BETHEL – Peter Smith’s assignment to ski Mt. Blue High School’s opening leg at Saturday’s Telstar Relays was simple as it gets.

Set a blistering pace, give the Cougars a comfortable lead and then watch the pieces fall into place during the co-ed race under the brilliant and unseasonably warm afternoon sunshine.

Those best intentions lasted all of about three seconds, when one of Smith’s ski poles hooked with one belonging to a Freeport skier, sending both tumbling to the packed powder below in the middle of a four-competitor pileup.

“It reminded me of a crash at the start of the Tour de France,” teammate Brody Hines told his cherry-cheeked teammate as soon as his potentially disastrous portion of the race was complete.

Smith smiled. Not the sheepish kind, either. The type that told anyone paying attention Smith knew he’d climbed off the canvas and delivered a knockout punch. The senior shook off his snow-burned skin and wounded pride, stood up, then raced from 29th to an improbable second position in his 8-minute, 57-second segment of the race.

Lauren Kerr stormed into the lead during her verse of the quartet, and Hines and Lindsay Mathes turned on the afterburners as Mt. Blue finished more than a minute ahead of its closest competition.

“You’ve just got to go for it,” said Smith, who noted that ‘wave’ starts are not the norm in traditional, high school Nordic races. “There’s no sense in pacing yourself, because they’re all already 30 seconds ahead of you. It’s a fast course.”

Speed was the buzzword around the 3.8-kilometer loop, which a hearty delegation of local ski enthusiasts worked day and night to prepare after a week of heavy melting punctuated by Friday’s rain storm.

“You can’t get much faster than glare ice,” said Leavitt Area High School coach Dustin Williamson.

Leavitt staged its own dramatic rally in the boys’ race, using a stout third run by Nate Theriault and Justin Fereshetian’s usual finishing kick to overtake Mt. Blue and Winthrop for the title.

Theriault trailed Winthrop’s Tor O’Brien by three seconds when the pair departed the staging area for their lap. Mt. Blue’s Kelton Cullenberg already had made a hasty advance into the woods.

“I passed one guy, but then I fell over and I was worried that was really going to screw the team up,” Theriault said. “There was nothing wrong with the trail. I just fell over. But Justin made it up for us.”

Fereshetian, a senior who launched his senior season in style with a victory at Leavitt’s Hornet Classic one week ago, skied the second-fastest anchor leg among the 34 teams to finish.

Shadowed by Mt. Blue’s Adam Fissette as the two emerged from the woods for the final 100 yards, Fereshetian found another gear and hoisted the Hornets to an aggregate time of 30 minutes, 29 seconds – seven ticks ahead of the Cougars.

“When I got the tag, I heard it was like a 28-second deficit. I was just going all the way,” Fereshetian said.

Lauren Turner and Danny Pellerin shared in the team victory for the reigning Class A champion Hornets.

Turner staked Leavitt to an early lead before Derek Rowe took it away for Mt. Blue with a speedy second run. The combination of Justin Carpenter and Danny Soltan kept Winthrop near the top of the leader board before it faded to fifth behind Waynflete and Gould at the conclusion.

“This is the first time in a long time Winthrop has been a factor at Telstar Relays,” said Ramblers coach Ed Van Tassel. “We really wanted to beat (Class C rival) Waynflete, but they got us at the end.”

With three of its four skiers posting the swiftest split time in their respective leg, Waynflete’s team of Holly Whitney, Eliza Milliken, Nina Whitney and Adele Espy (36:56) topped the Mt. Blue foursome of Shelby Aseltine, Caitlin Douglass, Meredith Allen and Hannah Allen by 50 seconds in the girls’ encounter.

“It would have been nice to win, obviously, but second is a pretty good finish,” said Hannah Allen. “It definitely got slower (in the afternoon) and slushy.”

Leavitt’s top girls’ group of Natasha Varney, Jessie Hinkley, Allison Fereshetian and Samantha Varney finished fifth, and its mixed combination of Drake Smith, KayAnna Beeckel, Derek Drouin and Melissa Kelson captured fourth.