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| UVM's Paula Moltzan |
The UVM Carnival kicked off today with men’s and women’s Giant Slalom (GS) races at Stowe Mountain Resort, and let me tell you: It was frigid. And windy.
The wind careened pitilessly downslope from the north and scoured the trail surface until it was just ice. GS panels were shredded. During particularly fierce gusts, gates were blown nearly flat — like palm trees in a (really cold) hurricane — and snow lifted into the air, wrapping racers in a foggy haze.
The weather was so harsh out there that I overheard multiple (multiple!) old-timers (yes, with icicle-trimmed beards) commenting on how severely Arctic the weather was.
This all sounds like an exaggeration, but:
“It was as gnarly as I’ve seen it in my twelve years coaching on the circuit.”
- Stever Bartlett, Head Coach of Alpine Skiing, Middlebury College
The casual observer might be sitting by the fire right now, thinking: It’s winter, and it’s a ski race. What’s the big deal?
Carnival host and UVM Head Coach Bill Reichelt explained why these conditions are difficult for a ski racer: “When you can’t see your feet, when you can’t see the ground. That’s the most difficult part,” Reichelt said. “Because [the athletes] don’t really know — they can’t see the micro terrain, they don’t know where the groove is. It’s like vertigo. And then, the other piece is that: if you get off-line, if you get a little low. The wind pulls you down, so it makes it that much harder to stay on-line.”
Before a ski race, athletes inspect the race course to see where the gates are set in relation to each other and the hill, and to get a feel for the surface conditions. From this information, they develop a plan on where and how to ski their particular lines. And, usually, things go pretty smoothly.
But on a day like today, plans go out the window. At any moment, a skier could lose track of where she is, or his trajectory towards a turn could change dramatically as he’s shoved by the wind. Skiing becomes reactive rather than proactive, which is rarely a good thing. More than half the field DNF’d.
It was a day in which experience on the home hill paid off. UVM’s Paula Moltzan and Max Roeisland each won their respective races. Moltzan (2:07.34) beat runner-up Foreste Peterson (2:10.01) of Dartmouth by more than two seconds. Roeisland's (2:03.21) margin of victory was smaller, about three-quarters of a second over UNH’s Patrick Kenney (2:03.91).
Moltzan achieved her win by skiing aggressively during the first run before skiing more conservatively to maintain the lead during Run 2.
UVM’s Head Coach Reichelt described Moltzan’s approach.
“The first run she was just attacking really hard,” Reichelt said. “The second run, it was: my words to her were, ‘Just be clean. Make clean turns, and make good turns.’ And you could see that with her approach as she left the start.”
Reichelt continued, describing how Moltzan is learning to measure her race runs while also staying competitive.
“That’s one of the things that she’s working on,” Reichelt said. “How much risk to take versus being safe. It’s not like she can just be safe and win. There are good girls in the field, so there’s a certain balance to that.”
Moltzan’s second run was noticeably more contained than her first, but — clearly — the overall tactic paid off. In a sport in which some margins of victory are measured by the hundredths-of-a-second, she crossed the line well ahead of the competition.
Even with Moltzan’s lead up front, the UVM women couldn’t quite claim victory as a team in the GS race. Dartmouth came out on top with 130 points to UVM’s 126. In addition to Peterson’s strong second-place finish, The Big Green’s Claire Thomas (2:10.14) and Kelly Moore (2:11.29) crossed the line in third and fifth, respectively. UNH was farther back with 86 points, barely coming in ahead of Saint Michael’s College (85 points).
UVM’s fortune turned in the men’s race, however. Roeisland was followed closely by teammates Sandy Vietze (2:04.11) and David Frisk (2:04.75) in third and fourth — enough to give them the men’s GS win over Dartmouth. Dartmouth finished with 105 points to UVM’s 135. UNH was once again a close third with 100 points.
The tight finish among the Catamounts is something Reichelt was excited to see.
“They’re all familiar with the hill, and they battle each other in training,” he said. “There’s a lot of confidence with that. There’s a lot of pride in being able to perform at your home carnival.”
Tomorrow’s Slalom races will be another test for the Catamounts and the rest of the EISA. The weather forecast is similar, and Reichelt predicts that the race condition could be pretty gnarly.
“Big day tomorrow,” Reichelt said. “The snow is going to be…There’s going to be a high attrition rate. With that terrain, the snow, and regardless of who sets [the course] and what it’s like. There’s going to be some people who don’t make it.”
Well.
Good luck!
