By Gavin Kentch
Sammy Smith had the fastest time of the 189 women who contested the classic sprint qual in this morning’s SuperTour sprint, by the obscene margin of nearly seven seconds.
The Sun Valley skier’s time for the 1.5km course was 3:14.95. Second in the qualification round was Katie Weaver, of Alberta World Cup Academy, 6.63 seconds back. Third fastest here was Hailey Swirbul of APU, 7.55 back. Fourth overall, and third American, was Ava Thurston of Dartmouth, 9.78 back.
Mia Gorman, a U16 (!) skier with Mansfield Nordic, was the final athlete to make it into the open heats, logging a qual time of 3:41.78.
On the men’s side, John Schwinghamer of Craftsbury had the fastest time, 2:52.91. He was followed by Pierre Grall-Johnson, of Centre National d’Entraînement Pierre-Harvey, a more human 0.46 seconds back. Will Koch of Sun Valley was third overall (+0.62), with Benon Brattebo of UVM fourth overall, third American (+2.15). N.b., this is me doing manual calculations off of unofficial results, so final margins here may change by a hundredth of a second or so in some cases by the time official results are posted here.
The gap from Schwinghamer in first to Adam Witkowski (Team Birkie) in thirtieth was 6.61 seconds. The gap from Sammy Smith in first to Katie Weaver in second on the women’s side — you can probably see where this is going — was 6.63 seconds.
After winning both sprint quals this week, Smith has an insurmountable lead in the women’s domestic sprint standings.
It looks like USSS hasn’t had a chance to update the Olympics points lists yet for the men (no snark; everyone over there is working very long hours; earlier this week I saw this spreadsheet being updated at 8 p.m. my time, midnight venue time), so I’m not going to hazard a guess as to who leads those standings at present.
Actually, I will: It’s probably Schwinghamer, who has racked up a healthy 75 points after winning this event both today and at the opening weekend of SuperTour racing in Anchorage last month. Unfortunately, through no fault of his own, Schwinghamer is extremely unlikely to gain an Olympic berth for his efforts; by my math, four American men have already claimed sprint spots in Milano–Cortina by virtue of their performances on the World Cup. Applying the Annie Hart Memorial Four-Sprinters-per-Gender Cap, this leaves no space for Schwinghamer on the American squad.
Heats are ongoing at Mount van Hoevenberg as I write this. Hot take, Sammy Smith should probably be favored.
This article has been updated to remove a reference to Smith presumptively qualifying for the Olympics. She is the top-ranked female domestic sprinter, but uncertainty remains as to whether there will be enough space on the Olympic roster to take anyone based off of domestic results.
Unofficial qual results: women | men
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