March 10, 2011 (Sovereign Lake, BC) – Russia showed their strength once again at the Sparkling Hill Masters World Cup taking six golds, as competitors battled it out in the 4x5km classic-free relays on Wednesday. The U.S. walked away with five first place wins while Canada scored one gold.

Barry Makarewicz, Rune Harkestad, Kent Murdoch and Shaun Marchall-Pryde led the Americans in their first gold medal of the day winning the M04 (45-49) category with a lead of 2:27 against the pursuing Russian team.

“Barry laid the foundation for all of us,” said Harkestad. “Barry and I, if we could stay with it we were safe.” Teammate Marchall-Pryde was equally pleased adding, “I got the easy part today. They did all the work. All the guys had good legs. Barry got us started and in a good spot.”

J.D. Downing (American XC Skiers) speaks about the U.S. men’s team race.

The women’s races were led by the U.S. winning three of the four relays. Laura McCabe and Leslie Hall were joined by Angela Robinson and Beth Thomas to show their Russian counterparts they could take the lead and win gold in the F02 (35-39) category.

This was repeated in the F04 (45-49) with Trina Hosmer, Linda Mcclatchy, Carolyn Senty and June Lane winning gold. In the women’s F03 (40-44) Americans Muffy Rice, Ginny Price, Maria Allen and Rosalyn Singleton came in 28 seconds ahead of the Canadian women’s team.

Canada got on the gold scoreboard as their women defeated the Russians and US teams in the women’s F01 category (30-34) with two prior gold medalists Nikki Kassel and Marta Green joined by Doris Hausleitner and Nikki Norrie.

“It was a fast start,” said Kassel who followed a Russian skier. Then Hausleitner tagged in, “I came and caught the Russian and had a little gap on her.” Hausleitner was followed by Norrie who did the skating and “never saw the Russian after that.”

Norrie tagged in Green who described the race as “… all fun after that.”

Full results HERE.

March 07, 2011 (Vernon, BC) – Russia showed their strength on Sunday in the classic mass starts dominating the field in the second day of competition at the Sparkling Hill Masters World Cup, winning 11 golds out of 23 races. The first men’s Classic races (M01, M02, M03) were led by Russia’s Anton Shevchenko and Alexander Mindrin along with Pavel Petr of the Czech Republic.

The first American medal of the day went to Dan Streubel in the M02 category in third place. Canadian Donald Farley was pleased with his second place finish in the 30km Classic M03 category.

“It was a tough race, right from the start,” Farley told SkiTrax. “There’s a good uphill at 4km. We all attacked there, and the group separated. We ended up with three guys and we worked together until the last 5km. I lost ground to the Czech on the last uphill. He had more legs.”

Canadian Michel Labrei, 2nd in M04 race, told us, “The first guy was too strong for us. I skied with the third and the fourth. I skied alone the last 15km. It was a very nice course but with the snow it was very slow.”

The first American gold medal in the women’s 15km classic races went to Inge Scheve in the F02, who was followed in by her teammates Sann Sevanto and Marlene Farrell in second and third place.

US skier Ginny Price took first place in the F06 category while Canada’s Marg Fedyna topped the podium in the F04 competition with teammate Wieske Eikelenboom in second.

Canada finished with 13 medals on day two while the and Americans netted nine – full results HERE.