Oksana Masters warms up for her races at the World Para Nordic Skiing Championships with her headphones on, listening to the likes of Foo Fighters, Eminem and Disturbed.
There’s one song not on the playlist the 29-year-old American sit-skier has been hearing over and over again in Prince George, but she never gets tired of hearing it.
It’s the Star Spangled Banner and they keep playing it for her at the medal ceremony every time she receives a gold medal.
Masters heard that anthem again Wednesday after winning the women’s biathlon sprint at Otway Nordic Centre, her fourth gold medal in four races. She edged American teammate Kendall Gretsch in a time of 22 minutes 26.9 seconds with one miss in two shooting bouts. Gretsch (22:45.2, 0+1) also had one miss on the range on the way to her third silver medal of the championships.
“I don’t want to say I was getting a little discouraged at times in some results, especially in biathlon, but I was doubting a little bit of what I was going to be able to do,” said Masters, who makes her off-season home in Champaign, Ill.
Masters is coming off several surgeries on her elbow after getting injured halfway through the 2018 Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Her result Wednesday provided further confirmation she’s back in prime-time form.
“The skiing felt amazing, our team made great skis,” she said. “I think I’m just getting lucky in biathlon – I don’t know what’s happening.”
Andrea Eskau of Germany (23:36.0, 0+0) won bronze for the third time at Otway.
“Oksana has been so dominant in this sport the last two years so it’s exciting to see her doing so well this year, especially coming back from her injury, and it’s great to see her kind of getting what she deserved last year, this year, at world championships,” said Gretsch.
The start temperature Wednesday was -4 C, a far cry from the near -20 C for Monday’s cross-country sprints, and that made for the fastest conditions so far at the nine-day event.
In the men’s sit-ski race, 19-year-old Taras Rad of Ukraine poled his way to his second win of the championships (24:04.2, 0+0). Martin Fleig of Germany won silver (24:19, 0+0) and Aaron Pike of the United States claimed bronze (25:39.7, 0+1) for his first medal after two fourth-place results earlier in the week.
Pike and sit-skier Daniel Cnossen are part of a four-athlete American contingent with Masters and Gretsch and all have made it to the medal podium, with three days of racing still to come.
“Our team as a whole is crushing it,” said Pike, 32. “We only have four people competing and we’re still the No. 2 nation in the medal count and I think we’re representing our nation well, just the four of us.”
Indeed, with 11 medals (four gold, five silver, two bronze) the U.S. ranks second only to Ukraine, which is running away with the team title, now with 27 medals (five gold, 12 silver, 10 bronze). France is third with six (four gold, two bronze) and Canada ranks seventh (one gold, two silver, two bronze).
Derek Zaplotinsky of Smoky Lake, Alta., just about got himself into medal territory, posting a career-best fourth-place finish (26:04.1, 0+1) in the men’s sit-ski race, one position better than his fifth-place result in Saturday’s cross-county mid-distance race.
“It feels good to finally put together a good biathlon race – the shooting was good and I felt good on skis too,” said the 33-year-old Zaptlotinsky. “I just wanted to replicate my mid-distance cross-country for intensity. I always knew I could shoot, I just had to get the ski speed up.
“Right now I’m kind of beating myself up because I missed one shot at the end in the second round and I just skied as well as I could. You have to take a bit of risk there to make the podium and I kind of rushed a shot and missed it but there’s always tomorrow.”
Zaplotinsky excels in distance races and he’s looking forward to today’s 15 km individual biathlon race and the 15 km cross-country race coming up Sunday.
In the men’s standing race that followed, Canadian standing skier Mark Arendz (21:04.5, 0+0) utilized his long stride to reel in bronze in the six-kilometre sprint, his third medal of the championships. It wasn’t enough to catch Benjamin Daviet of France (20:17.0, 0+0), who won his fourth gold medal at Otway, while Grygorii Vovchynskiy of Ukraine (20:59.1, 0+0) was the silver medalist.
“I shot really well today,” said Daviet, through an interpreter. “For sure, on sprints, you need to be perfect and that’s what I did for the win today. After four races, I’m starting to feel a bit tired and sore in the legs and I think it will be really difficult for the end of the world championships, but we’ll try to do our best.”
Arendz, a 28-year-old native of Hartsville, P.E.I., started the championships Saturday with bronze in the mid-distance biathlon and won silver in Monday’s cross-country sprints.
“The sprint is always a fast-paced one and so I started out hard on the course and maybe lost a bit at the end there with that strong start,” said Arendz. “When the guys are shooting clean, all three of us (podium-finishers) were clean today it’s going to be a really tough ski race and I was a bit short today but hopefully that sets me up for tomorrow. The consistency’s there, it’s just missing that last piece that will make the win.”
The men’s 15km biathlon today includes four shooting rounds and a one-minute penalty for each miss, rather than the 150 m penalty loops in the sprint and mid-distance races.
In the standing women’s race, Luidyma Liashenko (19:47.2, 0+1) and her Ukrainian teammate Oleksandra Kononova (20:03.2, 1+0) finished 1-2. It was the second gold medal of the championships for Liashenko, the mid-distance cross-country winner Saturday. Vilde Nilson of Norway (21:07.5, 2+0) was third.
Brittany Hudak of Prince Albert, Sask., (21:53.2, 1+0) was sixth and Emily Young of Kelowna (22:36.6, 0+1) placed eighth, both arriving at the finish together in the staggered-start event. A 16 km per hour wind added to the difficulty on the range.
“The conditions are fantastic compared to when it was minus-20 and the skis felt really great, we had fast boards and it was fun,” said Young.
Neither has replicated the medal success they had in Pyeongchang but their times reflect they’re well within striking distance of the world leaders. Hudak and Young are saving themselves for Sunday’s 15 km classic technique cross-county race.
“We used to be really spread out but our category is becoming much closer and the gap between first and seventh is less than a minute, and it used to be three minutes,” said Hudak. “We’re getting much more competitive as a group and our placing might not sound the best but we know we’re getting closer and anything can happen.”
Clara Klug of Germany won for the second time in the women’s visually-impaired class. The 24-year-old and her guide Martin Hartl also won gold in the mid-distance biathlon and silver in the cross-country sprint.
“It was quite hard because I feel quite sick today but the skiing was really good,” said Klug. “The last missed shot wasn’t necessary but I did it anyways.”
Klug is a B1 (most impaired) skier and has only a small sliver of side vision, a degenerative condition she was born with, and she relies on Hartl to give instructions. On the range, she uses headphones and aims her rifle sights according to the sonic beeps she hears, which get louder as she gets closer to the target.
“You need a lot of trust in your guide, otherwise it won’t work, and you need some self-confidence and I guess you just have to like the feeling of standing right on the ski and getting the feeling of being able to fly,” said Klug.
“I like Prince George a lot, I like the tracks, and for us it’s going very well. I’m a technical skier and I like it fast like that, otherwise I have to have too much power and I don’t have strength anymore.”
Klug set the pace with her adjusted time (21:51.3, 0+1), followed by Ukrainians Oksana Shyshkova and guide Vitalyiy Kazakov (22;47.0, 2+1) and bronze medalists Andriana Kapustei (24:35.9, 0+0) of Ukraine and guide Nazar Stefurak.
In the men’s visually-impaired race, Yuri Holub of Belarus and guide Dzmitry Budzilovich (29:44.4, 1+0) won gold, followed by Ukrainians Dmytro Suiarko and guide Vasyl Potapenko (21:24.1, 0+0) and bronze medalists Anatolii Kovalevskyi and guide Oleksandr Mukshyn of Ukraine (21:45.2, 1+1).
Thursday’s races start at 10:30 a.m.
