Hosted by the University of Waterloo, OUA Championships this year was set in the picturesque town of Haliburton. Not really near anything resembling a city, Haliburton dubious existence in most peoples’ minds was justified by their technical, hilly, luckily snow-encrusted race course centered around the equally-dubious of value Sir Sanford Fleming College of Glass-Blowing, Fiber Weaving and Statue Hewing. The College provided a great venue for the Championships, and despite the poor weather of the preceding week, the trails were groomed into perfect condition.
Hard pack, fast conditions and a nice day.
Saturday morning dawned bright and early, bright because of the cloudless sky, and early because the race start was set for 9 AM in order to get the Women’s Individual Start 5 km and the Men’s Individual Start 10 km underway before the afternoon relays. In preparation for the start, the Guelph men’s team played a rousing game of chess, followed by hide-and-seek. Ed. Note - If this blog was written by Guelph, we would now delve into a discussion of their race weekend, but because it’s the UW Nordic Blog, we’re going to stick to talking about Waterloo skiers. The conditions were hard and fast, and the rare one-loop 10 km course contained several large up hills before culminating in a long downhill with some fast corners, and a little art. The UW women showed up with their skating hats on, and led once again by 2008 All-Star Nellie Dow, dominated the hilly course. Dow, who has been struggling all season long to find her skate form, continued the trend, finished in 12th spot. Kelly Skinner, wife of outstanding head coach Justin Faulkner and owner of several important pieces of paper, placed 23rd, followed by Martha Sutton in 28th, freshly activated off the injured reserve in order to give the Warriors the best possible shot at crushing the University of Toronto’s Varsity Blues women’s team for the 15th consecutive year. A lock for Female Rookie of the Year, Jessica Stevenson finished in 32nd continuing her climb back into racing form after a 3-year layoff. With a successful morning under their mostly one-piece racing suits, the women hit the change rooms and bagels quickly before getting out on the race course for the men’s 10 km skate.
Jess Stevenson cruising her way through 5km in blasting sunshine.
With much the same real estate to work with as the women, just with more up hills, more down hills, more flats and more suffering, the Warrior men gathered their marbles and bet everything on 13 black. Ed. Note – For those of you confused at this point, it’s a ridiculous way of saying they got ready to start. After struggling through the rare one-lap 10 km, Cam Moore was again the fastest UW skier, finishing in 13th. Andrew Jeffrey and Kieran Jones had slightly off days, crossing the line in 19th and 25th respectively. Yudai Nakagawa finished in 29th with Nolan Beanlands close behind in 31st, one second out of the Top 30. Beanlands was ecstatic after his race, stating “Best skate race ever! I don’t know how to classic ski, so I’m screwed tomorrow, but I’m living in the moment! Can’t talk now though, I need to go check the results”. Derek Hartman, despite having an injury plagued season managed to shake off his nagging groin injury and cross the line in an OUA Personal Best of 42nd. When asked about how his injury felt during the race Hartman said “It was fine for the first 5km or so, but a couple of killer up hills really hurt me. In hindsight, I could have made up a couple of places if I hadn’t stopped and talked about dropping out with Colin[Rhodes, assistant coach], but it was a tough day regardless”. With mixed feelings about the morning race, relay teams were selected, granola bars were eaten, naps were taken and smack was talked. Due to the enormous size these blogs are becoming, take this opportunity to relax, eat something and breathe while you eagerly await the relay update.
Andrew relaxing like you should be, Nolan breathing like you should be, just a little too enthusiastically.
Name: Kieran Jones Program: Arts, History and Philosophy(part time) Year: 3 of 5? Years on the Ski Team: 3 Favourite Coach: Justin Faulkner of course, it is important to have a coach that can beat you in Tuesday night sprints. Favourite race: any race that is only one lap, the second and third lap can be tricky. Lapping makes dropping out too tempting. Three most important aspects of your training regime: sleeping, hydrating and watching world cups at 5 am.
Surrounded by trees, lakes, large sections of Canadian shield and a ozone-layer deteriorating number of smelting smoke stacks, Sudbury, Ontario and more specifically Laurentian University is well known for its ability to hold provincial level races and high level university skiers. Last year Laurentian University held OUA Championships, and hot on the heels of the success of the event, stepped up to host another university race. OUA Qualifier #2, scheduled for the always snowy always cold weekend of February 7 and 8. Unfortunately, Mother Nature failed to get the message, and instead scheduled the complete range of weather activities, from -10 on the pre-ski, to +5 and raining on the Saturday and then flurries overnight and back down to -15 overnight, creating a layer of ice covering everything for the race on Sunday morning. Regardless of natures cruel and ridiculous intentions, UW ski team went to Sudbury to race, not to see the Nickel or to go Science North, so that’s precisely what they did.
After an uneventful Friday evening, the team awoke Saturday morning to a warm, sloppy, Guelph-induced, unnecessarily early bus departure for the race site. Emerging from the bus onto the Laurentian ski trails, there was a distinct mist in the air, along with the typical ever-present penguin murdering smog. Although The Weather Network deemed it a ‘Low Smog’ day, even the most casual observer would have noticed otherwise.
The race course, despite being covered with a light mist, was still in great shape. Armed with klistered up skis, the OUA Men went first, skiing a 3-loop, individual start 15km. Most found out that despite Justin, Glen and Colin’s hard work that it was not a day for great grip and impressive striding. After a tough first lap which had many complaining of clumps of snow in the grip zone after the soft hills, the men decided to double pole and herringbone.Several sore backs and tired lat’s later, the 6-man UW men’s team crossed the line, though not all at the same time. Leading the way with yet another OUA Personal Best was Kieran Jones in 10th, closely followed by rookie-phenom Andrew Jeffrey who continued his unbelievable breakout season with a 13th. Cam Moore continued his tuning up, finishing in 14th and Yudai Nakagawa, only slightly tired due to his bouldering commitments crossed the line in 16th. Mike Neilly, fresh off the IR and itching to get the rust out of his legs at 23rd, and rookie Nolan Beanlands continued to improve his classic skiing, finishing in 24th. Unfortunately, the men’s team again missed Derek Hartman’s presence, as he remained in Waterloo on the IR. Even with Hartman’s absence the men’s field, while a little smaller than the first OUA race, was still deep, containing 43 competitors.
With the dudes out of the way, the 24 OUA women began their individual start 10km with about as much success in the grip department as the men. Ed. Note – This is in no way an indictment of the waxing technicians, it was just a herringbone/double poling type of day. The best of the Warriors herringbone/double-poling women was again Nellie Dow, showing great pre-OUA Championships form by turning in a 5th place. She was followed by Kelly “Mom” Skinner who finished a fantastic 13th place, who has been paralleling other great Canadian skiing women such as Sara Renner and Milaine Theriault by making a comeback post-pregnancy. While not recovering from a recent pregnancy, rookie Jess Steveson again posted a great result, ending in 16th. Stevenson was hampered by overzealous starting officials, who assessed her with a 30 second penalty for leaving the line before the official had said “go”. Ed. Note – On Sunday, a Laurentian skier was observed doing the same, but he was not held for the same 30 second penalty. Our displeasure in lack of consistency needs to be noted. When asked about the miscue, Stevenson said “I went between ‘one’ and ‘go’, which hardly merits a 30 second penalty. At the same time it really fired me up and made me turn in a really hot first lap. I’m suffering from mixed emotions, on one hand I want to slap the guy silly, but on the other, I want to give him a big hug.” The rest of the Waterloo women were DNS’s as Svenja Morgan remained in Waterloo due to illness, and Martha Sutton, while present and cheering, was still suffering from an unspecified lower body injury, and remains Day-to-Day.
With the messy, wet but more-or-less successful skiing experience over with, the team hit the wax benches, klister scrapers and solvent to clean up the skis and then headed back to the hotel for some snoozes, a trip to the Finnish bakery for some jelly pigs, and watching John Kucera win gold at Alpine World Championships. Following a team dinner led by wine-connoisseur Mike Neilly and a redundant-question filled team meeting, most retired to bed with the sounds of terrible wedding music pounding in their heads.
With the temperature diving below 0 overnight, the puddles and mist had tuned into ice. With about as much skill as the current Ottawa Senators, the team managed to cross skating-rink like parking lot to the bus in the morning. Arriving at the newly renamed Laurentian Ice Fields, keen observers on the Guelph team were overheard to have said “wow, it’s going to be fast today”. The MacDonald’s-for-lunch-and-dinner-on-every-bus-trip-we-take-together team observed correctly – Sunday’s conditions were lightning fast. The women’s 5km individual start began first, and it was clear from how quickly the 24 women skated the course that it was going be in an early afternoon finish to the OUA weekend. Nellie Dow had a tough day involving at least one bail and had to settle for 8th, while Kelly Skinner improved on Saturday’s skate result, finishing in 11th. Jess Stevenson continued her strong weekend of racing, finishing in 17th and avoiding the false start penalty. Martha Sutton again decided to sit out the race, and her status remains Day-to-Day.
In the men’s 10km, most of the Waterloo men were getting ready to throw down great skate races on the heels of Saturday’s tricky classic race. The skate specialists stepped up and used the fast conditions to lay down their best results of the OUA season. Leading the charge was Cam Moore, who was overjoyed at the return to Laurentian, as it was the site of his OUA All-Star performance last season. Moore finished 7th, and was followed closely by ROY standout Andrew Jeffrey in 9th. Classic and sprint specialist Kieran Jones slipped to 18th after a hot first lap, and Mike Neilly continued his road to recovery, crossing the line in 20th. Nolan Beanlands, despite his nonstop results calculations during the race, put in his best OUA result of the season, finishing in 26th, closely followed by bouldering expert Yudai Nakagawa in 28th.
Boarding the bus for home, most reported having a great 2 days of racing, despite the variety of weather. Next in the OUA season is OUA Championships, held in Haliburton, Ontario, home of the province-famous Sir Sanford Fleming College of Glass Blowing and Performing Arts, and hosted by none other than your University of Waterloo. The UW team is ramping up nicely, and most believe that UW will be ready when the time comes. As Nolan Beanlands put it “next Saturday UW will be ready – rested from Family Day, reading week, and getting ripped on the beach, we’ll be ready to grip it and rip it. Stay tuned, baby”.
For full results please see: http://www.laurentiannordic.com/
And the introduction of our athletes continues.
Illustrious, amazing, well educated and has nice teeth. There is only one man on the UW Ski team that fits all of those criteria...
Name: Yudai Z. Nakagawa
Program: Nanotechnology Engineering
Year: 2
Year on the ski team: 2
Favourite TV Show:A Double Shot of Love with the ikki Twins.
Favourite activity outside of skiing: Hanging out in the bouldering room “I like bouldering, I find it fun, but really, I just do it so I can hang out in the converted squash court. The revolving crowd of sweaty, smelly, often East-European immigrants who enjoy discussing the merits of Communism, as well as how outrageous the problem of cross-dimensional multi-axial bifocal tensity focused torsion they worked out this afternoon was. It’s a lot of fun.”
Bicep Size:Big. “Or if you want a better description, REALLY big”
Something you probably don’t know about me: I’m an acclaimed author. Ever heard of War and Peace? That’s me. I also followed it up with a few other bestsellers, one about the life cycle of bees, and another about my travel through time. They’re both big in Japan.
The Question of the Week is, who is going to be profiled next? Voice your opinions in the comments section, and make sure to A) grow some balls and leave your name, and B) keep your comments family rated, parents DO read this website, just ask Justin and Kelly.
