After struggling in his first-ever ski race, Raphael Palerme admitted he probably should have spent more time practicing for it.
He finished 15th out of 17 in the BC Teck Cross-Country Championships under-10 boys two-kilometre classic race, crossing the finish three minutes 44 seconds behind race-winner Ryker Ulansky of West Kelowna, and it was a harsh and humbling lesson learned for the nine-year-old Caledonia Nordic Ski Club member.
“I was really tired, I haven’t been training,” said Raphael. “It was really nice to race but I thought I’d do better. They’re just so fast, I don’t understand how fast there are.”
Given his family bloodline, it’s understandable why he thought it might be easier to keep up with the fastest of his age-group peers.
Raphael’s mom, Nikki Kassel, is a proven world-class ski racer who won two gold and two silver medals in 2019 at the World Masters Championships in Norway and she handily won her two races over the weekend at Otway in the master women 40-49-year-old class.
“She did really good, but then again I wasn’t surprised,” said Raphael, who proudly wore his mom’s gold medals while they toured the trails on a leisurely ski together during Sunday’s relays. “I just like that she races really hard.”
For Kassel, just seeing her boy line up for the start of his race was all that mattered.
“All I care is that he’s out there having fun and trying his best,” said Kassel. “He wanted to race and it’s a big event, having the BC champs in Prince George, the best across the province, so I was super-proud of him for being out there.
“He was hard on himself after his race.”
The 48-year-old Kassel works as an operating room nurse at University Hospital of Northern B.C. and on Feb. 4, a month before the races, she got infected with the COVID virus, which limited her training. Before she got sick, Kassel had thought about entering the World Masters Championships that started last week in Canmore but decided against it, just to try to avoid getting COVID.
“I got really sick and it went directly to my lungs - I’m still coughing,” she said. “I had a really tight chest and my lungs just felt raw and I took about a week off the trails. It’s scary. They warn you, you can’t train hard coming back from recovery. I lost my sense of taste and smell and had the worst headache I’ve ever felt.
“I’m not the same, for sure. I’m probably at about 80 per cent.”
Still good enough to claim provincial bragging rights.
In Friday’s 10 km classic event, Kassel clocked 36:42.4, 4:36 faster than silver medalist Megan Brooks of Salmon Arm. She won her five km freestyle race Saturday in 14:52.6, two minutes ahead of second-place Lesley Clements of Whistler. She much likes longer freestyle races, preferable 30 km, and said the sprint was tough on her.
Kassel comes from a skiing family and got started when she was 10, racing the BC Cup circuit with her two brothers.
“My parents didn’t push me and I think that’s why I love the sport; I’ll never stop skiing,” said Kassel.
“The objective is to keep (Raphael) skiing and loving the sport and I’m really into not pushing the racing part at this age, I just want to get him on skis and get him moving.
“We expect so much out of our kids and we just want to teach them everything we know, all the skills. But they just want to have fun. When I was nine, I wasn’t thinking of perfect technique, I just wanted to have fun.”
