The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Ian Boucher and Chris Lange headed to Nationals
The Crested Butte Junior Nordic Team competed this weekend in beautiful Steamboat Springs, at the Rocky Mountain Nordic (RMN) Junior National Qualifying season ending races. Spots to the Junior Nationals in Presque Isle, Maine were on the line, and the Crested Butte Team did not disappoint.
Top races of the weekend belonged to Forrest Smith with two silver medals in both the 3-kilometer classic and 3-kilometer skate races, showing that Forrest will be strong in the future. Forrest was narrowly edged for the gold medal during the 3-kilometer skate race on Saturday. Pharwit Durgan racing in the same age class posted two solid races (as always) and ended up in third and fourth respectively on both days of racing.
Sara Sherman and Sofia Deer skied superbly in their 5-kilometer contests with season best results for both of them. Kai Sherman racing in the 2.5-kilometer distance races skied strongly in the classic race and earned yet another silver medal to add to his impressive haul this season. Kai had a rare ‘off-day’ in the 2.5-kilometer skate race on Saturday but still held his own and fought hard all the way to the finish to post a tremendous eighth-place result.
Ian Boucher continued his improvement and skied to two fifth-place results in the highly contested and competitive J2 boys classification. Boucher fought hard in the 5-kilometer skate race on Saturday and was less than 10 seconds back from the victory after being barely edged for third and fourth in an epic sprint battle to the finish line. Boucher will look to ski fast again next week.
Senior member of the team Chris Lange skied to the gold medal in the OJ boy’s 10-kilometer classic race on Friday. This was Lange’s first victory of his long career in RMN junior racing. Excellent work.
Both Chris Lange and Ian Boucher have qualified to represent the RMN at the Junior National Championships in Presque Isle, Maine March 8-13, 2010. Stay tuned for results from these National Championship races as both will be putting it all on the line next week.
