Anchorage’s Zanden McMullen. Photo courtesy U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team
A day after the U.S. National cross-country ski championship ended with a 20-kilometer race, skiers were back on the trails at New York’s Mt. Van Hoevenberg for a Super Tour sprint race.
The results echoed those from the championships, a series of three races from Sunday to Thursday in Lake Placid.
Zanden McMullen, the Anchorage skier who captured gold in Thursday’s 20K and put down the top qualifying time in Tuesday’s freestyle sprint, won Friday’s Super Tour classic sprint final by nearly four seconds.
In the women’s final, Anchorage’s Hailey Swirbul placed second to Sammy Smith, the Stanford soccer player who dominated both sprint races.
Smith, the gold medalist in the freestyle sprint, was the fastest in Friday’s qualifying round by more than six seconds — a huge gap in a 1.5-kilometer sprint race — and beat Swirbul by about 3.7 seconds in the final.
McMullen and Swirbul, the winner of the women’s 10K classic on Sunday, were the only Alaskans to make it to Friday’s finals.
But McMullen was part of a strong contingent of Alaska men who grabbed eight of the 30 spots available in the heats.
University of Vermont junior Owen Young of Anchorage. Photo by Tyler Davis.
Owen Young, a South High graduate who skis collegiately for Vermont, flashed his sprint skills for the second time of the week. He posted the sixth-fastest qualifying time and made it to the semifinals before winding up ninth overall.
In the freestyle sprint earlier in the week, Young had the second-best qualifying time and was one of three Alaska Pacific University men to advance to the six-man finals, where he finished sixth.
On Friday, Young and UAA’s Erling Bjornstad made it to the semifinals. Bjornstad placed third in the semifinal won by McMullen but wasn’t fast enough to grab one of two lucky-loser spots in the finals.
Michael Earnhart of APU was 14th, Murphy Kimball of UAA was 18th, Cole Flowers of UAF was 22nd, Luke Jager of APU was 27th and Hunter Wonders of APU was 29th.
Kimball, a West High grad who’s a sophomore at UAA, was one of only four U-20 skiers to make it to the heats.
In the women’s race, Swirbul and two APU teammates — Renae Anderson and Kendall Kramer — advanced to the heats. Anderson finished 14th and Kramer 27th.
At least some of the top skiers from the week are expected to earn spots on the U.S. Olympic team headed to Italy next month.
In the six national championship races — freestyle sprint, 10K classic and 20K freestyle — Alaskans won four gold medals, four silver medals and one bronze.
Hailey Swirbul
All of Alaska’s gold medalists won the their races outright — McMullen and McCabe in the 20K and Wonders and Swirbul in the 10K.
Luke Jager earned silver in the 10K by placing 1.4 seconds behind Wonders.
Other silver medals went to Kramer in the 20K and McCabe in the 10K. Kramer actually finished third and McCabe fourth in their respective races, but each got medal upgrades for being the second-fastest Americans in the races.
A large field of racers competed at Mt. Van Hoevenberg, including numerous college athletes from foreign countries, who aren’t eligible for national-championship medals.
The eligibility policy helped APU’s Ari Endestad and Michael Earnhart claim medals in the freestyle sprint. They placed fourth and fifth in the finals but the top two finishers weren’t Americans, propelling Endestad to the silver medal and Earnhart to the bronze.
