Cross Country Skier Andy Pohl Smashes PB

Sovereign Lake, Canada (10 December 2012) – New Zealand cross country skier Andy Pohl conquered freezing weather conditions to smash his PB at the Sovereign Lake, NorAm event in British Columbia, Canada on the weekend of 8 and 9 December 2012.

Andy competed in the NorAm 15km Freestyle Mass Start on Saturday 8 December and the NorAm 15km Freestyle on Sunday 9 December. International skiers from Sweden, Brazil, Peru and Switzerland had travelled to British Columbia to compete.

Andy placed 14th in Saturday’s 15km mass start classic race despite “a horrible start” which left him “fighting my way through traffic for the first two laps and wondering what could have been.”  

Sunday’s NorAm 15km freestyle event produced a much better result. Andy finished ninth with a personal best time of 00:41:10.4 and only 1min 48sec down on the winner, Graham Nishikawa of the Canadian National ski team, scoring him 68 FIS points.

“It was a really hard race in some horrible weather, freezing rain and high wind which cased you in ice while you were skiing,” Andy reported. “I had to push super hard right from the start to the end and was deep in the hurt box by the end of the race.”