In a show of force that resulted in gold and silver, skiers from Alaska Pacific University grabbed first place and second place in the national championship mixed relay race Tuesday at the SuperTour Finals in Sun Valley, Idaho.
APU dominated the day even with two of its top skiers out sick – Rosie Brennan and David Norris – and another, four-time Olympian Kikkan Randall, choosing to skip the year-end race series.
"It says a lot about the strength of our program," said 2014 Olympian Sadie Bjornsen, a member of APU's gold-medal relay team. "Even missing two of our top skiers, we were able to finish first and second. It's so great, because we have so many talented skiers and everyone had such an exceptional race."
Racing in a heavy snowstorm, Bjornsen and teammates Lex Treinen, Chelsea Holmes and Erik Bjornsen won the 4x5-kilometer mixed-technique coed relay with a 21.6-second margin over the APU team of Becca Rorabaugh, Reese Hanneman, Rosie Frankowski and Scott Patterson.
Both APU teams came from behind on the final leg to pass Nick Hendrickson of the University of Utah, whose team led after three legs.
Erik Bjornsen skied a strong anchor leg for APU's winning team. The team was 2.2 seconds out of the lead when Holmes tagged off to him.
Patterson had a strong anchor leg too. He started with his team in third place and after he passed Hendrickson, he had to hold off a hard-charging Simi Hamilton of Vermont's Stratton Mountain team. Patterson and his teammates beat Hamilton's team by 3.4 seconds.
APU's winning team – which featured Sadie Bjornsen and Treinen skiing classic-technique legs and Holmes and Erik Bjornsen skiing freestyle-technique legs – finished in 58 minute, 52.5 seconds.
The second-place team finished in 59:14.1. A third APU team – Lauren Fritz, Thomas O'Harra, Jessica Yeaton and Eric Packer -- placed 13th in 1:02.04.2.
A fourth team that included two APU skiers and one of APU's wax technicians placed 24th in 1:04:36.8. That team included high schoolers Taryn Hunt-Smith and Conner Truskowski, wax technician Galen Johnston -- a former UAA skier – and Linda Danvind of the University of Vermont.
Conditions were demanding. Sadie Bjornsen said about eight inches of snow fell Tuesday, and she spent most of her leg breaking trail for everyone else. She tagged off to Treinen in third place and collapsed to the ground, exhausted.
"The conditions made the course really tough and you could see that every racer was giving it all they had for their teammates," Treinen said in a press release from APU.
"The finish line looked like Gettysburg – I've never seen so many people lying on the ground."