Faucon brings home double Gold for Nordic Ski Team

Onaping Falls , Ontario - To cap off a great season of racing, The North Bay Nordic Junior Racing Team captured two Gold, one Silver and three Bronze Medals at the final Ontario Cup Races of the season under spectacular cool spring snow conditions at the Onaping Fall Nordic Centre this past weekend.

On Friday Kaytlyn Faucon took the first place Gold Medal combining a fourth place finish in a very tough classic race in the morning with a spectacular freestyle performance in the afternoon to beat out the best Juvenile Girl athletes from across Ontario. This was icing on the cake after Faucon’s recent Silver Medal at OFSSA in February. Close behind Faucon was Samantha Odrowski with one of her best races of the season, placing 10th.

On Sunday’s mass start freestyle race, Faucon again showed her endurance and superior skill crossing the finish line in a close race to again take the gold medal. Like her earlier performance Odrowski placed a very respectable 10th.

Capping of a great season in his second year as a Junior Boy, Jesse Winter rebounded from disappointing fourth place in the Friday leg of the pursuit, to put in the fastest freestyle race in his category to capture the Bronze Medal for the combined time of the day. On Sunday, Winter used his exceptional performance on Friday’s freestyle race to launch a concerted attack on his main rival of the season, Harry Seaton from Team Hardwood, in a effort to repeat his OFSSA Senior Boy winning performance in February. In a dramatic cat and mouse tactical endurance battle over 10 km, the two best distance skiers in Ontario dominated the rest of the field and settled the score all alone with a near photo finish sprint to the line. Seaton’s time of 26:23.9 won the day by a margin of 1.6 seconds.

While somewhat disappointed with the outcome, Winter was philosophical.

“ Today Harry had the better legs in the sprint, but that’s OK, this is just a primer for next season," Winter said.

In his first year as a Juvenile Boy, Jacob Porter showed his tremendous potential with his best performance of the year on the Ontario Cup circuit taking double Bronze medals for both Friday’s and Sunday’s events. Combined with his outstanding Gold Medal performance in his first year at OFSSA, this establishes Porter as “the skier to beat” next season. Also putting in very solid races in this category was Jonathan Winter with finishes of 12th in the pursuit and spring boarding from that to a season best 7th place in Sunday’s distance event. Zale Apramian had an excellent pursuit race with a 8th place finish but struggled in the distance race on Sunday finishing 14th. Brenton Farintosh placed 18th on Friday and 17th on Sunday.

The weekend’s event was also the Provincial Midget Cross Country Ski Championship, drawing midget and mini-midget racers from all of Ontario and the Northern US. In his very first season on the Junior Racing Team, Zeke Williams again “raced up” in the older Midget Boy age group as he has all season, and proved his potential with a 10th place finish on Friday and a powerful sprint to the finish on Sunday to take the 8th place spot.

In the Junior Girl category Ava Rudachyk had very consistent results finishing in 6th spot on both days.

Other North Bay Nordic skiers that used the beautiful conditions in Onaping Falls to round out their race seasons were Senior Women racers Linnea Rudachyk, who captured the Bronze Medal in both events and Stephanie Rees who placed 9th in Sunday’s race. Her brother Andrew Rees rebounded from a disappointing classic race on Friday to finish 12th in the over all combined pursuit and closed the race season with a 15th placing on Sunday.

Submitted to BayToday.ca