Faster Skier Spring Fling Duathlon: a practice in hydroplaning

In celebration of Spring and everything that comes with it (rain, rain, and more rain?) Faster Skier held an end-of-the-season fun race at Prospect Mountain. The trail base was half ice/half wet slush, with a nice mix of dirt and pine needles on top. Lovely conditions for a duathlon! We did 3 laps of 3km, first on classic skis, then switched over to skate skis and poles for a freestyle loop, then switched back again to classic into the finish.
In the mens race Topher Sabot, Ian Nesbitt and Ollie Buruss dueled it out for Top 3 awards - Ian finished first in the ski leg, but lacked a costume and so lost in terms of points to Topher, who was dressed head to toe in velvet and wig. Williams skier Evan Dethier, just back and still recovering from his trip to Northern Mongolia where he was tracking and photographing the elusive Panthera uncia, took fourth.
In the women's race, former Colby skier Alex Jospe, dressed in Bumblee attire that was complete with shimmering wings, easily took the race, beating Aubrey Smith and Katie White, also attired in full costume, to the finish line.


Putting on some sweet aqua klister. . .

Topher Sabot, in full length red velveteen dress and ankle-length blonde wig, reads the rules on the start line

Skiers toe the line. . . .

Katie White and Aubrey Smith celebrate their finishes.

Happy Birthday, Dimitri!!!

Dimitri Luthi, freshman import from Switzerland, celebrates his birthday today!! :) Here he is pictured at the second NCAA race which took place on Saturday, a 20km mass start freestyle race. (pic by Liz Kantack)

A perfect day for course preview and watching Slalom

Cold temperatures overnight made for fantastic course conditions both at the nordic course and on the alpine hill. We had a great ski this morning around the 5km loop at Black Mountain and then grabbed some lunch and headed to the Sunday River slopes to catch the second run of the mens and womens slalom, where the slopes were hard-pack and rocket-fast.

Dimitri and Coach Fisher hang out in the sun at our wax cabin, trailside, after course preview.

Williams alpine skier and senior Eric Mann has a fantastic second run in the Slalom, improving his place to 14th overall.

Charles Christianson, Williams Alpine Alum, came back to help coach the Ephs at NCAA's: he videos and cheers Emily Porter, a senior on the team, as she flies through her second run.

Coach Smith and Dimitri, taking in the sights and sun at the alpine hill.

Dimitri earns 28th in 10km classic

It was a bluebird day, very windy, icy snow and sugary tracks. A good day for klister skis! The depth of the field was impressive, and although he would have like to get top-20, Dimitri felt good about the way he raced. It was also exciting to watch fellow Easterners, Jeurgen Uhl and Franz Bernstein, capture 1st and 5th!
The Eastern women had a great day as well, capturing many of the spots in the top of the field.

Update from Rumford: Rain and fog postpone alpine races, make for wet nordic course preview

10km later and 20 rain-water-pounds heavier, Dimitri Luthi gets ready to leave the course preview.

The fog that cancelled the alpine races.

It was raining hard this morning when we toured the race course, but thankfully we were eqipped with Multi skis and the tracks were surprisingly fast. We had a great tour of the trails, but are now hoping our boots dry out in time for the early start tomorrow morning!
The alpine racers were not so lucky today. Visibilty from fog was near zero and the snow was soft and slushy, causing both mens and womens GS races to be postponed until tomorrow. Their GS and slalom races will be back-to-back in the next two days as a result, but most of them are looking forward to some icier, hard tracks.
With temps dropping to 16 overnight the nordic races should be icy fast as well!

Dimitri is NCAA-bound, Evan heads to JO's, and 7 Skiers Named to the All-Academic Team

From the Williams Athletics Site: 

Ski Team Sends Four to NCAAs, Two Named All-East, Ten Named to NSCA All-Academic Team

Williams College will send four student-athletes to the NCAA National Collegiate Men’s and Women’s Skiing Championships hosted by Bates College, to be held March 11—14 at Sunday River and Black Mountain in Bethel and Rumford, Maine. Williams will be represented by alpine skiers Eric Mann ’09, Alex Dyroff ’10, and Emily Porter ’10 and nordic skier Dimitri Luthi ’12.  

Participants are selected based upon the combination of points from their best two races in each discipline (giant slalom and slalom for alpine; classic and freestyle for nordic) and will compete against athletes from the Central and West regions. Luthi will race in the 10K individual start classic race on Thursday and the 20K mass start freestyle race on Saturday. Mann, Dyroff, and Porter will race giant slalom on Wednesday and slalom on Friday. This is Luthi’s first trip to the NCAAs, while Dyroff and Porter return for the second time and Mann, already a two-time All-American (2006 and 2008, both in giant slalom) makes an impressive fourth trip to the Championships.

The coaching staff is excited for the upcoming week of racing. “We have a lot of experienced athletes returning to the NCAA Championships,” said alpine skiing head coach Ed Grees. “Emily and Alex raced last year in Bozeman and this is Eric’s fourth NCAA Championship, which is quite a feat in itself. I have tremendous confidence in their capabilities as skiers and racers so it will be an exciting few days of racing ahead!”

“I think Dimitri is ready to have his best race of the season in the 10K individual classic race,” said assistant nordic coach Aubrey Smith. “He knows how stiff the competition is and he’s the type of competitor who will rise to meet the challenge.”

Additionally, Dyroff and Mann were two of just five athletes named First Team All-East, by virtue of their two best slalom and giant slalom results during the 2009 season. They join David Donaldson of UVM, Sean McNamara of UNH, and Willie Ford of UNH on the First Team. Mann was named to the First Team in 2006. This is Dyroff’s first All-East honor.

Highlights of the skiing championships will be shown on CBS at 1 p.m. Eastern time, Saturday, May 2. CBS Sports Presents Championships of the NCAA will feature highlights of 17 different NCAA championships, each taking place during the winter season.

Ten student-athletes were named to the National Ski Coaches Association (NSCA) All-Academic Team. To be honored a skier must compete at the EISA Championship race, hosted by Colby College last weekend, and have at least a 3.5 GPA during the fall term.

Three alpine skiers and seven nordic skiers were honored. Alpine skiers receiving this award include captain Jim Whitledge ’09, Eirik Buraas ’09, and NCAA qualifier Alex Dyroff ’10. Nordic skiers honored include captain Sam Kapala ’09, Fiona Worcester ’09, Alice Nelson ’10, Alex Taylor ’10, Keith Kantack ’11, Evan Dethier ’11, and Kirsten Johnson ’11. Worcester and Kapala are being honored for the third straight year, while Dyroff, Nelson, Taylor, and Dethier receive this award for the second time.

Evan Dethier '11 is in Truckee, CA all week competing at the Junior Olympics.  Check out the JO 2009 Website to see how he's doing.  Sprinting on Monday, Freestyle on Wednesday, Classic on Friday, Relays on Saturday AND most importantly the JO Dance on Saturday night where Evan is guaranteed a podium spot on the dance floor. 

 

Video from Colby

Men's 20K Freestyle Race (~6 km in)

Men's 20K Freestyle Race (~10 km in) 

Eastern Championships in Sugarloaf, ME

Sam Kapala and Coach Fisher. A senior, Sam had a fantastic 21st place finish to end his college career for the Purple Cows.

Fiona Worcester, also a senior who competed in her last college carnival.

Junior Alice Nelson racing to a hard-earned 13th in the women's mass-start.

Sophomore Kirsten Johnson had a great weekend, earning 9th in the skate and 14th in the classic.

Just one week after the 15km classic at World Championships saw the top six men (our own Kris Freeman being the 4th) using Zero/Multi skis, our own classic races at Sugarloaf showed the top of the field in both mens and womens races competing on these skis.
The skiers who did not have a pair of these specialty skis (including most of our team) had to deal with waxing for very difficult conditions. The tracks ranged from glazed and wet at the bottom of the course (which was great for klister or klister-covered) to powder on the top (which made even hard-wax skis ice and the klister a nightmare) to wet-snow tracks on the downhills back to the stadium.
Needless to say, it was a very tough race! There was talk afterward about having to harringbone up 3km of hills, having to stop multiple times to scrape ice off of kick zones, and having to ski even on downhills because of the slow, wet, tracks. Still, I am proud to say that none of our Williams skiers dropped out of the race. They held their heads up and toughed it out. And afterward the men's team was even surprised by the fact that they came in 4th - definitely the first team who raced without Zero skis! Our three scores came from Dimitri Luthi in 16th, Erik Anderson in 18 and - 3 tenths behind Erik - Evan Dethier in 19th.
The women's results took a bigger hit because after unsuccessfully waxing the men's skis, we decided to use Harries (when you rough the kick zone with sand paper, in effect, making no-wax skis) for the women's race. Unfortunately, the harries did not work very well either. Kirsten Johnson, our only racer who was able to race on Zero skis, was the only woman on our team to place in the top pack, at 14th.
Waxing for Saturday was a cinch, but the challenge came in the race's mass-start format. After a sprint start across a wide-open lake, the race course then continued onto a 5km loop that was VERY narrow, forcing the skiers to race strategically. It was an exciting race, and the cold, hard-packed snow made for extremely fast skiing. Kirsten Johnson had the best place of the day, finishing in 9th. Alice was just behind her in 13th, and Sarah Tory took her first score for the team in 34th. In the men's race, Alex Taylor took the race out fast with the lead pack and ended in 12th, Sam Kapala finishing in 21st, and Dimitri Luthi in 23rd.

NCAA qualifiers: Dimitri Luthi
Going into the weekend both Alice and Dimitri had a shot at a spot for NCAA's. Dimitri qualified in the tenth spot of the men's division. Alice proved her toughness on Saturday by having one of her best skate races of the season, but her main competitor for the last women's slot also had an outstanding race and Alice was edged out by only 2 points. The NCAA's will be on March 12 and 14 in Rumford, ME.