Anchorage teammates get together at the World Championships to grab 5th place in the team sprint

Sprint races are the demolition derby of cross-country skiing, short and speedy and often fraught with peril. Sunday at the World Championships, mishaps marked both American teams racing in Oberstdorf, Germany.

Anchorage skiers and training partners Rosie Brennan and Sadie Maubet Bjornsen skied to fifth place in the women’s final, their shot at a medal dashed when Bjornsen briefly dropped to one knee after getting stepped on late in the final leg.

In the men’s semifinals, Anchorage’s Gus Schumacher and Colorado’s Simi Hamilton had a bad exchange that left them out of contention for a spot in the finals. They finished seventh in the heat -- the top four advanced -- and 14th overall in a field of 36.

Bjornsen and Brennan, teammates at Alaska Pacific University, were in the lead pack for most of the women’s final. But on her final leg, Bjornsen -- who won a bronze medal with Minnesota’s Jessie Diggins in the team sprint at the 2017 World Championships -- was skiing up a hill when she was stepped on by a competitor and lost contact with the pack.

“I didn’t quite find the gear to come back to it, which is a bummer because my skis are incredible,” Bjornsen told U.S. Ski and Snowboard. “If I would have been with those girls at the top of the climb, it could have been a medal day.”

The race paired two longtime friends who had never before skied a team sprint together.

“It’s been quite literally a career-long dream to do a team sprint with Sadie,” Brennan told U.S. Ski and Snowboard. “She’s been a best friend and training partner for the entirety of my professional career, so I was just so happy and excited to even get this opportunity.

“I know we are capable of more on any given day, but that’s ski racing. You go out there and give it your all and some days you win and some days you don’t. It was honestly a really special day for me and I’m really happy to be here right now.”

The two grew up in the western United States -- Bjornsen in Washington and Brennan in Utah -- and they were competitors during their junior racing days. Skiing brought both of them to Anchorage.

“I think it’s pretty cool that my No. 1 training buddy and I were in a fight for a medal,” Bjornsen said. “If you had asked us that when we were 14 years old beating on each other, we would have laughed at you. If we brought our 14-year-old selves here, we’d be pretty darn proud.”

In the men’s race, the U.S. fielded a team that represented the past and the future. This year’s World Championships are the last for Hamilton, a 10-year veteran of the U.S. Ski Team, and the first for Schumacher, a 20-year-old Alaska Winter Stars skier.

“It was amazing to ski with Simi,” Schumacher told U.S. Ski and Snowboard. “I felt a lot of pressure because it’s his last World Champs and his last team sprint and we knew that we had a lot of potential. I was really proud to have this start and give it my all.

“I think I did my best, but I made a mistake.”

The mistake came after the fourth leg. According to fasterskier.com, Schumacher started skiing before Hamilton tagged him. He quickly realized his mistake, slowed down and bobbled when another racer skied into him.

Norway won the men’s race and Sweden won the women’s race.