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By Peter Minde
MT VAN HOEVENBERG, Lake Placid — Sammy Smith was on her game today. Not only did she throw down the fastest qualifying time, she won her quarter and semifinal heats on her way to winning the final. Smith’s winning time was 3:12.16. In a final that initially didn’t seem that it would be close, Alayna Sonnesyn of Team Birkie came second, only .07 second off Smith’s pace. Dartmouth’s Ava Thurston was third in 3:15.61.
Monday, a rest day, saw cold temperatures that slowly rose throughout the day as coaches tested wax and skiers trained. What were flurries in the morning turned into actual snow in the afternoon. Where early Monday saw -7° F (-21.2 C) this race day morning was 23° F (-5 C), a 30-degree change. For context: This writer recalls, when he was younger and more foolish, an Adirondack winter camping trip, in January 1983. At the beginning of the week, it was -26° F. At the end of the week, the high temperature was 47° above. A 73-degree swing. We shall say nothing of trying to cook over a camp stove in those temperatures.
Skies were sunny for the men’s qualification, turning cloudy for the women’s qual. One could feel the humidity increase. The big guns went out first. For Sunday’s 10km, by contrast, they had started about one-third of the way through the start list, letting the course get skied in before the A-Seeds went out on course. No surprises in the qualification round today; all the usual suspects made the heats. The women’s qualification round wasn’t as tight as the men’s. Your correspondent suspected slower snow, but was unable to confirm.
The quarterfinals for women not named Sammy Smith saw close racing. Smith’s quarter was never in doubt. In her quarter, Thurston was fourth upon arriving at the big climb, and put the hammer down. She won going away, with Mansfield Pro’s Annie McColgan taking second. In the fourth quarterfinal round, Sonnesyn and Katherine Weaver (Alberta World Cup Academy) traded paint according to the announcer (per NASCAR: rubbin’ is racin’) in the downhill leading to the finish.
When the final rolled around, the last women standing were Smith (Sun Valley), Sonnesyn, Thurston, Lauren Jortberg (Mansfield Pro, despite what the results say), Nina Schamberger (University of Colorado), and Weaver.
At the start of the final, Smith went off the front, building a five-ski-length lead over Thurston and Schamberger. But the reckoning happened on the sprint climb. Coming back from fourth place, Sonnesyn hammered into second. Although Smith had a serious lead as she dropped into the stadium, Sonnesyn closed fast. What once looked to be an easy win became a nailbiter in the last 50 meters.
“I tried to be a little bit more conservative on the first heat,” Smith said after the final. “Just kind of figuring out what line I wanted to take later on. I think especially in a course like this with a few tight corners and potentially a draft in play, it’s important to figure out where you can make up time and where there’s good places to move on the course. So I tried to use the earlier rounds to find those lines and just hopefully kind of develop a good plan for the final.”
The 1500-meter sprint loop is a subset of the 5km loop used Sunday. Are the lines really that different?
“Definitely, particularly between classic and skate,” Smith said. “I mean, classic, you’ve got tracks, so there’s usually not a ton of extra thinking you have to do. But with skate, things can get pretty chaotic out there, especially when you have 180-degree turns. And in races as competitive as these, you know, everyone’s trying to get that inside lane. So it’s just about skiing smart, and being careful. You don’t want to break a pole or anything like that. So then just figuring out how to take your space responsibly and work to get yourself in a good position.”
You can view the final here. The video should be cued up to start in the correct place; you want to go to 5:11 into it (5 hours, 11 minutes) if it is not.
To an observer, the course seemed to slow down in the heats as it warmed up. Sonnesyn disagreed.
“I think my semifinal was faster than my qualifier,” Sonnesyn said. (Her semifinal time was 3:07.3; her qual was 3:08.75. Your correspondent stands corrected.) “There were places on the course where it started to get almost like a little glazy, and that made it really fast then. So I think it depends on the tactics that each heat played, because some of the heats were fast and some of them weren’t as fast.”
On her strategy in the heats, Sonnesyn said, “I try to conserve as much energy as I can in the quarter and semifinals so that I can go into the final with as much energy as possible. That being said, you got to get to the final! So it’s definitely a constant check-in with myself during each of those heats: Am I in a good position. I feel like I can rely on my finishing push pretty well, but I always try to still conserve as much as I can until it’s really time to go. And I feel like I did that well today. Unfortunately, in the final I think I did it a little bit too much, and I didn’t have a great start. Lost contact with Sammy, and really had to fight to catch her in the last little bit, and needed another five to ten meters to really close it. But still really happy with the day.”
Sonnesyn is here fighting for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team; she is currently holding onto a spot by her fingernails (49th in the World Cup sprint standings when a top-50 ranking gets you to Milano–Cortina), but the skate sprint in Oberhof on January 17 has the potential to tilt the math against her. So if one is peaking for early January just to make the Olympic team, how does one peak again for the big show, thirty days away?
“There’s still a lot up in the air with the Olympic qualification,” Sonnesyn replied. “And then there’s a little bit of time, between the qualification ending period versus when the races start, and so you can fit in a little mini training block, but it’s not much time. So it really is a battle of like, how do you carry some fitness, which is really hard. But also I feel like I’ve had to learn that a lot the last few years of racing pretty constantly on the World Cup, and so we’re trying to carry fitness throughout the season as much as possible.”
A friend who’s coached at Champlain Valley Union High School (Hinesburg, Vermont) told me some years ago to keep an eye out for one Ava Thurston. Throughout the day, she showed good form.
“It went really well,” Thurston said. “I was super excited to get back into the sprinting. We don’t do as much of it on the EISA circuit. … I’ve never made a final at U.S. Nationals before. So that was exciting. I felt good out there today.”
“It was nice in the quarterfinal to see how the hill skied in a heat, and that a lot was happening on that hill,” she added. “And so each heat, I just tried to move up there, and that was my strategy.”
Was that it? No secret sauce?
“I mostly focused on the climb,” Thurston replied. “And I was lucky too. [My] skis were running super well today, all my coaches did a great job speeding those up. I think in the women’s heats, we were more spread out than the men. So if you came over the hill in a good position, and with a little of a gap, you could usually hold that.”
There is one more national championship race this week, Thursday’s 20km mass start skate race. Friday’s classic sprint is “only” a SuperTour event. Less prestige, more prize money. Or maybe less prize money, but going to more athletes, six-deep instead of just the top three.
Halfway through this race week, your correspondent will not offer prose regarding possible Olympic team selections. [Yeah, some prolix pedant has already got that angle covered for you. –Ed.]
This ain’t sports talk radio: “Yo, it’s Louie from Park City. First time, long time.” There’s too many skiers leaving everything out on the race course. To say nothing of their coaches, family, and everyone else who makes an event like this happen. The USSS Olympic qualification document is head-spinning to the point that your correspondent wants to resume studying Ancient Greek. [οἴμοι –Ed.]
Wednesday is a training day. Racing resumes with the 20km mass start skate on Thursday. Forecast is below freezing, with possibility of snow tonight (Tuesday). Above freezing Wednesday during the day with a mix of varying types of precipitation. Above freezing again on Thursday. Good for my heating bill, but maybe not so good for skiing. Stay tuned.
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