Day 1 -- Thursday Feb 21st -- Free Technique Individual Sprints

See the attached picture of Leah, Kieran and Nicole taken at the Don Allen ski trails near La Ronge, Sask. Weather this morning was -14°C when they did the time trials, and by the time they raced their heats, temps went up to around -10°C.

Leah ended up winning a bronze medal in her sprint race today in what was a squeaker. The winner won by about 3 ski lengths, second and third were neck and neck with fourth, half a ski length behind; very exciting.

Nicole made it to the B Side Final by outsprinting a skier in the last 100 meters of her semi final. I believe she finished around 8th overall.

I believe Kieran finished around 12th. He is competing in a relatively large group.

We pre-skied the skate course in preparation for tomorrow's race and it reminds me very much of Whitehorse's ski trails. The country side here is beautiful, trails are either gradual up and down, not much in flats. The organizers and volunteers we've met have been very friendly and helpful.

We race again tomorrow in the interval skate race.

Day 2 -- Friday Feb 22nd -- Free Technique Interval Start

We weren't expecting the weather to be so cold this morning, so it threw our waxing plans from the night before down the tube. However, we quickly recovered at the race site by applying a colder wax to the race skis. Thanks to Roger Baird and Linda Nichols for their help. I found even though the snow was so cold, the conditions were fast. The snow temperature was -19°C at the time of the first races and as the morning wore on the air temperature rose to a balmy 0°C by 1:00 PM.

Leah won gold today in her interval start free technique race! She was four seconds ahead of her main competitor at 5K, and then went on to win over second place by 42 seconds. According to Leah, the last 2.75K of the 7.75K race went extremely fast.

Nicole was skiing so fast on one of the downhills that she had a fall that cost her a bit of time. Nicole says the race course is really nice to ski on, and it had a lot of gradual ups and downs.

Kieran may be getting a cold, as he was complaining about a sore throat today, but he still insisted on racing. He hopes to feel better for Sunday's mass start classic race.

The Loeppky/Nichols family made the trip to La Ronge and we hope their travels continue to go well despite a vehicle that is giving them some grief. The girls are getting a first hand experience at some high calibre competition at this event.

I managed to finish my race. All I can say is that with the lack of Wednesday night races recently, it's affected my performance. I did take my daughter's advice about taking the corners wide on the downhills to avoid any nasty crashes.

   This page was last updated on February 22, 2008