Domestic Roundup: March 15, 2005

Domestic Roundup: March 15, 2005{mosimage}Nor-Ams have all but wrapped with just the traditional downhill tune-up at U.S. Nationals remaining. Canadians hold three of the top four places overall for the men and the top slot for the women.

Overall leader John Kucera also holds a share of the DH rankings with teammate Manuel Osborne-Paradis. Jake Fiala sits third, one second place finish back. Dave Anderson, Jeremy Transue and Brit Roger Cruickshank hold the next three slots respectively. Fiala did win the super G crown, by 10, over Kucera with Canadian Brad Spence another 10 back. The second best U.S. male in the discipline is Kevin Francis in sixth and he’s back 89 points.

Chip Knight got the slalom win by more than 60 over Spence with Japan’s Kentaro Minagawa in third and Patrick Biggs fourth. Ryan Semple put up a substancial lead in GS with James Cochran in second and Tom Rothrock in third.

Canada’s Brigitte Acton hold the women’s overall lead by a slim margin over Jessica Kelley and both of them are slalom/GS competitors and the speed gals are a couple hundred points back so this is likely to stand. Acton and Kaylin Richardson both won the slalom title, deadlocked at 360 points.lead and Ross at 346 kept it interesting the whole way.

Kelley survived a run from Kristen Mielke for the GS title, separated in the end by 20. Sophie Splawinski is third 19 more in arrears (as the British like to say).

Much could still shake out in women’s DH. Sherry Lawrence holds the chief cards, but Caitlin Ciccone is just 10 back and Shona Rubens another 10 back. Kate Bragg is in the mix as well. Lawrence got the SG title by 10 and wouldn’t mind duplicating the feat. All in all – You have to wish you were going to be in Mammoth to witness this.

The Europa Cup is all but wrapped up with about half the finals left. The U.S. will let the Euro’s finish out their Cup on their own, but would not have impacted very heavily anyway. Seventeen U.S. men scored during the season with the top two guys – Rothrock and Ted Ligety – in 74th and 75th place (overall) respectively. Nine women scored, though Kelley did very well, sitting 27th overall and 12th in slalom.

Outside of the U.S. Championships, the J2-Nationals – held at Sugarloaf this season – are about as important as any single race series can be domestically. The downhills went to Canadian Ashley-Kate Durham 9narrowly over Elle Anderson and Kiley Staples; Kamden Burke won over Ace Tarberry among men. In Super G it was Katie Hartman over Alice McKennis and Travis Ganong over Burke. In slalom it was Lindsay Cone over Kiley Staples and Maximilian Hammer with a big margin over Martin Harris. Hartman got the GS win over Lauren Eder and Hammer won by a second over Nick Cohee. We haven’t found combined results yet. You can get the rest of the results off the USSA page, then go to “alpine”… or the VARA page.

Jason McNeill, Gillian Hearn, Ben Babbitt, and Lauren Brien picked up Super-G wins in Rocky/Central Regional title races at Aspen. For full results go to the RMD page. Further down the page the Rocky/Central JIII JO meet results are posted. Congratulations are in order for downhill winners John Kemp and Madison Shepard; SG winners Cody Unicume and Christa Ghent; GS winners Shepard and Hunter Schleper and slalom winners Michael Ankeny and Jasmine Cooper. And double congratulations to the combined leaders, Shepard, Ghent and Mary Hostetter among women, Unicome, Max Lamb and Schleper among the men. You guys rock.

Intermountain JIV-V championships at Snowbird can be found here.

There’s lots more out there. It’s title time. Safe speed.