Bolton Opener

NWVT had eight members compete in Saturday’s Bolton Opener and several helped out in various volunteer positions to help pull off the fun event.

The morning started out early, and cold. As the course was set up the temperature hovered just above 0. By race time it had crept up to 4 with clear skies. The race was a 30 second interval start that sent racers out to do 3 laps on the rolling Picnic Loop. The snow was nicely packed but very cold and relatively slow. This combined with the nature of the loop made the race more difficult than one would initially think. After an exhilarating first half of the loop the racers had to turn and find themselves faced with a slow grind back to the top of the loop. What was deceiving was just how hard they had skied down through the woods to the horse pasture finding themselves a little more taxed than expected for the climb. As they went over the hill, it drained more out of the athletes each time they rounded the lap zone. On the final lap racers were ready to take the turn-off for the finish. Though the field was small, it was very competitive. Having the race on the shorter loop also gave the field a larger feel as the early starters would lap around and be paired with a fresh starter and so on.

Eric Tremble got the ball rolling for NWVT starting in second position 30 seconds behind Stowe Nordic ace Tom Thurston. Within the first lap Eric had all but closed the gap. He went on to drop Tom and win the race. Jake Hollenbach was the next NWVT finisher. He had a mild mishap which cost him a few precious seconds and positions in the short and fast race. It was almost impossible to recover from any error during this race as there was no time or place to gain anything back. The next to finish was Damian Bolduc with Scott Magnan following close behind. The gap was small but still not in Scott’s favor. We will see what happens next week when Scott can pull out all the stops at the Alumni Race. Scott has the advantage of designing the course, and knowing Damian as a racer better than anyone, and has in the past, modified the course in his favor and Damian’s disadvantage, but it gets harder to do each year. Next up were Andre’ Bolduc and Josh Dillon just a few seconds back. Andre’ contending with an epic commute involving wrong exits, running out of gas and bumming gas from an antique Tucker groomer resulting in a late arrival still had a good effort and did not let on to the stress of getting to the race until after when one could detect the stench of gasoline on his chauffeur Brendan Barden who missed the race due to dealing with aftermath of the events getting to the race. Josh Dillon moved up a lot since last week, and made out good on an inside bet for a dinner with 10 seconds to spare in the spread. In the Women’s race NWVT took the top two spots. Ilke Van Genechten hammered for three laps virtually passing the entire field to take the overall win. As she powered over the hills it was clear that nothing was going to distract her focus or get in her way. Next up was UVM alumni Anja Jokela showing a few of UVM’s current skiers how it is done. This was Anja’s first race for the club as she joined in true club spirit, “yeah, sure, I’ll do that.”

Well the 2007-2008 season continues to be the winter that is. I traveled from Lyme , NH to Burlington today with nothing but deep powder the whole way. If you get a chance, take a snow day this week. It will be worth it.