A former Harwood Middle School state champ reached new heights earlier this month.
Brooke Greenberg was unfazed by over 1,000 meters of elevation gain while claiming first place in the Vertical Kilometer race to kick off Youth SkyRunning World Championships in Italy. She returned to the course two days later and prevailed again on the 10k loop to make it a clean sweep of top honors in her 15-to-16-year-old age category.
“Brooke is a Nordic skier, and the Nordic skiers always make the best SkyRunners,” said John Kerrigan, a longtime Harwood coach who helped launch the first U.S team in 2017. “And she’s a competitor and she put her game face on for the races. She won the VK by over a minute and she was sixth overall.”
Greenberg won the 2023 Vermont middle school crown by finishing the 2-mile course in 11 minutes, 8.5 seco
nds before moving with her family to Utah, where she won the varsity state title last fall with a 3-mile time of 18:11.5. She flew to Europe the week before the main events and took part in a five-day camp run by U.S. head coach Ryan Kerrigan.
“We looked at the course the day before,” John Kerrigan said. “But Brooke was part of the first annual USA Youth SkyRunning camp that Ryan conducted in Maiella, which is on the other side of the mountain from where the races were.”
A sophomore at Rowland Hall, Greenberg set a brisk pace on the rugged Gran Sasso trail network to kick off the VK competition. The challenges of racing at altitude on slopes above 2,000 meters didn’t intimidate the 15-year-old, who posted a winning time of 49:11 on a course featuring an incline of over 30% at times. Japan’s Rina Ogake was the runner-up in 50:17, while Norway’s Anna Bruseth placed third in 52:42.
Greenberg returned to the top of the podium at the SkyRace, which requires athletes to make lung-bursting treks over and around several summits before testing their courage during a spine-tingling decent toward the finish line. A winning time of 1:09:42 confirmed Greenberg’s status as top dog, and she was once again followed by Ogake (1:10:30) and Bruseth (1:10:36).
As an added bonus, the former Highlander collected a third gold medal for recording the top combined time in both events.
“It was a little bit of a surprise,” John Kerrigan said of the sweep. “We had a girl from California, Sophia Sanchez, who did the same thing back in 2019. And we had another girl from the Lake Tahoe area - Sidney McIntosh - and she was third in the SkyRace and fifth in the VK and third overall.”
The powerhouse youth A girls’ squad also included Arizona standout Josephine Smeets, who placed fourth in the VK. Another star was Vermonter Lila Marchetti, a Norwich resident who races for Hanover (N.H.) High School. Marchetti finished seventh in the SkyRace, while teammate Elliot Gielty was 14th in the VK to round out the youth A girls’ contingent.
“Josephine Smeets is the Arizona state cross-country champ in all divisions,” John Kerrigan said. “She reminded me of (University of New Hampshire star) Ruth White and she’s a tough kid. She was fourth in the Vertical, which is amazing. But in the Sky Race she was eighth or ninth. She fell at a couple of the practice runs they did up on Miella and got scraped up – and she was a competitor and she just got up and gritted her teeth and she tried to stay up with the other girls. But she’s just not used to running downhill that fast – and that makes a difference. ... The finish line of a SkyRace looks like a MASH unit with bloody cuts, scrapes, bruises, and occasionally broken bones.”
Colorado’s Eston Sutherland was the lone U.S. boy in the A division and finished seventh in the VK. Leading the way in the boys B division was the Maine duo of Enzo Giampolo (12th in VK) and Beckett Cote (17th in SkyRace). They were supported by Colorado’s Magnus McKisic (22nd in VK) and former Harwood runner Lincoln Gage (26th in VK).
“After U16, I think we were in second place overall because we had such a powerhouse group of girls,” John Kerrigan said. “So, we had a good representation of girls in Youth A and couple good girls in Youth B. We had no girls in Youth C and no girls in U23.”
Spain claimed top honors in the overall results, while Italy placed second and Norway was third. Spain has won every Youth Skyrunning Championship team crown since the inaugural competition was held in 2016.
“When you watch these Spanish kids run down the hill, it’s like, ‘C’mon man,’” John Kerrigan said. “And the Nordic skiers make better downhill runners because they’re used to that weight transfer, so they get it more quickly.”
After a hundred athletes from nine countries participated in the first world youth championships nearly a decade ago, this year’s field featured over 250 participants. According to John Kerrigan, there is a strong push to start the process of establishing SkyRunning as an Olympic sport.
