By Gavin Kentch
This is a reader-funded website. Virtually all of my income (for perspective: I took home less than $5,000 from Nordic Insights last year after paying staff) comes from reader contributions, which I sincerely appreciate. If you would like to support the site, including helping us get to the Olympics in February, you may do so here. Thank you.
The American team placed twelfth in the mixed relay for both World Junior Championships and World U23 Championships earlier Sunday, as racing concluded in Lillehammer.
The juniors had the first shot at the day’s pairing of back-to-back 4 x 5-kilometer mixed relays (for both: classic–classic–free–free, male–female–male–female), so we’re going to talk about them first. Jack Leveque took the scramble leg for the U.S. here, handing off to Annelies Hanna for the second classic leg. Hanna handed off to James Underwood for the first skate leg, leg three, before Britta Johnson brought things home.
The American juniors finished twelfth, after skiing in eleventh or twelfth throughout the race. At the front of the field, Norway took the win, by just 0.3 seconds over France, with Italy third.
Here are pictures of all the Americans in the junior relay, in leg order. As always, all shots this week came from the talented Steve Fuller, @flyingpoint on Instagram and online here. Any event that can avail themselves of Steve’s services should consider themselves fortunate. The man is a pro.
Jack Leveque:
Annelies Hanna:
James Underwood:
Handoff and Britta Johnson:
U23 athletes started a few hours later, at noon. At the front of the field, the top of the podium was reversed from the juniors in the morning, with France’s anchor crossing the line 1.7 seconds ahead of Norway. Finland was third.
The American U23 team finished twelfth as well. The first three skiers — Owen Young on the scramble leg, Emma Reeder on the second classic leg, and Anders Weiss on the first skate leg — were in sixteenth at each handoff. Anchor-leg skier Sammy Smith then had the day’s eighth-fastest time for the final leg to bring the team up to twelfth at the finish.
Travel-day demands and a tight schedule following the close of racing meant that photos were not immediately available from the U23 race. Sorry about that; nothing personal.
This concludes racing at this year’s World Junior and U23 Championships. Thanks again to Steve for the sterling photos all week, and congratulations to all athletes who raced.
This week was a pillar project of NNF, in case you are curious where your Drive for 25 donations go. Go team.
Programming note: Due to being on vacation with my family following the Olympics, we will not be covering this weekend’s World Cup races in Lahti on the site. Finding an hour a day to blurb the races out of Lillehammer has been enough of an ask; upping that to three hours to also do World Cup racing is a bridge too far. I don’t do this lightly; these are the first World Cup races that we haven’t covered in at least two full seasons, probably pushing three by now, and I am proud of my team and our work. But it would not be fair to my family to take that much time out of our vacation to play unpaid, or I guess barely paid, journalist, especially after I made my wife single-parent for nearly a month so I could go to the Olympics. We will have in-person reporting from Drammen on Thursday and will cover that here. And I fly back on Saturday, Holmenkollen day, and so will find in-flight wifi at some point in that 28-hour saga to edit and post others’ work from Oslo.
