Looking for Speed

Besh Cup 1 Day has been happening at Kincaid for many decades and there was no reason to stop the tradition this year, so we all gathered 'round for a sprint race like we always do. We had plenty of fun.

Here's Hailey at around the halfway point in the quarterfinal, coming from way behind on the top of the previous downhill to glide up to, and past, Josefin Nilsson. These two advanced to the semifinal.

Here's Hannah Rudd in her quarterfinal. She was in second place at this point, about 2/3 of the way around the loop. From here, Hannah made sure she advanced to the semi final with a strong 500 meter push to the finish.

Here's Michaela.

Here's Sadie. And Hannah behind her?  I think so.

Skippy got into a bit of a tussle during the semifinal. I didn't see it. I'd heard a rumor that someone had skied into Casey about 150 meters into the race. Later, I was speaking with one of the officials who said there'd been a big crash that ensnared our Skippy. One way or another, Skippy found out that our zoot suits are not ski-pole proof.

Here we are: Tommy, Hailey, The Quail, Sadie, Skippy, Hannah, Pietro, Zack.

We did have a couple of firsts today on the UAA team: For one thing, Skippy won the qualification round. She's never won a qualification round before in her life so this was a promising start to a day that went very well for her with the exception of her wreck in the semifinal which sent her to the B-final instead of the A-final where she would of course rather have been. And I personally had a first, too. Today was the first time in my life that I've been the oldest person in a race of any kind. I've been to a lot of races where they give an award to the "oldest finisher". I was ready to accept my award for being born in the '60's and surviving this long but clearly nothing of the sort was forthcoming. That's OK. I've still go a long way to go.