course is pretty simple, but it really rewards just strong and powerful skiing, which is — sometimes, that’s not my strong suit. But today I just really wanted that to be my goal: to just be a strong and technically well and relaxed skier, and I think I accomplished that today.”
Jayne explained that he was contrasting “strong and powerful skiing” with “just smashing it with tempo and just skiing frantically, which I definitely do.” (Been there, dude, particularly on this course.) “So it feels really good to just ski composed, I think is the right word, throughout the heats.”
Michael Earnhart, third today — 0.07 ahead of Keelan Durham of Craftsbury — spoke with me longer after the close of the race, and had a more composed take on the day. Here’s how the final played out from his perspective:
“It was a decent start,” Earnhart said. “I was kind of in second or third going up the first hill. The only issue was I was kind of to the right of first place. And going into the first lefthand turn, I wasn’t very aggressive and let myself get kind of pushed out wide, and I moved back spots on that downhill being pushed out.
“So I came into the main climb in fourth or fifth. Which was unfortunate, because I think the main climb is definitely where my my strengths are. That jump skate is really where I feel comfortable. And being back in fourth or fifth, I wasn’t able to dictate the race there. I just had to respond and go where there was room, so I ended up coming over the top of the hill in fourth, and first and second were gone at that point. So at that point, I was kind of racing for third, but I had a good battle with Keelan, and I think I was able to take third. So, happy enough with it, but that’s sprinting — you’re always wishing for more.”
Earnhart crossed the finish line seven-hundredths of a second ahead of Durham, as noted. On the one hand, this is a margin seven times greater than his teammate Endestad had enjoyed in the battle for first. On the other hand, a single blink of a human eye takes approximately 0.10 to 0.40 seconds, depending on what you’re measuring, so there was not exactly a lot of daylight between the two men out there.
I asked Earnhart the same thing I had asked Endestad, if he does anything different in that moment. Everyone has heart in the finish stretch; do you also want to change your technique or some such.
“I think for me, it helps to be around someone,” Earnhart said. “Because I think then I focus more on my technique, and I forget about how my legs are feeling. I think in qualifiers, it’s very easy for me to kind of notice how flooded my legs are, and start skiing worse. But when I’m next to someone, a ‘if they can do it, I can do it better’ kind of thing is what’s going through my head. So I think the mindset of being next to someone helps me.”
Speaking of being next to someone, there were a total of four men in APU blue standing on that podium today (plus Hailey Swirbul third for the women, whose race article is by this point in the night going up tomorrow). I try to keep the APU lovefest to a minimum here — I’ve worked with my APU Masters coach, Galen Johnston, for nearly as long as Jessie has worked with Cork, so I’m not exactly unbiased — but four athletes from the same club in a sprint final at this level is legitimately newsworthy.
So I grabbed a moment with APU doyen Erik Flora, and asked him, “What’s the secret?”
“The secret probably lies in how hard these guys are working,” Flora said. And also “in Eagle Glacier. This year was huge: To be able to be up there and train as a team, I think has a big effect. The ‘secret’ for the APU men, APU ladies is, I think, start with the people, but then second, the training in Eagle Glacier.”
As for today’s races, Flora said that he was “always proud of my athletes, but excited for them today.”
What are you excited about?
“I think they all came today and did their best and skied really well, and you can see all of our skiers are making breakthroughs. So it’s really fun. And today in the the finals we had Hailey coming back, making her way to the finals. That was great. And then we had four boys in the men’s final, and Ari’s first win. Then we had Buster, first time in the finals. So we had a lot of really good stuff; it’s good racing today.”
Junior podiums
There were no separate heats today for the juniors who raced, but multiple junior skiers placed top-30 in the qual and raced in the open heats. Based on final overall placing, the juniors podiums today were Vebjorn Flagstad (Alaska Winter Stars), Quinten Koch (Plain Valley Nordic), and Lucas Wilmot (Utah) for the men, then Ruby Serrouya (Denver), Miya Kam-Magruder (Alaska Winter Stars), and Neve Gerard (Utah) for the women.
Women’s article?
Is coming tomorrow, sorry. Nothing personal, just very long days on this end recently, plus today was a school day as well as a World Cup day. And did I mention that it was cold? Anyway, check back tomorrow for the women’s race writeup, probably late morning Alaska time.
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