Category: XCFeeds

I considered Thursday’s freestyle sprints to be hors d’œuvres for the rest of the World Championships, so I was happy the semis and the finals were all excellent competitions – even if the North Americans did not quite ski up to expectations. Marit Bjørgen and Marcus Hellner both skied tough, clean races that they won on strength and speed – not luck or even guile.While Bjørgen’s gold was more or

I considered Thursday’s freestyle sprints to be hors d’œuvres for the rest of the World Championships, so I was happy the semis and the finals were all excellent competitions – even if the North Americans did not quite ski up to expectations. Marit Bjørgen and Marcus Hellner both skied tough, clean races that they won on strength and speed – not luck or even guile.While Bjørgen’s gold was more or

Just a quick note (no graphs) with some historical perspective on the Swedish men’s performance in yesterday’s sprint race.

It was somewhat of a surprise seeing Marcus Hellner win, and indeed the Swedes put three (Hellner, Jönsson and Modin) all in the top 5. As far as I can tell, the last time the Swedish men had three in the top 5 in a WSC race was back in Val di Fiemme at the 50k freestyle. (Hey Americans! Carl Swenson was 5th that day. Remember that?)

In fact, since the 1991-1992 season, those are the only two instances of the Swedish men putting three skiers in the top 5 at World Champs that I can see. On four occasions the Swedish men have actually put four racers in the top 5, each time in a WC freestyle sprint race. And in addition to the two WSC races, the Swedish men appear to have managed three people in the top 5 on 9 other occasions (WCs and one TdS race); those are a mix of sprint and distance races.

Anyway, I thought that little factoid was interesting.

Related posts:

1. <Podium Heartbreak
2. <Comparing Variability In Men’s & Women’s Sprinting
3. <Odds and Ends after Otepää

The day after the race may seem early to start doing serious evaluations, but I thought it would be interesting to take a look at different nations’ performances in championship sprint races over time, to put yesterday’s race in some context.

I’ve taken the sprint results from Olympic and World Championship races since 2001 (which, admittedly, includes some changes in the sprint format) and plotted the results over time for each nation. For instance, here’s the version showing the US and Canada:

The y-axis is an athlete’s result in the race. The colors group together each category’s best, second best, etc. result over time. The lines will sometimes cross as a result of there being different numbers of athletes competing from year to year.

As you can see, despite Alex Harvey’s mishap yesterday the Canadian men still had a pretty strong day overall. The US men have been up and down a fair bit over the years, including a pretty bad one last year in Vancouver. But yesterday probably was about average, given recent year’s performances. The US women of course didn’t expect to see their red line (their best result) shooting up like that. However, they may take some solace in that they had a somewhat stronger performance by the rest of the team, as their 2nd, 3rd and 4th best results saw modest to significant improvements over the previous few seasons. (It’s important to note here that I’m intentionally comparing performances only to OWG and WSC events, since the number of skiers nations can enter is different which can make the fields somewhat weaker. So the fact that the US women’s 2-4th best sprinters saw improvements is a “real” improvement compared to past WSC/OWG races, not just a result of a weakened field.) The Canadian women saw a huge drop-off with Beckie Scott’s retirement in 2006, but they have been improving, although yesterday’s race was probably only a modest improvement over the Olympics last year.

And here’s the same graph for the “big six” nations (NOR, SWE, FIN, RUS, GER, ITA). It’s big, so click through for the full version:

Only a few notes here:

• For some reason I was surprised by the steady decline of the German sprinters.
• The Russian men, clearly improving considerably over recent years, truly had a bad day yesterday.
• The Finnish women also really struggled yesterday. Hopefully Krista Lähteenmäki and a healthy Aino-Kaisa Saarinen can make up for it in some of the distance events.

Related posts:

1. <Trends In US Skiing Performance: Sprint
2. <Most Improved: Women’s Sprint
3. <Mid-Season Review: North American Sprint

< <

Hi Everyone,

I’m in Antholz, Italy at the moment. Tim and I have been here for a little over a week following the conclusion of the Fort Kent World Cup. It was nice to be home in the USA for three weeks and I was fortunate to have some good results at both of the American races. I think the high point for me was definitely the 9th place in the Fort Kent mass start. During the previous day’s Pursuit Race, I made a costly blunder and forgot to take two of the four clips I needed for that four-stage competition. This meant that, upon reaching the first standing stage, I had to flag down a race official and get two clips from the spare rifle on the spare rack. This took added a solid 30 seconds on to my course time and took me out of a Top-20 finish. At the end of the day, when all the numbers were crunched, it appeared that this error had cost me the qualification for the Mass Start the following day.

However, luck was with me on Sunday and a few of the qualified athletes dropped off the start list within an hour and a half of the start. Thus, I was given the last race slot and a chance to compete in my second Mass Start of the season. The race went well and I was able to shoot two penalties, leaving the range in 8th position for the final lap. I was able to hang on and place 9th, my career best.

Now, it’s just been a week and a half of training in Antholz. Tomorrow we drive to Munich and catch the charter flight to Khanty Mansiysk, Russia. World Championships are less than a week away!

All the best to everyone!
Lowell

< <

Hi Everyone,

I’m in Antholz, Italy at the moment. Tim and I have been here for a little over a week following the conclusion of the Fort Kent World Cup. It was nice to be home in the USA for three weeks and I was fortunate to have some good results at both of the American races. I think the high point for me was definitely the 9th place in the Fort Kent mass start. During the previous day’s Pursuit Race, I made a costly blunder and forgot to take two of the four clips I needed for that four-stage competition. This meant that, upon reaching the first standing stage, I had to flag down a race official and get two clips from the spare rifle on the spare rack. This took added a solid 30 seconds on to my course time and took me out of a Top-20 finish. At the end of the day, when all the numbers were crunched, it appeared that this error had cost me the qualification for the Mass Start the following day.

However, luck was with me on Sunday and a few of the qualified athletes dropped off the start list within an hour and a half of the start. Thus, I was given the last race slot and a chance to compete in my second Mass Start of the season. The race went well and I was able to shoot two penalties, leaving the range in 8th position for the final lap. I was able to hang on and place 9th, my career best.

Now, it’s just been a week and a half of training in Antholz. Tomorrow we drive to Munich and catch the charter flight to Khanty Mansiysk, Russia. World Championships are less than a week away!

All the best to everyone!
Lowell

< <

Hi Everyone,

I’m in Antholz, Italy at the moment. Tim and I have been here for a little over a week following the conclusion of the Fort Kent World Cup. It was nice to be home in the USA for three weeks and I was fortunate to have some good results at both of the American races. I think the high point for me was definitely the 9th place in the Fort Kent mass start. During the previous day’s Pursuit Race, I made a costly blunder and forgot to take two of the four clips I needed for that four-stage competition. This meant that, upon reaching the first standing stage, I had to flag down a race official and get two clips from the spare rifle on the spare rack. This took added a solid 30 seconds on to my course time and took me out of a Top-20 finish. At the end of the day, when all the numbers were crunched, it appeared that this error had cost me the qualification for the Mass Start the following day.

However, luck was with me on Sunday and a few of the qualified athletes dropped off the start list within an hour and a half of the start. Thus, I was given the last race slot and a chance to compete in my second Mass Start of the season. The race went well and I was able to shoot two penalties, leaving the range in 8th position for the final lap. I was able to hang on and place 9th, my career best.

Now, it’s just been a week and a half of training in Antholz. Tomorrow we drive to Munich and catch the charter flight to Khanty Mansiysk, Russia. World Championships are less than a week away!

All the best to everyone!
Lowell

< <

Hi Everyone,

I’m in Antholz, Italy at the moment. Tim and I have been here for a little over a week following the conclusion of the Fort Kent World Cup. It was nice to be home in the USA for three weeks and I was fortunate to have some good results at both of the American races. I think the high point for me was definitely the 9th place in the Fort Kent mass start. During the previous day’s Pursuit Race, I made a costly blunder and forgot to take two of the four clips I needed for that four-stage competition. This meant that, upon reaching the first standing stage, I had to flag down a race official and get two clips from the spare rifle on the spare rack. This took added a solid 30 seconds on to my course time and took me out of a Top-20 finish. At the end of the day, when all the numbers were crunched, it appeared that this error had cost me the qualification for the Mass Start the following day.

However, luck was with me on Sunday and a few of the qualified athletes dropped off the start list within an hour and a half of the start. Thus, I was given the last race slot and a chance to compete in my second Mass Start of the season. The race went well and I was able to shoot two penalties, leaving the range in 8th position for the final lap. I was able to hang on and place 9th, my career best.

Now, it’s just been a week and a half of training in Antholz. Tomorrow we drive to Munich and catch the charter flight to Khanty Mansiysk, Russia. World Championships are less than a week away!

All the best to everyone!
Lowell

Check yesterday’s post for graphs focusing on the North Americans. But for the moment let’s focus on the rest of the race, starting with the men’s finalists:

Sprint times again provided by Jan at WorldOfX.com. The times kind of bounced around in this race. Normally the men’s qualification round is somewhat faster than this, relative to the times for the whole day. This might be related to either the course or the fact that in a WSC race you actually have a slightly weaker field due to the big nations (Norway, Sweden, etc.) being limited to only entering 4-5 athletes.

In either case, we have Jesper Modin again putting in a strong performance early, only to fade by the finals (but at least not finishing last in the final like he has so many times before this season). Still, Modin I think has gone somewhat overlooked among sprinters this season. He always seems to be there, he just needs to get his stamina up a bit so he can be more competitive late in the day.

Notice Northug skiing steadily faster through each round, while the others bounce around a bit. Hellner and Jönsson skiing fast in the quarters, then lucking into a slow, slow semi and then of course turning it on again in the finals.

As you can probably guess, there was a huge difference in the two semifinals:

Wow. Semifinal 2 was almost 4 seconds slower; hard to say whether those extra four seconds helped the Swedes Hellner and Jönsson in the final, but it couldn’t have hurt. Only Northug seemed to have handled the fast time in Semifinal 1 well, but then he landed in a fairly slow quarterfinal as well.

As for the women’s finalists:

This is more of a typical pattern for the women’s heats: slowish qualification followed by progressively faster heats. Björgen was in control pretty much all day. Sprinting is still unpredictable, and there are clearly several other skiers who have the potential to match her speed in any given round (Randall, Follis, etc.) so I wouldn’t really expect her to dominate sprint races like she does the distance events.

The semifinal picture with the women is less stark:

Semifinal 2 was probably slightly slower, but only barely, and there was much more overlap.

Alright, on to the distance races…!

Related posts:

1. <Recap: Davos Sprint
2. <Tour de Ski Freestyle Sprint Recap
3. <Liberec Sprint Recap

Yesterday was the first day of World Champs here in Oslo, which was the skate sprint. I am still in shock from the whole series of events that took place… I think it is still sinking in.

All the events here are being run mid-afternoon, so it leaves a nice long morning to sleep in, relax, watch some Glee, and shake some nerves before heading up to the venue. Going into these events has been really nice for me, because I have had the goal of simply soaking it in. Being my first world cup last weekend, and my first World Champs this week- I am living the full experience… just feeling the water out. This leaves little pressure- allowing me to ski my own races depending on where my head is the given day. It has been soooo fun!

Lars, Jessie and I in front of the kings castle downtown Oslo

Thursday night we had opening ceremonies downtown, which was lots of fun. Oslo is a very impressive city, with all the old, beautiful buildings. In my short time downtown Oslo earlier this month… where I managed to get myself super lost, I somehow missed all the cool things. So, this time I knew what I was looking for- mainly the kings castle. As we arrived downtown there were hundreds of school children, nearly 30 for each country participating in the Championships. Our kids were super fired up about the US and they had amazing english- so we had lots of fun predicting who was going to win all the races this week! I was impressed how many people lined the streets to watch us march through…. little did I know what was coming.

Yesterday was a whole new meaning of cheering and crowds. As I arrived at the venue, I tried to stay calm and avoid the large crowds…. but when it came down to warming up- there was no more avoiding it- no more hiding. As I skid around the 1.4km course time after time- I found myself skiing faster and faster. With such a hilly course, I would normally walk the hills for the first 20 minutes… but it was IMPOSSIBLE! I felt like the thousands of people in bleachers and lining the course were sitting watching me. There wasn’t more then 50 skiers on the course… so I felt like I had the telescope on me. It was simply intimidating! Not to mention, if you happened to be skiing near a norwegian- the crowd would go wild…. even when we were just warming up!!

Stadium

Petter Northug getting his cheer on for the USA

When it came down to race time- I was ready to go. Having a crowd like that cheering so loud makes is awesome. It makes you feel like you can’t let up- because the spectators sure as hell were not going to let up!!! The qualifier went sweet for North America. We managed to qualify 3 canadians, and 3 americans- so we were super fired up. After a short break, it was off to the heats. Having never started heats in world cup- I was more excited then nervous. I simply had no idea what to expect. All I knew was I was starting with the infamous Kowalczyk as well as the girl that had gotten second in the World Cup last weekend… so I had my work cut out for me. As they introduced each of us one at a time at the line, it all hit me. I think if I would have had a few more seconds to wait there.. I may have shed a tear. But, before I knew it the gun was fired and we were off. Having a good start, I hit the corner right in with the lead pack… stepping in right in front of Kowalczyk. (which was my claim to fame for the day-maybe even for the next year). For the next three minutes it was a blur… I just went with it. Accelerated when they did, and tucking in behind when they did. Not surprisingly, when we neared the end I wasn’t quite able to hold on to the lead pack- and crossed the line in 5th.. putting me in 24th for the day. More then the result I was blown away by the experience. It was simply unbelievable to see what “Norwegian Spirit” does to a race! It turns it into the Superbowl of Nordic Skiing. Just incredible!

Looking over the stadium from the wax cabins

Nearing the end of my quarter-finals

Unfortunately Kikkan fell during the quarterfinals, wrecking her chance for the gold- but I think every person out there knows she would have been a true threat. It was incredible to watch her true sport shine through as she brushed it off and continued to say “it happens”. Kikkan has never ceased to impressed me since the minute I joined APU 8 months ago! It has been incredibly fun for me to watch her win world cups first person. Not only because it is incredible to watch- but because she has proved it to me that champions are human. I have always looked at the norwegians and believed they must be from another planet…. they must be doing rocket science. But Kikkan has proved to me that its humanly possible. I train with her day in and day out- and she is not performing rocket science. She is simply working her ass off, and has been for years now. So as sad as it was to see her fall, she still is one of the fastest sprinters in the world.

Team APU

So with a strong start- the US is pumped for the many more races to come.

My next race will be Monday, which is the 10km classic. In the meantime, it is the womans pursuit race tomorrow, and the mens pursuit on sunday.

One of the camps out on the distance course

We had an excellent sprint practice today. We were honoring the World Championships (where Andy got 10th!) and getting ready for Jr Nationals. The conditions were perfect and the weather was sublime.
After a warm up and some practice starts (pictured below) we ran a prelim and 3 heats.
It is always interesting to see how fast the kids ski in the prelim and the heats. Typically the pure sprinters do really well in the prelim and hang on in the heats while others may get faster in the heats. There was a day when SMS was known for our sprinters. Now that’s not the case, we have kids who can do well because they are tough through the heats, but they may not have the pure speed. We do have 3 pure sprinters, but you can guess who they are?
Anytime we time a workout, it is easy to get all fired up and analyze the results. This can lead to twisted logic…here is some to help this old coach feel good… last time I raced Brooke, I whopped her. Brooke beat Heather in a couple of sprint starts today. Heather was 31st at Jr World Champs in the sprint. Skyler was 35th at Jr Worlds in the sprint. Skyler was 3rd at Sr. Nationals. Ergo…. I could have easily won Sr. Nationals 🙂 Watch out Rob Bradlee, here I come!
Brooke spanks Heather off the line.
Tess and ‘Kenzie.
Rachel and Cambria.
The Caldwell cousins.
Mac lays it down on Nick (who learned not to bring his rock skis to sprint practice).
Hallie and Issy.
Bridger pushed Skyler hard, but couldn’t quite get him.
Charlie and Tyler.

Warm down chat.
As always, you can click on any picture to enlarge it.

This is just a quick update with some graphs of the North American’s heat times (data provided via Jan at WorldOfXC.com). I’ll have my usual sprint race recap up tomorrow. Obviously, it was a pretty disappointing day for the North Americans, since Kikkan Randall had some big expectations behind her. But sprint racing is risky, so that’s the breaks. Here are the heat times for the North American men:

And for the North American women:

Related posts:

1. <Gällivare Recap: North Americans
2. <TdS Classic Sprint: North Americans
3. <Tour de Ski: Leaders & North Americans

Wow, what a bummer of a day for Kikkan! But that’s sprint racing; everyone who makes it to the finals relies on at least a little bit of luck.

Related posts:

1. <Race Snapshot: Davos WC Sprint
2. <Tour de Ski Freestyle Sprint Recap
3. <Race Snapshot: Liberec Freestyle Sprint

Wow, what a bummer of a day for Kikkan! But that’s sprint racing; everyone who makes it to the finals relies on at least a little bit of luck.

Related posts:

1. <Race Snapshot: Davos WC Sprint
2. <Tour de Ski Freestyle Sprint Recap
3. <Race Snapshot: Liberec Freestyle Sprint

After a good week of training here in Lake Placid, I’m off this morning for Russia! It will be a long next couple of days of travel (overnight in Oslo before leaving for Khanty Saturday morning). It’s exciting to finally be heading off to World Championships, I’m really looking forward to racing again. I’ll keep you posted as things get underway!

After a good week of training here in Lake Placid, I’m off this morning for Russia! It will be a long next couple of days of travel (overnight in Oslo before leaving for Khanty Saturday morning). It’s exciting to finally be heading off to World Championships, I’m really looking forward to racing again. I’ll keep you posted as things get underway!

After a good week of training here in Lake Placid, I’m off this morning for Russia! It will be a long next couple of days of travel (overnight in Oslo before leaving for Khanty Saturday morning). It’s exciting to finally be heading off to World Championships, I’m really looking forward to racing again. I’ll keep you posted as things get underway!

After a good week of training here in Lake Placid, I’m off this morning for Russia! It will be a long next couple of days of travel (overnight in Oslo before leaving for Khanty Saturday morning). It’s exciting to finally be heading off to World Championships, I’m really looking forward to racing again. I’ll keep you posted as things get underway!