Waterville, ME - The Nordic team hosted the Colby Carnival at Quarry Road Trails this weekend. Friday's race was the 20km mass start skate race and the Mules had a very strong showing.
The men had a great performance finishing 3rd in the team scoring and had three in the top 15, and five in the top 30.
Ben Lewis led the way in 8th place, with
Andrew Defor just behind him in 9th and
James Underwood was also right there 11th. Other top performers for the men were
Isak Nightingale in 25th and
Ellis Slover in 27th. It was a really fun race to watch as the front pack of about 15 skiers stayed together for the large majority of the race and all three of the top men took turns leading at times in front of the home crowd. It wasn't until the 7th of 8 laps that the lead pack began to split up.
The women also had some strong results.
Natalie O'Brien led the way for the women in 20th place with
Lola Villafranco in 27th, and
Nyla Scott in 33rd. The women's team was 7th on the day. The start of the race was a little mayhemic as a few of the skiers near the front of the start ended getting tangled up and causing a bit of a pile up that effected the skiers behind them in the middle lanes of the mass start, the skiers with start positions on the sides were mostly able to get by, but skiers in the middle either couldn't avoid the pile up, or had to come to halt momentarily while people were getting untangled. Natalie and Lola were able to navigate around the chaos unscathed, and put together good races. Nyla's performace was a big improvement for her in this 20k distance.
Men's results
Women's results
