Huge Wins For Kris Freeman and Beckie Scott in Fairbanks SuperTour

From FasterSkier.com Beckie Scott and Kris Freeman absolutely devastated the competition in Fairbanks, AK where the majority of North America's best racers took part in the season-opening SuperTour pursuit races today.

After super-cold temperatures prevented Saturday's sprints from taking place, this morning's weather "warmed up" to within half a degree of the legal limit by 10:30 AM, and finally the races were able to get underway shortly afterwards.

The men's 10km + 10km saw 57 skiers take off in a classic mass start. Kris Freeman skied alone at the front the entire race, leading his brother Justin Freeman into the exchange zone by over 40 seconds. Justin had a gap of about 15 seconds to James Southam, who brought in a 6-man train including Dave Chamberlain and Chris Cook of the Atomic Team, Canadian Drew Goldsack, and the U.S. ski team's Andrew Johnson.

Over the course of the remaining 10km skate leg, Kris opened up more and more ground behind him, all the way to the finish. It was 1 minute and 25 seconds before Justin out-sprinted Andrew Johnson for second place. Another 35 seconds and it was last year's National Champion Southam grabbing fourth just ahead of Goldsack.

In the women's race, Canadian Beckie Scott didn't waste an opportunity to push herself hard. After "winning" the first 5km classic lap by 56 seconds, she cranked up the pace even more on the skate leg to pull ahead to a total lead of 2 minutes, 11.6 seconds at the finish. Anchorage native Kikkan Randall put in a great performance to put up the second fastest classic time and the second fastest skate time of the day, coming in 24.4 seconds ahead of Wendy Wagner. Liz Stephen of the Burke Mountain Academy followed closely behind in fourth after skiing the third fastest skate leg, and Brooke Hovey took fifth, just under three minutes behind Scott.

For complete results and some good photos, visit the event main page at the following link: http://www.sportalaska.com/noramskiraces/2005-2006/index.html

Saturday's missed Sprint races are now planned for Monday, promising another exciting look at the early-season abilities of North America's strongest, fastest skiers. You can follow the minute-by-minute results at http://summittiming.com/races/race_results.htm