You never quite know which elite skiers are going to show up for the Wells Fargo Boulder Mountain Ski Tour, but observers of the 32nd annual cross-country ski race got a look at two runaway winners Saturday.
Hailing from the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, the first and the fastest was Billy Demong, 26, a three-time Olympian for the U.S. Nordic Combined Team (ski jumping and cross-country skiing).
Demong took advantage of a lightning-fast 32-kilometer course to lead all 818 finishers Saturday with the third-fastest 32k time in Boulder Tour annals. He was one minute and 23 seconds faster than a chase group of three 25-year-old ex-college skiers representing the XC Oregon team.
His winning time, 1.10:12, was 12 minutes faster than Zack Simons' winning Boulder time in 2006. Demong, from Vermontville, N.Y., first got on skis at age three, first raced at six and took his first ski jump at eight. For seven years he was on the U.S. Nordic Combined team.
If that wasn't fast, the female field boasted a three-minute runaway winner in diminutive 21-year-old Evelyn Dong, the Wayland, Mass. native who raced three years for Middlebury College prior to 2007.
Dong (1.16:06) clocked the second-fastest Boulder winning women's time and was a full 14:27 quicker than Brooke Hovey's final time on last year's slower course. Dong, the 2006 NCAA Championship bronze medalist at 15 kilometers, was 35th overall Saturday and raced with the men most of the time.
Actually, Saturday's race was a showcase for the handful of elite skiers in J.D. Downing's nine-year-old non-profit XC Oregon program based in Bend. Taking a break from her Middlebury studies, Dong is the team's only female elite skier. Most of the men were here and placed well.
Men's runner-up Zach Violett (1.11:35) was an All-American skier at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. Third-place Marshall Greene (1.11:42) graduated from Middlebury in 2004 but wanted to keep skiing at a high level. Fourth-place Brayton Osgood (1.11:43) came from Dartmouth College and Maine and was looking for something different in going to central Oregon.
The top local finishers for the men were FSx/Sun Valley's Simons (13th in 1.12:40) and Colin Rodgers (16th in 1.12:42) along with 49-year-old Jon Engen (19th in 1.14:01). FSx/Sun Valley's Kate Whitcomb (63rd overall in 1.19:50) was fourth among the women.
Sun Valley boasted plenty of age class winners led by first-place finishers Joanne Davis, E.J. Harpham, 80-year-old Charley French (14:15 faster than he did as a brash 79-year-old), Andy Andrews and Del Pletcher.
Taking second in their classes were Jenny Busdon, Linda McClatchy, Muffy Ritz, Whitcomb, Barbro Hatlevik and Norman Clark. In third place were JoAnn Levy, Adrienne Leugers, Crystal Ward, Maranda Stopol, Nello Busdon, Jon Engen and John King (28th overall).
Finishing times for those skiers returning from the 2006 Boulder Tour were generally anywhere from 12 to 36 minutes faster. But there were some local skiers who improved more than a half-an-hour.
They included Brian Yeager 52:44, Tim Eagan 51:24, Don Haisley 45:06, Tod Gunter 34:26, Lucy Bourret 33:17, Kathy Lynn 32:56, Gloria Kimball 31:17 and, of course, 12-year-old Maranda Stopol, who was just two hours, two minutes and 30 seconds faster than her 2006 time.
