By Gavin Kentch
There are a lot of different races going on at U.S. Nationals this week. The single most visible races yesterday were the open sprint finals, which, understandably, led our coverage (women’s race here, men’s race here). But athletes are also racing for qualification points good toward some or all of — deep breath — World Juniors, World U23 Championships, the U18 trip, the Olympics, Period 3 World Cup starts, and nation’s group World Cup starts for racing back at this same venue two-plus months from now. The NCAA circuits are also treating some of these races as collegiate competitions.
I could show you a picture of the all-powerful spreadsheets here, but that is… not a great visual. (If you’re curious, though, this is the U18/World Juniors/U23s points list and this is the Olympics and World Cup starts points list.) Instead, please enjoy the photos that I do have.
All photos here are by Phillip Belena, and are used with his gracious permission. You can find Phillip on Instagram here, and can find his website here.
EISA women’s podium
1st — Ava Thurston, Dartmouth
2nd — Haley Brewster, Vermont
3rd — Sofia Scirica, Middlebury
EISA men’s podium (viz., Vermont)
1st — Owen Young, Vermont
2nd — Fin Bailey, Vermont
3rd — Tabor Greenberg, Vermont
Junior women’s podium
1st — Ruby Serrouya, Denver
2nd — Neve Gerard, Utah
3rd — Linnea Ousdigian, Loppet Nordic Racing
Junior men’s podium [last slide in above post]
1st — Murphy Kimball, Alaska Anchorage
2nd — Finn Redman, Alberta World Cup Academy
3rd — Thierry Olivier, Centre National d’Entraînement Pierre-Harvey
Also the top-three American juniors, fwiw, obviously not to be xenophobic but just if you’re counting points this is who you want to focus on (foreign nationals are excluded from internal USSS rankings spreadsheets for purposes of selecting American skiers to American teams):
women: Neve Gerard (Utah), Linnea Ousdigian (LNR), Maeve Ingelfinger (Dartmouth)
men: Murphy Kimball (UAA), James Underwood (Colby), Micah Bruner (Dartmouth)
CCSA women’s podium
1st — Julia Junkkala, Michigan Tech
2nd — Henriette Nilssen, Northern Michigan
3rd — Lauren McCollor, Northern Michigan
CCSA men’s podium
1st — Luke Fricker, Northern Michigan
2nd — Caden Albrecht, Northern Michigan
3rd — Ivar Dragerengen, Wisconsin–Green Bay
CCSA used the qual for its rankings. Massive shoutout to Michigan Tech professor Gowtham, universally known as G, for his help with the CCSA data.
Unofficial top RMISA finishers, by me
The skate sprint was not an official RMISA competition, so there was no standalone podium ceremony for it. That said, here are the unofficial–official top RMISA finishers yesterday, per my parsing of the results sheet:
women:
1st — Nina Schamberger, Colorado
2nd — Ruby Serrouya, Denver
3rd — Neve Gerard, Utah
men (aka Utah):
1st — Mons Melbye, Utah
2nd — Zach Jayne, Utah
3rd — Max Kluck, Utah
Racing continues tomorrow with a 20km mass start skate for age classes U23 and up. Juniors (U20 and below) will race a 10km mass start skate. Due to the size of the field, there will be two flights for each of the juniors races for logistical reasons. The second flight will start soon after the first.
So far as I can surmise, Peter Minde of Nordic Insights is the only print media [sic] on the ground for literally U.S. Nationals. NRK sends six reporters to Norwegian Nationals; I’m proud to be doing what we can with our resources (also, my deep and sincere thanks to everyone who has contributed to the GoFundMe recently).
Our team’s in-person coverage will continue here all week. Thanks for reading.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing and now we’re going to the Olympics. You can read more about our first three years here, and donate to the Olympics fund here. Thank you for consideration, and, especially, for reading.
