Masters Moments: Jans Cup heats up in Park City

Intermountain Masters: Jans Cup races at Park City
    Intermountain division racers gathered at Park City on Feb. 24-25 to cross swords again in the Jans Cup. With only two weekends of racing remaining to determine the Jans Cup title, competitors were ready to make their move for the cup. In a break from Intermountain tradition, the slalom was held on Saturday, instead of Sunday, in memory of our friend and fellow racer, Brett Pendleton, who passed away on Jan. 24. He loved to race slalom but frequently missed them due to church commitments on Sundays.
Intermountain Masters: Jans Cup races at Park City
    Intermountain division racers gathered at Park City on Feb. 24-25 to cross swords again in the Jans Cup. With only two weekends of racing remaining to determine the Jans Cup title, competitors were ready to make their move for the cup. In a break from Intermountain tradition, the slalom was held on Saturday, instead of Sunday, in memory of our friend and fellow racer, Brett Pendleton, who passed away on Jan. 24. He loved to race slalom but frequently missed them due to church commitments on Sundays.
    After a snowy Friday, blue skies, sunny weather and firm snow greeted the racers on Saturday. In the men’s race, the challenging slalom courses set by Bill and Bob Skinner were tamed by Dennis Wilhelmsen, who captured first place overall. Close behind in second was current Jans Cup leader Ryan Leach, followed by Andy Baillargeon, fresh off the World Cup tuning circuit, in third. USSA Masters National Coordinator Bill Skinner continued his comeback from injury and narrowly missed the podium in fourth.
    Notable class winners included John Droege in Class 12, Carl Fullman in Class 10 and Steve Slivinsky, who ran away with the Class 9 victory. Class 7 and 8 competition was tight with Keith McCauley taking first in Class 8 and Thomas “The Target” Kronthaler capturing Class 7, just .03 ahead of Tom Wood. Don Sears, making a rare appearance in slalom, had an amazing series of linked recoveries that propelled him to a Class 6 triumph. An awestruck Gary Dranow offered the following analysis of Sears’ impressive display of balance: “If I tried to make just one of those recoveries, there would be little pieces of me scattered all over hill.”
    Lynn Vaughn won the Class 5 shootout with Brian Frost. Kent “Juice” Johnson was victorious in Class 4, and newcomer David Cox led the Class 1 men. On the women’s side, Dana Alexandrescu powered her way to winning the slalom with Chris Katzenberger and Judy Gooch rounding out the podium. Gooch edged Amy Lanzel for that final podium spot. Nancy Auseklis and Glenn McConky bested the competition in Class 9 and 8 respectively, and Rosie Moschel won Class 7. Pam Sheeler held off Pam Skinner to win Class 6, Dasha Kadulova took first in Class 3 and Emily Davies was the Class 1 winner.
    Special mention to the crowd of new young women racers — Emily Davies, Heather Neumann, Amanda Nuttal and German national Kerstin Korten.
    The GS held on CB’s run on Sunday was regarded by all to be the most challenging GS of the year. Overcast skies and intermittent snow made for flat light and difficult visibility. As usual, the snow (OK, it’s actually ice) was rock-hard on the course. The difficult conditions took their share of the field, with many of the prerace favorites meeting an untimely end to their runs. Coming back from retirement, Class 2 racer Baillargeon won the race with “Coach” Bob Skinner in a tight second and Thunder Jalili capturing third. The women’s race was once again won by Class 2 ace Alexandrescu who held off the charging Katzenberger and Gooch.
    The women’s class winners in GS mirrored Saturday’s slalom results, with the same racers finding themselves on top of the timesheets. In the difficult flat-light conditions, one particularly impressive performance came from Auseklis who took home the Class 9 win. For the men, Sun Valley legend Bob Sarchett won Class 8, James Bergseng dominated the Class 6 competition as did Latner Straley in Class 5. Eric Schramm put in a solid performance to win Class 4 and Matt Buhler made a triumphant return to masters racing by winning Class 2. In Class 1, Jon “Speedy” Jessup fought deteriorating conditions to triumph in a competitive Class 1.
    A special welcome and congratulations goes out to Stephen Balog on his first, but not last, IM masters race.  
With one more weekend left in Jans Cup competition, Intermountain racers will tune their slalom skis for the finale at Deer Valley on March 31 and April 1. The next masters race will be March 3-4 at Tamarack Resort, the last race before nationals.

New England Masters: Cannon Mountain Hochgebirge Cup
    A regular stop that brings many ski racers out of retirement once a year, the Hochgebirge Cup is one of the most well-attended races on the Sise Cup. The Ski Club Hochgebirge became instrumental in the development of skiing and racing in New England. The first slalom in the United States was run by Dartmouth skiers in 1925, but not long after that, the “Hochies” staged what is now the longest-running ski club race in the country.
    The first race, a downhill, was held on Mount Moosilauke in 1931, and by 1933 the race was moved to Cannon Mountain. In 1960, it became an all-masters event, but before that, the race had attracted worldwide stars from the United States, Austria, Norway and Japan, once serving as an Olympic trials. The race became a Sise Cup masters event in 1974.
    There are many races within the Hochgebirge Challenge — fastest man and woman, fastest overall team and fastest women’s team. There are the dollar bets, the adult beverage bet … which Alex Gadbois won over Brian Irwin. Irwin was clearly the winner of the Best Retro Outfit (Spyder in pastels, and Demetre Wool) with a strong challenge from Peter Carter’s CB gear from the 1970s. Carter was later disqualified when it was found out that his “retro” gear really IS his everyday gear. The first race of the morning though is for the best parking spot. One now has to arrive well before 7 a.m. to avoid the walk from what seems like Franconia.
    The Alexander Bright Trophy went to Luke Hiebert (M1) from Maine. Hiebert rose to the challenge to become the 2007 champion over second-run course setter Dave Roberts (M4). Class 6 Mark George narrowly missed the overall win when he was forced to ski too round while searching for a missing gate three gates from the finish. Like a gentleman, George declined a rerun and settled for third place overall, calmly stating “Nah, I don’t think I lost that much, it’s OK.” Matt Aeschliman (M2) and Tip Kimball (M5) battled it out in a tight race for fourth and fifth with Aeschliman blasting the second run and taking Kimball by .01.  
    Masters newcomer, Hiebert, a Burke Mountain Academy graduate, lost a college racing career due to an accident two weeks before trials and has only recently resumed racing. His last season of FIS racing saw his point profile in the 50s. Hiebert, a real estate appraiser, stated, “It’s truly fun being back in the game.”
    Carolyn Beckedorff (W3) once again laid it all out and took the women’s race for the Clarita Bright Trophy. Gould Academy alumni and the lone Class 1 competitor Abbi LeFebvre (pronounced “LaFave“), hung onto a .01 first-run lead over Tracy Beckerman (W3),  then stretched her lead to 0.13 to hold second overall. Kim Wolff (W5) was
fourth and Meg Nutter moved ahead a spot to round out the top five.  
    The fastest ladies team and the Michael Harding Trophy went to “Fast Women,” a team thrown together at the last minute comprised of Swix and Comets women Barb Brumbaugh (W4), Gay Folland (W7), LeFebvre and Anne Nordhoy (W9). The team clearly benefited from early starts and insatiable youth.
    The fastest overall team, and winner of the Hochgebirge Challenge Cup, was the “Comet Renegades” consisting of Aeschliman (M2), Matt Bemis (M4), Terrance Fogarty (M4) and Bryan Reimer (M2), taking the win over the “Bottom Feeders” (Beckerman, Hiebert, Jim Nash and Beata Wiktor) by more than four seconds.

Loon GS
    In the last regularly scheduled race before the Sise Cup Finals, the women fought a tightly contested race, which deteriorated well before the Class 9 men finished. Beckerman took the win over Lefebvre by 0.16 with the two racers only 0.03 apart for the weekend. Wiktor (W2), a second-run casualty at Cannon, held onto third place overall over Margaret Vaughn (W5). Anne Nordhoy moved up to fifth place overall when 19-year-old newcomer Emma Masur (W1) lost a beat with the course.
    Not many seemed to enjoy the difficult course sets: tight rhythm changes, holes …  the men especially had it bad. The strong survived as the course claimed one racer after another with 19 DNFs in the men’s division. Bob Hill (M5) amazingly made the courses look easy with his patient arcs from one tough turn to the next as he won both runs and the race by an astonishing 2.54 seconds. Tip Kimball (M5) also looked fast but struggled in sections as he took Irwin by 0.16. Gadbois (M3) lost his Adult Beverage Bet, but held onto fourth over late runner Ben Green (M1), who fell into hole after hole on the top pitch. A lot of credit goes out to the younger men who held on for a rough ride.
    The 2007 Sise Cup season ends at Sugarbush, Vermont, with the Season Finals Party on Saturday, March 3, with super G on Friday and GS on Saturday. The Eastern Regional Championships follow the national championships in late March. Full results at www.nemasters.org.

PNSA masters
    For masters races at Schweitzer, PNSA had great visitors from Washington, Oregon and Montana. In addition to the “regulars,” several locals made their annual appearance in masters racing. Good thing we had this seasoned crowd familiar with the Northwest. The weather was all too Northwestern. Visibility came and went. New snow to deal with each day, but the Schweitzer crew was one of the best we’ve seen; practiced, organized, deployed effectively and absolutely positively on time. Well-set, safe courses, great course maintenance under conditions that should have broken up the course but didn’t.  Still, our resilient visitors went about business like usual. All races were completed.
     U.S. Ski Team member and 2006 Olympian Tom Rothrock was a forerunner, smoked us all EXCEPT Knut Olberg, who was only a couple seconds behind him in the second GS, and within four seconds in the super G’s and other GS.
    Many times were separated only by tenths of a second. Looking at the overall field, Olberg was fast as usual, but local boy (41 years old) Don Waldo actually ended up with the combined considering all five races. Jim Phillips (Class 9) won both super G’s, nipping Rich Robinson by .02 seconds — one of the closest margins we’ve seen in masters.