November 30, 2013 (Kuusamo, Finland) – Following today’s races at round 2 of the Ruka Triple in Kuusamo, Finland we caught up American Sadie Bjornsen who had another top 10 result placing a career-best 7th in the women’s 5km CL individual start, Canada’s Ivan Babikov was the top North American man placing 21st in the men’s 10km CL, the USA’s Holly Brooks shares her thoughts on being named to the US Women’s “A” Team + Alex Harvey and Kikkan Randall sent us comments on today’s races…

Sadie Bjornsen

Ivan Babikov

Holly Brooks

Alex Harvey – 30th in Men’s 10km CL
The race was ok for me, I felt decent the whole way but I started a bit too slow in the first 2km. The track was getting faster every five minutes and I felt like I would glide further down the hills in my 2nd lap, which is unusual. I think the guys with a late start got a bit of an advantage today. These are also the first races for me…we chose to go for better training conditions in Davos so we had to sacrifice some early races. We are thinking that it will pay off down the road. So considering all that I’m satisfied with a top 30 today.

Kikkan Randall – 15th Women’s 5km CL
Another solid day for me although I was hoping for a little better. My energy was good and the skis were kicking really well. I think I started off a little too conservative and gave up time in the first half of the race. The second half was better. We don’t race 5km events too often, so it was fun to make one hard lap. Super cool to see Sadie have another fantastic performance. I think we’re all pretty excited for the relay in Lillehammer next week!

Today’s race sets me up well for tomorrow. I am looking forward to have a skating race on the final day!!  I love these mini-tour formats and I like head-to-head racing, so tomorrow will be fun to go chase after some girls!