November 03, 2016 (Canmore, AB) – The final day of the Frozen Thunder Sprint series got underway this morning at the Canmore Nordic Centre. This was the second of two selection opportunities for two men to be added to the December World Cup trip. Tuesday’s classic sprint qualifier and today’s event – a skate sprint qualifier – would determine who is selected to the team.

Based on his victory in Tuesday’s race, Jesse Cockney of Foothills Nordic looks to be one of the two selected athletes. With Cockney not racing in this morning’s race due to illness concerns, the top non pre-qualified athlete, would look to be added to the team.

The men already pre-qualified to the December World Cup team are: Alex Harvey (Mont Se. Anne), Devon Kershaw (Onaping Falls), Lenny Valjas (Team Hardwood), Graeme Killick (Ptarmigan Nordic), Knute Johnsgaard (Whitehorse) and Andy Shields (Lappe). On the women’s side Emily Nishikawa (Whitehorse), Dahria Beatty (Whitehorse), Maya Macisaac-Jones (Rocky Mountain Racers) and Cendrine Browne (Fondeur Laurentides) will be competing.

Lenny Valjas was the first starter as the skiers began at 30 second intervals. As the snowflakes settled, based on unofficial results, Lenny led from start to finish and everywhere in between. He posted the fastest time of the day in a closely contested event.

The overall race and the race for a World Cup qualifying spot was extremely tight. Lenny’s margin of victory was 6, 100ths of a second, over Bob Thompson of Team Hardwood. Thompson looks to have grabbed the World Cup berth over Black Jack’s Julien Locke, by .16 seconds. It was another great race for Locke who was the overall race winner at the King’s Court Classic on Tuesday, but would unfortunately miss the World Cup team this time round, by a fraction of a second. This will be Thompson’s first crack at European World Cup races in his career.

Canmore’s Rosanna Crawford, of Canada’s Biathlon Team, took the women’s sprint by a comfortable margin over Fondeur Laurentides’s Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt. U.S. racer Caitlin Gregg was 3rd and local Canmore skier Annika Hicks was 4th, the 3rd Canadian.

In the Jr. Women’s race Shilo Rousseau of Team Hardwood dominated over Laurence Dumais of Fondeur Laurentide and Emma Holmes of Rocky Mountain Racers.

For the Jr. Men it was Canmore’s Reed Godfrey with the win by a 5-second margin over Black Jack’s Remi Drolet. Nicholas Bardak of Rocky Mountain Racers finished 3rd.

Results here.

That wraps up the racing for now at Frozen Thunder, with the official World Cup team announcement to be made shortly. The first World Cup starts November 26 in Ruka, Finland, with the Para-Nordic World Cup also starting in Finland, Dec 9th in Vuokatti. The Haywood NorAm circuit begins in Sovereign Lake B.C. on Dec 10th.