Friday, April 13

World Skiercross Championship Results

freezeonline.com

Let me tell you a little story about crap: crap weather, crap visibility and crap golf.

Can you believe that Tiger Woods won the damn Masters again?! I mean, when the hell are these other golfers going to pull their heads out of their asses and learn how to play the damn game - or at least learn to not choke under pressure?

Now, I know this stuff because the weather this weekend at Squaw Valley was anything but beautiful. Give me a break, Mother Nature. It's frickin' April; that means NO MORE SNOW!

Just days before the event, temperatures where in the mid-60s and the snow was melting away just as scheduled. Is there something that someone did to piss Mother Nature off? Seemingly every time an event is scheduled, it snows. Why can't skiing be an indoor sport? Well, enough bitching. I'm only sour because I wanted to be scoring hot chicks at the ESPN Action Sports and Music Awards in L.A., not watching it snow in Squaw.

Getting back to the event at hand, the World Skiercross Championships were postponed on Saturday due to weather, and when I say that, I mean three feet of fresh Tahoe pow. The hot temperatures just days before the blizzard caused some major ice bumps which made for some difficult powder skiing so you pretty much had to go fast so you stayed on top of the ice. It was actually a great day of skiing. I went for a few runs with Jimbo Morgan and Jamey Parks and then retired to the Resort at Squaw Creek to watch the Masters.

Sunday was equally snowy, but Uncle E and the rest of the EXP Production crew had no intentions of canceling the event. We finally got things started around one o'clock with training and qualifying. The course was in good shape, although the three or four feet of new snow really slowed things down. This made for a lot of poling and pushing across the flats but the competitors didn't seem to mind.

U.S. Ski Team member Marco Sullivan came down with the fastest qualifying time, followed closely by ex-ski team member Clic Bloomfield. Are you beginning to see the trend here? It's clear that more and more of these Skiercross athletes are accomplished racers, which means faster better courses. I think that it is a good trend, but time will tell. On the women's side of the action, Chiara Lawrence pulled down the fastest qualifying time with Michaela Boyle second fastest. Both sides of the filed had close times in qualifying which would make some tight races.

As is the case with most Skiercrosses, the start proved crucial at the World Championships. There was really only one chance for skiers to pass and that was a tricky one, considering the fact that it was the section where competitors were poling and pushing across the flats, so start position made all of the difference. Most of the early heats were won easily with Marco Sullivan, Isi Greuner, Enak Gavaggio, Jamey Parks, Daron Rahlves, Chris Delbosco, Marcus Wittner and Clic Bloomfield advancing to the Great Eight. The women found a power packed Great Eight with Chiara Lawrence, Josee Cahrboneau, Patti Kauf, Michaela Boyle, Magda Jonsson, Alisha Klein and Megan Brown ready for battle. Gwen Abbott dropped out do to an injury earlier in the day.

All of these skiers have the ability to win any Skiercross they enter so this was going to be a showdown. Unfortunately there are always losers and only the fastest two move on. Moving into the men's final were U.S. Ski Team members Marco Sullivan and Daron Rahlves along with Euro's Enak Gavaggio and Marcus Wittner. The men started off in a tight bunch sharing the hole shot into the first turn where Rahlves and Wittner got tied up in the air causing Daron to lose valuable speed into the flats. Sullivan moved into the lead thanks to the Salomon rockets that he had on his feet. (Enak Gavaggio would later offer Marco $2,000 for the skis, but Marco had to decline.) With the mess behind them, Sullivan and Gavaggio easily skied to first and second place with Wittner finishing third.

The women's side found Chiara Lawrence, Patti Kauf, Alisha Klein and Megan Brown making it to the finals and as we have seen twice before in the X-Games Alisha Klein got the hole shot and never looked back. Along the way one of her poles found itself under a ski of another competitor and was forced to hang out on the course with her glove. Chiara Lawrence was able to move by Megan on the flats and skied into second place.

OFFICIAL 2001 RESULTS
MEN

1.Marco Sullivan (USA)
2.Enak Gavaggio (FRA)
3.Marcus Wittner (AUT)
4.Daron Rahlves (USA)
5.Jamey Parks (USA)
6.Clic Bloomfield (USA)
7.Chris DelBosco (USA)
8.Isi Greuner (AUT)

WOMEN
1.Aleisha Cline (CAN)
2.Chiara Lawrence (USA)
3.Megan Brown (USA)
4.Patti Sherman Kauf (USA)