NEWRY – Tongue lolling from her mouth, determined 7-year-old Marta Opie nearly fell across the finish line Saturday afternoon while racing madly on snowshoes beside mom Eileen Opie during the April Fools’ Pole, Paddle and Paw triathlon.

Marta Opie, formerly of Kazakhstan, now of Bethel, was the youngest-ever entrant in the Sunday River Inn and Cross Country Ski Center’s 34th annual race, co-organizer Steve Wight said of his goddaughter after the event.

When asked about the 4-mile race, the youngster said it was tiring, but fun when their canoe tipped and they got wet in the Sunday River while trying to launch from below the Artist’s Covered Bridge on the course’s second leg.

It was Marta’s first such race and, although mom and daughter finished last with a time of one hour, 40 minutes and 15 seconds, they were course favorites as evidenced by wild cheering from spectators and other racers at the finish line, and a photographic session afterward.

The Opies were one of six two-person teams, ages 7 to 50, who competed in the traditional season-transition Nordic ski, canoe and snowshoe race.

Kirk Siegel and Brad Clarke, both of Bethel, won the event, posting a time of 54 minutes and 7 seconds. Taking second place were Bethel father-and-daughter duo Ken and Allie Hotopp, at 1 hour, 25 seconds; Jeremy Nellis of Bethel and Peter LeBourdais of Harpswell finished third at 62 minutes.

The only Down East team entered – ornithologist Rich MacDonald of Bar Harbor, and Steven Cicrotte of Ellsworth – finished fifth at 1 hour, 25 minutes and 20 seconds. But their claim to fame in doing so was MacDonald’s identification of 21 different bird species during the two-mile paddle.

Before the start, racers lounged along the inn’s deck, basking in the sun and beachlike weather.

“For those that didn’t make it, this was the best year of trail conditions that we’ve had in eight years,” said race coordinator Susan Isham.

Sometimes there’s no snow on which to ski, or the river is completely iced over or too low, and racers have had to run alongside their canoes, dragging them downriver.

Aside from skiing on corn snow, which bloodied the arms of two racers who fell during the Nordic portion, other hazards included the river’s below-40-degree Fahrenheit temperature, ice floes, the infamous “Swirling Vortex of Death,” a whirlpool opposite the Sunday River Ski Resort pumping station, and trees in the river.

“There’s usually at least one section of it that is really heinous,” Wight said.

Although the vortex wasn’t as bad this year, Siegel said, “It caught your attention. It was big and turbulent.”

But for very accomplished sea kayakers MacDonald and Cicrotte, it was nothing.

“We’ve dealt with the world’s largest whirlpool in Eastport, so, this was a cakewalk,” MacDonald said.

A large tree in the river, however, with another 6 inches below the surface, were more problematic.

“We crashed into it. It wasn’t pretty,” Clarke said. “You had to go sharp right to get around it.”

“There were two dicey turns, 90-degree right angles around rocks and trees,” Siegel said.

But their biggest surprise came on the snowshoe run.

“We thought we were winning, and then we saw this team of six deer ahead of us. But they got lost and went off the trail,” Siegel said.