Star Tribune
Fresh snow ‘a gift’ for organizers of Minneapolis World Cup cross-country skiing event
Strictly speaking, they didn’t need the snow. Organizers of the Loppet Cup had the cross-country loops at Theodore Wirth Park in fine condition before Wednesday’s precipitation, using human-made snow to groom the racing surface for this weekend’s World Cup.
But oh, how they wanted the real thing. The 5 inches of snow that fell on Wirth Park put a smile on countless faces Friday, when World Cup athletes arrived on site to test the courses. In addition to creating an instant winter atmosphere, it changed the racing surfaces a bit, bringing them closer to the composition typical in World Cup events.
American skier Julia Kern said the courses for Saturday’s freestyle sprint and Sunday’s freestyle 10-kilometer races were in excellent condition, praising the Loppet Foundation — which is staging the event — for its work in preparing them.
“The grooming was impeccable today,” Kern said. “It was skiing unbelievably well. Talking to other athletes and teams, they were blown away by the course conditions.
“It’s fast. It’s firm. It’s a mix of man-made and new snow, which is what we’re pretty used to on the World Cup. I think it’s going to ski really well and be really fair and fun courses.”
Loppet Foundation Executive Director Claire Wilson said the courses will be different with the natural snow added. She emphasized they were ready for racing before Wednesday, but she said the new snow helps.
It was a mood lifter, too. “It was so emotional,” Wilson said, describing how she felt when the long-awaited snow finally showed up. “It felt like a gift. We wanted to welcome everyone to snowy Minneapolis, and then, we got to.”
Back home at last
Jessie Diggins has become used to living out of a suitcase. With most or all World Cup competitions in Europe, Americans on the tour head overseas in November and spend nearly five months abroad.
It’s been 23 years since the last World Cup cross-country race in the U.S. and 13 years since Diggins, who is from Afton, raced in her home state. The three-time Olympic medalist said Friday it was “really emotional” to know she would finally compete again on familiar turf. She’s also relishing the rare chance to come home during the World Cup season.
After this weekend’s races, the tour resumes March 1 in Lahti, Finland. Diggins will stay in Minnesota for several days and plans to compete in next weekend’s American Birkebeiner in Wisconsin, but she’s most looking forward to just being with her family. Her husband, Wade Poplawski, gets to town Friday night.
“I haven’t seen him since November, so mostly, I’m just excited to spend time with him,” Diggins said. “That’s my number one priority for the next week … see my family, which I don’t get to spend that much time with anymore.”
As a local, she offered a tip for other athletes looking for a signature Minneapolis experience.
“I did tell some people to go try a Juicy Lucy,” she said. “It’s one of the things we’re known for. I think it went over well.”
Ogden out for U.S. men
It’s been an outstanding World Cup season for the American men, who have reached the podium twice — marking the first time since 1983 that two U.S. men earned World Cup podium finishes in the same season. But one of them, Ben Ogden, won’t be racing in Minneapolis.
Ogden revealed last week he has mononucleosis. It isn’t known how long he will be sidelined, but he could miss the rest of the season, which ends March 17. He currently is seventh in the World Cup sprint standings and was third in a freestyle sprint in Toblach, Italy, in December.
Spectators at the Loppet Cup will get to see JC Schoonmaker, the first U.S. man to reach a World Cup cross-country podium since 2017. Schoonmaker, who was third in a classic sprint in December, will race in Saturday’s sprint. He said it’s “a bummer” that Ogden is out.
“Ben is a huge part of this team,” Schoonmaker said. “He brings the mood up. He’s super funny and an awesome guy, so hearing his season was going to be ending was pretty devastating. I know he’ll come back stronger next season.”
Group effort
Kern noted that 33 Americans will be competing this weekend. She said one of the team’s big goals is a high finish in the Nations Cup, which ranks countries by their athletes’ combined points earned in World Cup races.
The Americans were fourth last year, and Kern hopes racing at home can help them hold — or improve — their current third-place spot behind Norway and Sweden.
“We’ve been following the standings this year, which has been a really motivating factor for the team,” Kern said. “We’ve never been ranked third. We’re really going for that.”
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
