An excellent start to the sprint day for the US and Canadian ski teams. The US qualified three men - Andy Newell, Torin Koos, and Garrott Kuzzy, and one woman - Kikkan Randall.

Randall rebounded from a dissappointing classic sprint to qualify in a blazing 5th place. Newell also charged back from a sub-par performance in the classic sprint - qualifying in 2nd.

The Canadians put four women in the top 30 - led by Chandra Crawford in 2nd. Sara Renner guaranteed a fourth consecutive race with World Cup points, qualifying in 23rd. Perianne Jones was 25th and Sarah Daitch 29th.

Long time US skiing presence Karin camenisch, skiing for her native Switzerland qualified in 26th.

At least three Canadian men advanced.

Virpi Kuitunen had the best women’s qualifying time. The field spread out dramatically. Crawford was half a second behind the Finn, and Italian Magda Genuin +2.88. The times back for the next 5 4 finishers jumped dramatically - +9.81, +11.43, +15.04, +20.89.

The corner leading out of the stadium foiled a number of qualifying attempts. It did not appear to be particularly difficult, but a number of skiers tripped and several went down. IT appeared that the inside was skied off, causing the outside ski to wash out into softer crud. Laura Valaas (USA) got tripped up, and while she didn’t fall, she lost significant time.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Race Update, Sprint. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.