At the end of last February Casey Wright, Ash Spittle and I competed in the TjejVasan . It’s a 30km classic races from Oxberg to Mora with 10000 female participants. I placed 65th in a time of 1:36:42, Casey placed 66th in a time of 1:37:12 and Ash placed 154th in a time of 1:45:26. This was our last hoorah at the end of a 4 month long European ski season before flying home to Australia.
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As the Olympics come to a close the junior/U23 team is wrapping up their European racing season with successful racing in Sweden and Germany. Anna Trnka, Casey Wright and Ashleigh Spittle achieved top Tjejvasa results in Sweden whilst Nick Montgomery achieved a career best classic result in an OPA Cup in Oberwiesenthal, Germany. Continue reading
The Daniel Karlssons Minne is a 5/7.5km mass start skate race held in Ostersund on the 28th of December. Casey Wright finished third in the 19-20 age class. This was Casey’s first race in Sweden and was a solid effort as she finished only 19.9 second behind the winner. In the open female class Ash Spittle finished 8th and Ellie Phillips 9th. In the men’s event Jackson Bursill finished in 12th, Nick Montgomery 13th and Alasdair Tutt in 15th. 
Continue reading
Just a quick update before we re-establish regular blog posts about our travels and adventures overseas.
Most of the team is flying to Europe in late November, with Alasdair, Hamish, Anna, Nick G. and Linky beginning their trip in Sweden, while Casey, Ellie, Ash, Jackson and Nick M, accompanied by coach Ewan Watson, fly first to Seefeld before heading down the Winter Universiade (World Winter University Games) in Val di Fiemme, Trentino, Italy. After this competition we will join the rest of the team in Ostersund, Sweden, and Xanthea will fly in just after Christmas as well.
Most of us will be a month in Sweden, before we return to Val di Fiemme for World Junior and U23 Championships, after which we head separate ways, be it back to Australia, Sweden, to Germany or elsewhere. Training reports will be forthcoming, but in the meantime we are all keenly awaiting short, cold days, abundant snow, tall mountains (not in Sweden) and lots of adventures! The dates to watch out for:
11th-21st December 2013: Winter Universiade
27th January – 3rd February 2013: World Junior/U23 Championships
7th-23rd February: Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia (one of our juniors is on the shadow team, and show the seniors some love!)
by Nick Montgomery
We awoke to about 3cm of fresh, cold snow this morning after several days on man made snow. A refreshing view but throwing all wax techs off the scent with the exception of maestros Nick Grimmer and Finn Marsland who gave up both fantastic grip and glide for today’s event a 3-hilled, 1.3km Classic Sprint.
The girls kicked off at 10am with the highest seeded racers starting first.
Xanthea Dewez was the highest placed girl in 46th, followed by Casey Wright in 50th and Anna Trnka 57th in the field of 68 starters.
The boys started soon after on a well chopped up course. Alasdair Tutt led the Australian results in 64th, followed by Jackson Bursill in 78th closely backed up by Nick Montgomery in 79th out of 81. Much to Jackson and Nick’s delight they found they would’ve finished in 15th and 16th place in the girls. Surgery updates are to follow soon.
Tomorrow the U/23 Boys are hitting the same sprint course. The starters are Phil Bellingham and Paul “PK” Kovacs whilst Alex Almoukov arrived last night prior to starting his race on Thursday.
The next competition in line for the juniors is the much anticipated 5/10km Freestyle. A large number of our strongest results this season have come in this style and distance so expect great things.
Oberwiesenthal OPA Cup Race Report by Nick M
After a week of training which for some was very difficult and was part of a larger buildup to the World Junior Championships (WJCs) and for others involved tapering off to target these races, we decamped from Klingenthal, Eastern Germany and moved to nearby Oberwiesenthal for a successful long weekend of racing. Continue reading
A full blog post from the past week will hopefully be uploaded shortly. We are having Internet troubles here.
Hey all!
Sorry it has been a while since our last post, things have been hectic with lots of training and preperation for our first race of the trip!
Australian Junior XC Ski Team 