Day 7 at Skimo Worlds – Relay races: Top 3 men's teams & Top 2 women's finish within 8 seconds!

Today marked the last day of the 2015 Ski Mountaineering World Championships in Verbier and as the tradition dictates the relay races were going to squeeze the last bit of energy out of the athletes.
» Full results are here but keep reading for a detailed account and photos of the super close fights from today.

Course details and How the relay works:

Men race the relay in a team of four and women in a team of three. Youth race as a three person team that combines two men and one woman. Each team member does the course lap once and then hands off the relay (by touching a teammate) at the start & finish area.
Today’s course was the same for all and featured 145 m of climbing, with the same for descending, spread over two small climbs, including a short boot-pack on the second climb.

Women’s race

Top two teams, France and Switzerland, put on a fantastic show today. The home Swiss girls were in a gold medal position with the two currently fastest women in the world going into the last lap. Maude Mathys (SWI) dug deep to fend off the skimo queen Laetitia Roux (FRA) but had to bow at the end, and France took gold. The difference was only 8 seconds after 32 minutes of racing! Spanish women claimed bronze about 30 seconds ahead of Italy.

The usual North American rivalry didn’t disappoint once again, this time the U.S. girls catching and then passing their Canadian friends, finishing 5th and 6th respectively, 90 seconds apart.
Canada seeded Melanie Bernier, currently the best female sprint in North America, first to build up a gap for the other two. Team USA, thanks to its depth, had a more even team and slowly clawed back the time over the lap two and three.
Team USA raced in this order – Meredith Edwards, Sarah Cookler, Jessie Young.
Canadian team – Melanie Bernier, Kylee Ohler, Michell Roberts.

Men’s race

Skimo is often perceived as a sport where athletes set into a fast rhythm with not much changing beyond the first 30 minutes despite lots going on. It’s kind of hard for a complete outsider to see where the adrenaline comes from. But never mind…
If there is an equivalent of a “military combat” in skimo then today’s men’s race was it – the top three teams finished within 8 seconds after 35 minutes of racing! With so many good sprinters on the Swiss, Italian, and French teams, the strategy was going to be important. Usually the fastest racers are seeded for the first or last leg but ultimately you don’t know who you gonna face until you line up.

Germany was also in the mix during the first few laps as they had Josef Rottmoser, one of the two best sprinters in the world right now, to start their race. Italy sent yesterday’s teams race world champion Matteo Eydallin while saving their ace Robert Antonioli for the last leg. William Bon Mardion (FRA) and Iwan Arnold (SWI) aren’t specialized sprinters, however, they are fast starters and so their were first to go for their teams.

After the top positions changed few times it was Robert Antonioli, the new sprint world champion from a week ago, that put in an impressive performance to take Italy from third to capture the gold! France’s finishing man, Didier Blanc, first tried to go with Antonioli but later had to worry about holding off Switzerland’s sprint specialist Marcel Marti. At the end it was – Italy, France, Switzerland.

For North American’s the usual script played out when the USA and Canada were super close throughout the race. The Canadian boys went out to seek a “revenge” for the women’s race and at the end beat the U.S. team by 50 seconds, with both teams finishing at 9th and 10th respectively.
Today, I have a super quote for you from my friend Nick Elson, describing how he raced arguably the best sprinter in the world during the first leg today 🙂

I started behind Rottmoser. It was good. He was not in my way.

Usually very little spoken but always on point, I award Nick with “The Best 2015 Skimo Worlds SkinTrack statement” 🙂
Canadian team raced in this order – Nick Elson (Squamish), Peter Knight (Edmonton), Oliver Bibby (only a junior, Vancouver), Travis Brown (Calgary)
Team USA – Andy Dorais (SLC), Colin Cares, Teague Holmes (SLC/CO), William Laird

Wrap-up

Watch out for a wrap-up report from the 2015 Skimo Worlds coming in few days as I gather more quotes from racers on the US and Canadian teams.