March 28, 2012 (Jay Peak, Vermont) – Liz Stephen (Burke Mountain/USST) took advantage of her slight frame and superior climbing ability to take the win on Jay Peak in today’s women’s USSA SuperTour hill climb competition. Stephen, who started 5th and 1:02 behind mini-tour leader, Sadie Bjornsen, finished the gruelling climb in 15:06.7.

Jessie Diggins (CXC) finished second in today’s race, at 6.6 seconds behind Stephen, and was able to take over the lead in the final mini-tour standings with Bjornsen struggling on the climb (she finished over 2 minutes behind Stephen).

Chelsea Holmes (SVSEF) came in third today, 13.9 seconds behind Stephen.

“The course was crazy hard today,” said Diggins when reached by SkiTrax, “It started off steep, with V1 and then just got steeper as we climbed! But the snow cover was enough that it wasn’t too icy.

“My strategy was to just get in a really good hard warmup so I could go from the gun,” she continued. “I tried to make sure I didn’t die halfway up, but once I start chasing people down I tend to get going faster and faster and die anyways, so the top third of the course was really, really painful! I just tried to stay on my feet long enough to cross the line!”

Holly Brooks (APU/USST), who finished 4th on the day and third overall for the mini-tour, started 25 seconds ahead of Stephen and was able to catch a ride as the latter quickly caught and passed her, as anticipated. “A bunch of the top girls were stacked fairly close together with Liz (typically the best climber) on the chase! The spread between us made for a fun and exciting race,” she told SkiTrax.

“Liz must have sprinted off the line,” Brooks remarked, “in fact, I heard she was ‘jump skating’  in true Liz Stephan fashion.  Even though she started 20+ seconds behind me, she caught me quickly and I decided to ‘latch on’ and see what happened.

“We had Jessie in our sight the entire time but just couldn’t seem to close the gap. Towards the end we were both noticeably tired but I faded a little bit to finish third overall for the Tour.”

Hill climb results HERE.
Mini-Tour overall results HERE.