Mt. Gay Rum/SISE Cup Series at Stowe, March 9th &
10th
By Jennifer Calder It was the best of races, it was the worst of races, it was a weekend of giddy euphoria, a weekend of incredulity. For the first time in a couple of decades Stowe hosted the New England Masters, and Mother Nature, that we might savor the full New-England-spring-skiing experience, served up a sampler of binary opposites. Both races were held at Little Spruce, where the mountain had reserved for our exclusive use a large Solar Tent which comfortably accommodated all racers and their paraphernalia. It was 42° at the start of the GS. Hero snow-- soft, yielding, forgiving-- on an unintimidating course that from the lift conveyed the false optical perspective it featured uphill gates—the kind of course that makes you feel you can pull up the anchor and let it rip. Appearance is such a duplicitous strumpet. The course ran the gamut of terrain, demanding perhaps more technical skill to ski well than any other course this year, and it was long. A couple of the women and a few of the men edged in under a minute, but most of the field was out there for over 60 seconds. By the second run the temperature had climbed to over 60° and the snow took on most of the properties of warm marshmallow. Grippy, unpredictable. Racers scrambled to de-tune their edges and it was a wax race. Who could have known George Merrill was serious when he tried to sell us Zoom Slush at the beginning of the season? The second course reset was minimal, and surprisingly, so was course deterioration. The weather induced a manic exhilaration as racers donned t-shirts and sun glasses for the post-race awards, and all reported the race had been glorious fun, independent of their performance.
Men’s Class 7 earned bragging rights, placing two in the top ten. Bill McCollom, in a supple, go-for-broke descent, seized an 8th place, and Dwight Conant, returning from a prolonged hiatus in Florida, finished 6th overall, lst in the class. Speculation was that he was secretly training in Austria, or that maybe “less is better.” But Dwight says he cross-trains on his motorcycle. “The balance is the same,” he claims. Right. Russ Probert nailed Class 6, and the race divided Class 5 men Ken Hylwa and Mark George by barely half a second. That race wasn’t as close as the one between Class 4 winner Doug Carpenter and Class 3’s second place finisher Sean Florian. Mathematically unlikely as it is, these two men, separated by a number of competitors on a sticky course, finished with an identical combined time.
John Pierce, from the bottom of a course, is something to see. With a combination of aggression, acrobatic athleticism, and an instinctive feel for soft snow, he careened down the final pitch in a series of linked recoveries. He managed to keep at least one ski on the snow at all times and pointed like a cruise missile toward the finish, for his first SISE Cup win this year. This is a guy who kicks out of every starting gate lusting for battle like an attacking warrior god, and the conviction that the only thing that counts is the clock, his body being expendable to the larger objective of winning.
The chase was close among the women. Carolyn Beckedorff had a little more than a tenth of a second lead over Susanna Whitcher in the first run, but Whitcher navigated a spectacular second run to win the race by two tenths. Susan Jefferson, who finished 4th, had spectators gasping as, catching an edge in the finish area, her velocity carried her right into the gravel of the parking lot. Carolyn Elander, who has been accompanying her husband to these races for years and made her debut to Master’s Racing this year at Attitash, carved a graceful and nearly perfect line for a top ten finish.
Miracle workers. The Mount Mansfield Ski Club’s race crew deserves combat pay. Torrential rain swept across the state in the night, and by dawn the wind had picked up and a half inch of ice glossed the parking lot. The groomers were on the job when we arrived, and where they hadn’t groomed, you pretty much couldn’t ski. Crampons would have been helpful for the inspection. The course started flat, then disappeared down a pitch, and when you dropped over that edge you wanted to be sure yours was set, and hold on tight to the tiller. Just to be sure the technically competent had the advantage, the final flat before the finish featured a flush. Somehow they got that race off on time, but a hole opened up on the pitch and it got worse with each passing racer. Meanwhile, the announcer kept informing those at the bottom of brief holds due to wind, and you knew that meant your fellow-racers were up there stripped down and shivering in lycra as the temperature dropped to 10°. The hole was declared dangerous. It forced a reset between the women and Class 8 men, and a revisited review of the course, which was deemed “tight.” The race resumed about 11 a.m., and not in years have we contended with adversity from a course such as this. The ice on the pitch got so polished it gave back to each racer the reflection of his own folly. The carnage from Class 3 on was calamitous and skiers, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the course, were bounced around mercilessly, the fall-away gates on the pitch obliging them to clamber for purchase, the holes forcing pre-releases. No day for a video camera.
The wind howled, but not because it couldn’t catch us Gusts of reportedly 90 mph pummeled us. It blew Dwight Conant 10 feet up the slope. It toppled the unwary. It stopped Doug Wisse in full attack a third of the way into his run. It flattened the breakaway gates against the mountain. Sometime after the Class 5 women the timing malfunctioned. The holes on the course were opening up again and the collective wisdom pulled the plug on the 2nd run, making the race a one-run slalom for SISE Cup points. The Mt. Mansfield Ski Club race crew expressed genuine regret at the decision, but it was much like a decision to put a dying animal out of its misery, and most racers agreed that somebody’s knees were saved this day.
Bill Zimmerman won this race, a feat the more remarkable because Class 1 men had a rodeo ride. Class 3’s Sean Florian had the second fastest run, but only about two tenths ahead of—and here you gotta have respect—Class 7’s Bill McCollom.
Carolyn Beckedorff established an unassailable lead, almost 4 seconds ahead of nearest contender Margaret Vaughn. Lori O’Brien skied third, only about a tenth ahead of Class 5’s Meg Nutter and two tenths ahead of Class 6’s Cindy Berlack.
Masters’ racing isn’t about hero maintenance and disposal, about polishing egos and separating the worthy from those who “didn’t want it badly enough.” It’s largely an individual endeavor, athletes in competition with one another, but mostly with themselves. Yet the shared attitude that creates ski racers unites us into a community, an extended family of those who understand why you’d race on a torn ACL, or with an enormous brace supporting each knee because you’d already had 13 knee operations, or worry, after you’ve torn your Achilles tendon, only about how much muscle you’d lose while it healed and how fast you could rehab before next season—never even considering the option of not skiing. None of the people huddled in the Solar Tent, listening to that wind blow after Sunday’s race, needed to explain why they were out there on a day like that. And virtually all of them contributed generously to the raffle for the Gerhard Schmidt Trust, in recognition of a kindred spirit, a member of the racing community: athlete, risk-taker, lover of life. The New England Masters were able to make a contribution of $2,000 on Gerhard’s behalf. Raffle prizes were donated by our sponsors Atomic, Artech, Mt. Gay Rum, Denby Pottery, Florian Tools, Swix, Buchika’s Ski & Sport. The big winner was Ken Hylwa-- a pair of Atomic 10/22’s. Other winners included Jim Doig, Hans Schemmel, Bill Whitcher, Patti Lane, Derek Riggs, Doug Wisse, Tom Maynes, and Tom Calder. If skiing be the music of life, play on, give us excess of it.
The Mt. Gay Rum SISE Cup series culminates next weekend at Mt. Snow, March 15-17th. |