Randall sweeps national ski championships

Things came up gold, silver and bronze for Alaskans as the national championship ended on a gorgeous day at Kincaid Park, where the trails were hard and fast and the Alaskans who grew up on them were plenty fast, too.

In the men's final of the classic sprint race, all six skiers either went to high school here or go to college here, including gold medalist Tyler Kornfield, a Service High graduate who is an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

In the women's final, Anchorage's Kikkan Randall continued to look invincible, claiming her fourth gold medal in as many races and headlining a 1-2-4 finish for Alaskans.

"Whew! It's done!" Randall said as she caught her breath at the finish line. "It was a hard week of racing.

"I'm really happy with how my body held up. I really feel I'm a couple of weeks away from peak fitness but I'm confident I'm gonna get there. I'm hoping this is my best season ever."

It could certainly be her most important season ever. Randall, 27, will make her third trip to the Winter Olympics next month, and for the first time she goes in as a medal contender, thanks in part to her second-place finish in the sprint race at last season's world championships.

Randall's sweep marked the second time an Alaskan came to Kincaid Park for the national championships and left with all of the gold medals. Audun Endestad of Fairbanks did the same thing in 1990.

Randall didn't need a big week at the national championships to secure a spot on the Olympic team -- she had already qualified for the team with strong results on the World Cup international race circuit -- but a lot of other skiers did. Results from the national championships will help determine the Olympic team, which will be announced Jan. 19.

Olympic hopeful Laura Valaas of Anchorage helped her cause by sticking with Randall -- as much as any American can stick with Randall -- in the finals. Valaas finished second to claim the silver medal, with the bronze going to Ida Sargeant of Craftsbury, Vt.

The battle for fourth place turned into a near-replay of last year's photo finish at the 50-kilometer American Birkebeiner race in Wisconsin, where Colorado's Rebecca Dussault nipped Anchorage's Holly Brooks for the victory. This time, Brooks got her ski boot to the finish line a split-second before Dussault to grab fourth.

The effort came two days after Brooks, 27, captured second place in the 30-kilometer classic, but whether it's enough to send Brooks to Vancouver, no one knows. Brooks, Dussault, Valaas and several others will put their Olympic hopes on hold until the team is announced in 10 days.

"Sit and wait," Valaas said. "There's a ton of skiers who could potentially go, and I'm just one of those skiers."

Valaas, 25, trains with Randall on the Alaska Pacific University nordic team and said her goal in the finals was to stay as close to her teammate as possible.

"I let Kikkan lead because she's a phenomenal skier, and she wasn't far enough ahead that it was demoralizing," she said. "She really pulled me through this race."

Randall led all three of her heats -- quarterfinal, semifinal and final -- wire to wire, which helped her avoid a fate several other top skiers did not.

Men's hopefuls Chris Cook and Garrett Kuzzy and women's hopeful Caitlin Compton all took spills, a sign of how fast the course was and how much contact there can be in a sprint race. The heats can get heated -- poles, elbows and skis often get bumped, making the sprint a winter version of combat fishing.

Randall made sure no one got in her way by hammering from the start.

"This is a test run for the Olympics," she said, "and there's no dinking around in the Olympics."

Her margin of victory was evidence that she didn't dink around on the 1.4-kilometer course. Randall won in 3 minutes, 26.6 seconds, with Valaas almost three seconds back in 3:29.3. Sargent was third in 3:32.1 and Brooks took fourth in 3:34.9, beating Dussault by one-tenth of a second.

The men's 1.5-kilometer final had even more finish-line drama -- only four-tenths of a second separated the top three finishers.

Erik Soederstroem, a sophomore at UAF, led the way with a time of 3:15.8 on the 1.5-kilometer course. Right behind were Kornfield (3:16.0) and Mike Hinckley (3:16.2). Because Soederstroem is from Sweden, he isn't eligible to win a U.S. championship, so the gold medal went to Kornfield.

Hinckley, an APU skier who was second in last Saturday's freestyle sprint, took the silver again and Reese Hanneman of Fairbanks (3:17.7) took the bronze. Rounding out the six-skier final was UAF's Einar Often (3:22.5) and Anchorage's Eric Packer (3:24.0).

It was the second big sprint result for Kornfield, who was fourth in the freestyle. He could only shake his head at his achievements.

"I have no idea anymore (what to expect)," he said with a huge smile.

Winning a medal wasn't even a goal when the national championships started, Kornfield said, "but after the skate sprint, it was in the back of my mind."

Soederstroem, meanwhile, seemed ecstatic knowing he was the first to reach the finish line, even though he didn't get a medal or a $1,200 winner's check as rewards for his race.

"I felt so good today, I was pretty confident I could win the final," he said.

That confidence didn't waver even when he and Kornfield caught Hinckley on the final downhill and turned the race into a three-man fight for the finish line.

"I just looked at the finish line," Soederstroem said. "I never looked back. I only looked forward."