St. Lawrence Carnival Report
Following a highly successful training camp in and around Jackson, NH, the team opened its carnival season last weekend in the Olympic venues at Lake Placid:
Alpine Report from Tim Mitchell
The Harvard Alpine team got the carnival season underway this past weekend at Whiteface Mountain, just outside Lake Placid, NY. Soft snow and extremely difficult course and snow conditions made things difficult for the Harvard skiers, who were starting further back in the field. As a whole, the men’s team skied very aggressively and were it not for a few unfortunate and untimely mistakes caused by rapidly deteriorating course conditions, would have surely seen at least three of our skiers knocking on the door of the top-15. Nonetheless, our men’s team battled hard and put in some solid finishes, with Chris Kinner and Kevin McNamara scoring 32nd and 34th place respectively in the GS, and Kevin McNamara 34th again in the slalom. On the women’s side, veteran Margie Thorp used her experience to overcome one of the last starting spots in the women’s GS to lead the charge for the Crimson in 37th, followed by Caroline McHugh in 38th. The women put things together a bit more in the slalom, with freshmen Catherine Sheils notching a 21st in her first collegiate SL, not far behind were Caroline McHugh in 24th and freshmen Tenley Mamlquist in 31st. The team was largely victimized by a lack of training in soft, rutty, bumpy snow conditions; but the last few days have provided just those kind of training conditions, so everyone is eagerly anticipating upcoming carnivals. You can check out all the racing live via the internet at www.live-timing.com!
Nordic Report from Chris City
We had a very solid opening weekend of racing on the nordic side. The headline was that Audrey Mangan and Esther Kennedy placed 12th and 13th respectively in the 5km classic, while Cara Sprague was not far behind in 27th. These placings gave us a 5th place finish in the women’s race (ahead of UVM and Williams!). Conditions were really tricky with alternating rain, sleet and snow creating variable conditions on the course. As you know, it’s very difficult to find a wax that will work through all those conditions. With the women, we found something that would work on the rainy parts of the course and not be too slow in those areas at higher elevation where the precipitation was falling as snow. When the guys started, the snow line shifted and in a few short minutes it had covered much more of the course. Because of their early start positions, Trevor Petach and Kevin Sprague were able to finish much of their races before their skis stopped working; Tony Ryerson wasn’t so lucky and his finish place reflects that.
On Saturday we had a mass-start skate race. Conditions were more stable than on Friday; however, warm temperatures and the multiple lap of the field in each race (men did 4×5km, women did 3×5km on the same course) led some uphills to turn to the consistency of mashed potatoes. For the same reason, many of the downhills developed large berms of snow on the turns, which can make steep downs rather tricky. Trevor got a great start and maintained a good pace throughout the 20km race. Kevin overcame a collision near the start and a broken pole later in the race. He moved from the mid-60s at one point to eventually catch Trevor and finish in the low 30s. For the second day in a row, Tony was saddled with some slow skis. The women were boxed out at the start and ended up behind a bottleneck when the race entered the narrower trails in the woods. They – along with much of the pack – came to almost a complete stop until the traffic jam cleared and spent the rest of the race trying to move up. Audrey did the best job of this, slowly moving from the low 40s and ending up 30th. The rest of the women were close behind her. Clare Miller in particular is showing huge gains from last year, while Alena Tofte and Anika Petach had very promising debut weekends.
