Ultimately, he couldn’t be beat.
At the 2013 Haywood Ski Nationals at the Whistler Olympic Park from March 24 to 30, Larch Hills’ Thomas Hardy took to the podium three times, ultimately tying for first place in Individual Aggregate results in the Junior Boys category. Joining him in the top position was Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier of the Fondeurs-Laurentides Club in Quebec.
Under sunny skies and rapidly melting snow, Hardy took gold in the Junior Boys 7.5-kilometre Classic Race on March 26 in a time of 20 minutes, 29 seconds. On March 27 in the Short Sprints, he traded places with Izquierdo-Bernier, who took first in the 1.2-km race and Hardy earned silver.
On March 30, in the Mass Start Freestyle long distance where racers started in a pack and raced between 7.5 and 50 km depending on their category, Hardy took first place in his 10-km race, lunging ahead of Alexis Dumas of Skibec and beating him by half a second.
Larch Hills’ Rachel May also raced exceptionally taking second in the Juvenile Girls’ 5-km race.
Alysson Marshall’s weekend in Whistler was hot, and not just because the temperature had competitors racing in T-shirts. Marshall won three bronze medals, an aggregate second place and a sprint award for her racing season.
Marshall placed third in the 5-km skate race for the Canadian competitors, with a fifth-place finish overall in the open class field, which included some top international skiers. She also went on to place third in the 10-km Classic (fourth in the open class) and third in the 1.4 km sprint (fourth in the open class). In the 30 km skate, Marshall was the fifth place Canadian and eighth in the open class.
Her performance over the weekend earned her a second place aggregate award. In addition, she was awarded the Nor-Am Series Sprint award for accumulating the highest number of points in sprint racing for the season-long competition.