Fourth

Saturday.  The final day of NCAA's. It ended with some skating.  The downhillers had finished up the slalom on Friday, so they came out to support us. Everyone was feeling good and the vibe was right. Sunny and warm, and we were confident and rested. We were pretty sure things would go well for us. 

Here's Espen at around the nineteenth kilometer of the twenty kilometer race.

And here he is a little earlier in the contest.  And me, trying to stay out of the way.

Here's Sparky, giving Tuva a little pep talk with 500 meters to go.

Sigurd.  And the alpiners.  And Astrid.

Sigurd:

Astrid:

Astrid, Pascale and Tuva post-race.

It's been quite the year!  Sparky was clearly very happy and relieved to get his mitts on this.

Trond and Sparky at the end of a successful week.

The coaching staff - all of us.

Maggie, Mikey and Siggi

Roommates Espen and Moro

The trophy got its own seat on the plane ride home.  And why not?

If you compare and contrast our new fourth place team trophy to our most recent (2009) fourth place team trophy, you will quickly notice several differences.  For one thing, the trophy has grown larger over the years.  That's only natural, due to inflation.  Also, the 2009 trophy is a lot dustier. (But perhaps I have to take some of the blame for that.) Most disturbingly, however, you will notice that the cross-country skier has been removed from the trophy, leaving only the alpiner. You might think that, considering the larger size of the trophy, there would be no need to remove the cross-country skier. On the other hand, you may have thought there was no need to remove the alpiners from our ski team earlier this year, either, so maybe it's only right that the nordies get left off the trophy now. Or maybe I've got it all wrong; maybe the skier is actually a nordie descending a hill. Looking closer, it does appear to more of a nordie tuck than a downhiller tuck. 

But the more important thing is:  Look at how much snow there is in Anchorage now! It's going to be another great season of spring skiing adventures in Alaska!