Baic & Edwards Win Holley Cup

Results, photos, video

Thu, Dec  29, 2005 - By Mike Muha

Milan Baic and Cassidy Edwards won this season's Holly Cup Classic in difficult waxing conditions. Temperatures were just under freezing, with a light dusting of new snow over crusty old frozen snow that turned to sugar snow during grooming and racing.

Skiers tried a number of waxing strategies: Klister, klister with hard wax on top, and no-wax skis. It seemed that the people who used only klister had the best wax to the end. Combinations of silver, violet, universal, and orange (Toko) worked best. Those who waxed over their klister had the best results with red hard wax. Ironing in a base layer of green or blue klister first helped minimize wax wear. No-wax skis worked great on the uphills but were a detriment during the long doublepole and and kick-doublepole segments.

There was good coverage on the trail - only a couple spots had grass showing through on the track.

Outside the track? The snow cover was nearly bullet proof, having gone through many freeze-thaw cycles in the last week.

The race was converted from a mass start to an individual start to keep people from being crowded out of the track and into the hard and slippery snow to the side. Individual racers left in 15 second intervals. Adult skiers did 4 laps around the approximately 2.8 Km loop. All the uphills were stridable - if you had any wax left!

The abrasive conditions quickly eroded wax off many skier's skis. Milan said that he could feel his grip starting to go by the end of the first lap. He had fast skis but had to muscle up the hills with his upper body the last laps. You can even see him slip a bit in the video below.

More 2005 Holly Cup links:

• Here's 21 photos taken during the latter part of the race
• Watch a 7.3 MB video (*.wmv - Windows Media Video format) of winners Milan and Cassidy ripping around the course.

Results