Allan Frostad wanted to inspire technical skiing.

So he added two new features to the Cross Country Yukon Championships' course at Mount McIntyre on Saturday: a slalom section on the sprint course and a hairpin turn on Chalet Trail.

To mix it up, as he called it.

"Most of the skiers have been slogging through all these races when it's cold and the snow is slow. So for the last race of the season we decided to make it a little bit more fun,” said Frostad, chief of competition.

Mission accomplished, said Kendra Murray, who won the junior girls 7.5-kilometre free in 20 minutes, 43.5 seconds.

"The slalom in the stadium, that was just a fun addition to the course. You had to be really on your toes coming down the hill. It's just different, it's nice. It's a really good idea because it gives focus to going down the hill, it's not just getting into a tuck and going, you have to really pay attention,” Murray said.

Fellow Team Yukon skier Fabian Brook agreed, adding that the entire course was fast and well marked.

"(The slalom) was kind of fun and it added a new challenge to the course,” he said.

And that's just what Frostad was going for.

The course was also set over 2.5 km, he explained. Racers completed up to four laps depending on their categories, which ranged from one km for the atom boys and girls to 10 km for the junior boys and masters men.

The slalom and the hairpin turn were added especially to make it fun for the kids, Frostad said.

"They mostly ski what I would call boring courses most of the year, it's the same sort of thing, it can't be too long or too hard,” he said.

"As an organization, Cross Country Yukon is really trying to push for this kind of event, where you're incorporating a little bit more of the skill of skiing, not just the fitness aspect.”

Frostad set the course earlier in the week when the snow conditions were much different. Adjustments had to be made race day, such as setting the slalom cones farther apart, the spacing for which was originally "all wrong,” he said.

There were two concerns with adding the two features: fairness and safety.

Working with technical delegate Bob Nishikawa, Frostad also made sure any skier who ran into trouble had space on the side of the slalom to bale without getting injured.

"That's obviously the way you want to do things, same with a corner or anything else, if something goes wrong you don't just get hurt, because skier safety is very important, obviously,” Frostad said, adding that race officials were also determined to keep the race fair.

"The concern is that, if you have people lapping through a technical section of the course together, and one's slow and there's a faster skier catching up and can't pass, that disadvantages that skier, whereas if it was a normal trail they could just ski past. That's a concern.”

Adept skiers could cut through the slalom as fast as if it was a straight downhill, while the less experienced skiers had to slow down and burn off speed to navigate the turn, he added.

"You want sections that aren't dangerous but separate people based on their abilities, and that's no different than a climb on a course; somebody who's a really fast skier is going to do better on a climb, somebody who's a really good technical skier is going to do better on a slalom.”

The additions were inspired by the Timex Skiathlom races in the 1980s, which included downhill slaloms, steep hill climbs, time penalties and bonuses and even jumps.

"It wasn't crazy – you didn't need to have special gear, just regular cross country ski race gear – but it tested a different skill set than normal races, and we've kind of gotten away from that over the years with cross country skiing,” Frostad said.

He's even heard that next year some of the events on the World Cup circuit will incorporate slalom sections to test the athletes' abilities in different ways.

The International Ski Federation is currently encouraging similar technical sections in their races, Frostad noted.

Creating technical courses without guidelines can be challenging, he added.

"Hopefully they'll develop a set of criteria for it.”

While this year's Yukon Championship course was "experimental,” Frostad said, the future looks promising for further additions after a fun event that was without crashes.

"I think we'll probably do it more in the future.”

Results are as follows:

Atom boys 1-kilometre free

1. Derek Deuling 2:13.3

2. Sasha Masson 2:16.7

3. Ben Puskas 2:24.5

Atom girls 1-km free

1. Dahlia Lapointe 2:24.3

2. Sonjaa Schmidt 2:36.4

3. Peyton Twardochleb 3:01.8

Midget boys 3.5-km free

1. Caelan McLean 8:17.9

2. Marcus Deuling 8:44.3

3. Mac Prawdzik 8:44.7

Midget girls 3.5-km free

1. Cambria Fuerstner 9:30.6

2. Alexis Gee 9:49.9

3. Natalie Hynes 10:12.1

Peewee boys 2.5-km free

1. Ian Hogeboom-Burr 7:32.8

2. Simon Cash 8:07.3

3. Leif Blake 8:46.0

Peewee girls 2.5-km free

1. Hannah Shier 8:25.5

2. Maggie Brook 8:32.9

3. Hannah Jirousek 8:45.4

Juvenile girls 5-km free

1. Adrienne Hynes 16:08.2

2. Nahanni Sagar 16:08.6

Juvenile boys 7.5-km free

1. Trevor Bray 20:41.6

Junior boys 10-km free

1. Fabian Brook 24:34.7

2. Reid Seal 29:16.7

Junior girls 7.5-km free

1. Kendra Murray 20:43.5

2. Erin Oliver-Beebe 22:22.4

3. Katie Peters 22:32.2

Masters women 7.5-km free

1. Lois Johnston 25:01.7

Masters men 10-km free

1. Dave Brook 25:49.1

2. Chris Schmidt 26:57.4

3. Dominic Bradford 27:31.3