Race Reports: Engadin and Masters World Cup

 Many thanks to Rob Corkran, our man on the spot, for this race report from the Engadin and the Masters World Cup in Klosters, Switzerland, and for the photos -- I mean, those mountains!  How could you even ski with that backdrop? Somehow the racers did, and here is the report:

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With a rough start to our journey and an immediate flurry of races upon arrival, let alone recent open-heart surgery, this was a challenging year at the Masters World Cup for Suzanne especially, but also me.  See below, Appendix, for a summary of the unexpected drama that we faced this year!

After a first day inspecting the MWC course for the “elderly”, women over 70 and men over 75, we headed for the start of the famous Engadin Ski Marathon.  This entailed early rising and an early train with transfer to bus.

Start of the Engadin Ski Marathon

The last stage of the bus trip was along the lake on which the race starts, in opposite direction to the race. The lead skiers could be seen, hundreds of them, still undifferentiated from the rest of field of the thousands of skiers who had already started.  Suzanne started about two-thirds of the way back and I at about three-quarters of the way through the 13,400 entrants, there being a start of up to five hundred every three minutes.

The Engadin Ski Marathon is primarily a 42k freestyle race, with provision for classic skiers, two tracks, sometimes one, for the entire race. Suzanne skated the race and I chose to do classic.  Neither of us really raced it.  Suzanne’s goal was to finish the race with energy for her first classic race the next day! She accomplished that in a time of about four hours and fifty minutes, including a thirty minute wait for her turn to scale The Hill. The race was uneventful for her except for a mortifying incident on The Hill.

 

I had been watching weather for Klosters before leaving Seattle and had noted that it was clearly klister conditions. Then I stumbled across the daily waxing tips for Swix and Toko at the Swiss national cross country school in Pontresina, and at the midway point of the Engadin.  What?  Swix 30, with Swix 40 hard wax!  Well, that course is almost 2,000 feet higher than Klosters.  The day before the race Toko changed its tip: base klister, blue klister and a cover of a Toko blue!  So I went with Swix green klister and blue klister covered with Swix 40.  The alarming caveat was that you should carry Toko Universal Warm klister for “Touch Ups” later in the race.  For the first time in 57 years of xc skiing, I bought a spray klister!

From the start my skis were awesome! I was easily the fastest in my group, which was however no statement of absolute speed.  I was amid the hoi pollois and the sound of fish scale skis could be heard.  But as the race progressed and stronger and occasionally skilled skiers passed me from even later groups my skis could catch up to them on the slight downhills.  I used my go-to glide wax brand, Star Next, a wax developed post fluorides.  In this case Star Next Medium Powder, ironed in, scraped and brushed at home.  Suzanne found the same wax good on her skate skis, but it was not the fastest amongst her cohort.

 

The gradual descent of the first hill on to the lake revealed one of the most impressive sights in cross country skiing; a ribbon of skiers, maybe 10-15 skaters wide stretching for kilometers to the far end of the lake with the dramatic alpine scenery of the Engadin valley bathed in early morning light!

 

For later starters the crux of the race is “The Hill.”  It is a steep climb of less than fifty meters up two trails through the woods, each about 10 meters wide.  This year maybe a half meter of snow had accumulated over a sheet of ice. There was room for four lines of skiers herringboning, some with a little glide, all so close that coordination in steps was necessary.  Suzanne fell on a patch of ice and could not get right up. Volunteers stationed on the course swooped in to pick her up.  Embarrassed, she imagined that she might be asked to step aside and exit the race! By the time I arrived every third skier was falling.  Volunteers were taking off skis of those tied in knots.  My wait to start up the hill stretched to fifty minutes, whereas Suzanne had to wait only thirty minutes! Once on the hill I got impatient and got out of line and with my excellent wax skied straight up!  That despite the example of another classic skier early in my wait.  A young man, he had charged up the hill to the growing roar of the crowd.  As the roar reached a crescendo he fell on his face on a patch of ice!  When I encountered that spot and realized the cause of the young man’s fall I gingerly side stepped the ice and made it to the top without incident.

As we passed through St. Moritz I was skiing with a good classic skier, a woman in her mid thirties fashionably dressed, her hat some sort of animal fur.  She explained that she was Italian and spent almost every winter weekend in St. Moritz and “knew the town well.”

 

The next challenge for those in the rear of the van was the infamous “mattress hill,” a downhill through open forest with all trees bundled for injury prevention.  By the time I got there the exposed boilerplate looked like a fluvial braided stream with big piles of loose snow in between the interweaving patches of ice. All skiers were descending the trail on foot except for a Swiss woman and me, who managed to run into each other and a tree at the confluence of two of the braided ice patches!

At about 20k with a higher sun and wind protected glades, my wax failed completely.  I did a “touch up” with the spray universal which worked like a charm until I entered the next shaded area! I bailed shortly thereafter in Pontresina, the mid point.  My primary function on the trip was to provide waxing support for Suzanne whose first MWC race was to start in about twenty hours!

 

The Masters World Cup courses for the “elderly”, a term used by the Finns last year for skiers over 70 if female and over 75 if male, were disappointing. (I continue using the term because I enjoy the irony of the juxtaposition of the term and its connotations with how these men and women are actually skiing, some of them faster than I have ever skied in my life!) The continued climatic erosion of the Alpine skiing environment is each year omnipresent, and is affecting World Masters Cups significantly.  Snow quantity and quality is degrading.  This year the rapid deterioration of the uphills in the freestyle events made for difficult courses. There are also challenges in scheduling and lodging.  Those are a major concern of our team leader, AXCS and international masters head JD Downing of Bend.

Suzanne and JD

Start and finish area, with mountains

This year’s course for the elderly, constrained by conditions, was but a loop with an interior loop that was only 2.5k long. Situated on the meadow that included the start area, it was basically two gentle downhills and two gentle uphills. This sounds boring which it was and also sounds easy, which it was not. That sort of course offers no respite that a skier can use to recover.  It was 5,10 or 15k around the same loop with constant application of power required.  Quite a change from last year in Finland which had a variety of uphills appropriate for the age and some speedy downhills with bombproof tracks and was skied one, two or three times as opposed to two, four or six times!

 

Suzanne realized that she would not be able to perform to her expectations at Masters early on in her recovery.  Her surgeon had convinced her to sign up for Switzerland before her operation.  He got further over his skis when he announced to Suzanne right after the operation, “Now you will win gold medals!” The radical Ozaki procedure does theoretically allow maximum blood flow through the aorta, but the procedure puts the patient on the heart-lung bypass machine for over five hours. This can result in “brain fog” and various other forms of mental and corporal damage.  Suzanne had auras for months and her lungs were affected.  She could not breath deeply at any time before her races. In fact it was only in her MWC last race that she began to feel that the ability to breath deeply was coming back. The result was that she could not maintain the same high level of effort to which she is accustomed.  Countering her surgeon’s confident predictions, she finished last in her 10k race but did somewhat better in her other two races. She has continued to improve subsequently so maybe his optimism may yet be warranted!

 

Suzanne has skied classic at MWC at almost four-minute kilometers.   This year she was skiing at five-minute kilometers.  The top skiers in her class, F09, 70-74, can ski classic at 3:45, sometimes even 3:30 minute kilometers.  They include such luminaries as Trina Hosmer (actually in F10!), who was a guest member of the Kongsbergers in 1970.  In one club race of 5km only Einar Svensson finished ahead of her!  Among others are Pat Pierce of Vernon, BC, Lois Johnson of the Yukon, Carolyn Tiernan of Bishop, CA, and last year 1980 Olympic silver medalist, Hilkka Rihivuori of Finland.  Long time club member Ginny Price is also in that group.  If none or only one or two of these outstanding skiers is in the race the second tier of skiers can fight it out for a medal which Suzanne successfully did in Canmore and Seefeld.

Speedy elderlies and Suzanne's competition: Nini Hindert and Gretchen Lindgren

Jan Guenther, owner of Gear West and perpetual podium stander

Ancient elderlies John and Pat Taylor, the matriarch of the games

A pleasant surprise for us was the arrival in Klosters of our grand niece, Sophie Corkran, the Classic Queen of Oregon.  She had earned that designation by winning both classic tour races in Oregon this year, the Tour of Meissner and the Teacup Classic. Traveling in Europe she had discovered from her parents that we were in Switzerland. Arriving by train from Chur in her ski suit, she had breakfast and dinner with us in our hotel and Suzanne sneaked her into the Sauna in my hotel- supplied bathrobe.  Mid day she had rented skis and had taken a solo tour up valley.

 

Two lines of the Star Next system of waxes are designed to be ironed in and two are to be applied with roto fleeces. I began using their roto fleece system three years ago with some success.  At Canmore several of Suzanne’s rivals/friends suggested that I might consider waxing their skis.  Last year in Finland I could not make Star Next Polar work well until near the top of its range, 10F.  All races were run well below that temperature!  Suzanne’s skis were consistently slow.  This year’s one successful effort of the trip was in further adapting the system to lessen travel weight.  I rubbed the block of wax into the felt of a Swix combi brush, then rubbed the ski, brushing with the other side.  As with Star’s fleeces I devote one felt/brush to each of the four temperature ranges.  Structure as usual.  This seems to duplicate the standard roto floss routine with some success and was durable enough for Suzanne’s race distances.  In the warm up area at the start area of her 15k race she said her skis were the fastest among all skiers she encountered. But conditions changed dramatically during the race. For most of the race her Norwegian friends had somewhat better skis! Her skis for all races were at least as good as those waxed by Boulder Nordic for some of her American friends.

Whoa, who's this speedy elderly passing me?

A really useful aspect of this preparation method is the minimum of excess wax generated when brushing.  Star counsels multiple thin layers and that is per force what one has to do with this apostate method; there is a lot of manual rubbing and brushing.  Our hotel did not have an adequate ski prep area. What was available was crowded and jury rigged.  But I had brought Swix portable vises which I affixed to a table in our room and with my method left no trace of waxing with minimal clean up effort on my part.

 

Rune Harkestad was the only other Kongsberger present. He did very well in his highly contested class placing 11th and 6th in two classic races before departing for Birkebeinerrennet.  Laura McCabe of the Methow was first or second in her races. Long time Kongsberger Kent Murdoch was present but under the weather, skiing once, I think.  JD. Downing, team leader and currently head of both AXCS and the Masters World Cup organization, always enters several races and competes well in at least one as his time allows.

 

Suzanne and I ran into a former NCAA Wyoming skier on the train returning from a side trip to Davos.  Tore Tajet, Norwegian, was an All American at Wyoming and a teammate of Hugh Owen and his Norwegian wife to be, “TJ.”  Hugh was a member of the Wenatchee Racing Team and still shows up to race at the Kongsbergers.  (Hugh and his sister Sally figure prominently in the opening scramble of the 1974 REI Gold Rush tour race pictured in the KSC dining area.) TJ was a longtime leading coach in Pacific Northwest but sadly died recently.  Tore remembered skiing on the Leavenworth golf course during visits to Wenatchee! The WRT was one of the most illustrious clubs in the country in the 1970’s.  Founded by Middlebury biathlete Herb Thomas and coached for many years by Jack Owen, five of its girls were on the US Ski Team!  Alison Owen broke the gender barrier at Junior Nationals by entering the races which had theretofore included only boys. The JN’s featured girls as well as the boys in the years thereafter. 1966?  Alison together with Trina Hosmer, guest member of the Kongsbergers that year were the first, with another woman, to represent US women at the FIS Championships (1970).

 

APPENDIX

 

E mail to KSC members, March 6, 2025, after our arrival in Klosters and after the Engadin and two MWC races, all three on successive days.

 

Something in the US government hasn’t been incapacitated! 

Suzanne and I got to the British Airways ticket counter at SeaTac on Wednesday last for our flight to Zürich and the Masters World Cup in Klosters, Switzerland.  She was denied a boarding pass!  Had we been ever alert and not beset with Suzanne’s slow recovery from open heart surgery we might have noticed/remembered JD Downing’s warning that Switzerland does not allow entry if a passport is within three month’s expiration.  (JD, from Bend, heads up AXCS and is an amazing team leader/coach.)

Midway through our dejected walk out of the airport we made the decision that I would go and Suzanne would attempt to follow!  Spirits buoyed, I embarked and Suzanne went home with our daughter Liz.  Next morning she had actually secured an appointment at the Seattle Passport Office!  There she got a new passport almost immmediately.  

British Airways meanwhile had put a hold on her ticket and said that a spot was available in 48 hours, but that she could show up on standby before the flight that evening.  Initially the airport staff was much less accommodating and said there was no standby and that she would need to buy a $5,000 first class seat.  Suzanne’s protestations got the attention of a supervisor who spent 30 minutes on the phone with London and got her an economy window seat on that night’s flight!  By taking a train instead of doing my layover in Zürich she arrived in Klosters ten hours after I did albeit something of a wreck.  We have been celebrating her completion of the Engadin Ski Marathon and her first two MWC races on successive days with our “savings” of $5,000 by splurging.  I bought a Bjorn Daehlie jacket and we had lunch in our hotel.  A huge dressed bacon burger served on a stone plate framed by wood, fish soup, a salad and sparkling water for $125.  (JD drives a great bargain and our demi pension stay here is nothing like what that figure implies!). This place is something of hot spot in Klosters, with its own singer crooning the lunch hour, dinner and late evening.

Suzanne has good skis. (Whew! Since I am the responsible party.) She is skiing as well as she can but is a little unnerved by not being able to kick into her accustomed overdrive.

Have not seen Rune, I think he finished 11th yesterday in his incredibly competitive class. 

Good skiing, everybody.  Wish you were here.  These races have been something of a Kongsberger tradition.  Great spirit. New friends.  More current Kongsbergers should be doing this and continuing the tradition.  Yes, the level of skiing  and the depth of the competitive field for the fifty and sixty year olds can be truly amazing, but all competent skiers will find someone with whom to fight it out.  It is a great experience.
Rob

PS. For those old timers who have been here, Pat Taylor is the Matriarch of these games!  And Bob Gray, an All American with our own Ozzie Nordheim in the 1961 NCAA Championships, has won his first two races!