April 28, 2008 – North American cross-country skiers are not well-known for winning medals, but the numbers are starting to grow. The USA’s Bill Koch got things underway way back in 1976 when he won silver in the 30km classic at the Innsbruck Olympics.

So, do you know who has won the most medals of any North American xc skier when it comes to adding up medals they’ve won at both the Olympics and World Championships? For some, there’s no comparison between a World Championship medal and an Olympic medal, but that’s not the case when it comes down to the actual field competing. They are both of equal strength, with the Worlds actually having the potential to be stronger, as there are no national criteria for team selection to go to the Worlds. However television coverage and premiums paid to the skiers are certainly better for medal performances at the Olympics. Regardless, I’m sure any North American athlete would be excited as hell to win a medal at either of them.

To find out who has won the most medals took some real nosing around and I was quite lucky to stumble onto which skier in fact has the most medals, as the agencies involved are definitely not writing press releases in any great numbers about how this all came about. So, here we go with the line-up – I think you’ll be surprised!

Chandra Crawford has one gold medal she won in 2006 at the Torino Olympics in the Free Style Sprint event. So, one medal for Chandra.

Bill Koch also has one bronze medal from the 30km classic at the 1982 FIS World Championships in Oslo, Norway. So, with his silver in the 30km classic from the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics two medals for him.

Sara Renner eared one silver medal in the classic Team Sprint event at the 2006 Torino Olympics and one bronze from the classic Sprint event at the 2005 FIS World Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany. So, two medals for Sara.

Beckie Scott has one gold medal from the Pursuit at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City and one silver in the classic Team Sprint at the 2006 Torino Olympics. Of course Scott’s gold at Salt Lake was a bit convoluted as there were doping issues with the two Russian skiers who beat her that day. Eventually they were disqualified and she was finally awarded the gold medal two years late at a ceremony in Vancouver. So two medals for Beckie.

It looks like we have a 3-way tie – but this is not the end of the story!

The winner is Alex Harvey , the up-and-coming outstanding junior skier from Canada. He has two bronze medals from the 2007 FIS Junior Nordic World Championships in Tarvisio, Italy – one in the 10km free and one in the 20km pursuit (read on). Plus he has one silver medal from the 10km classic event at the 2008 FIS Junior World Championships in Mals, Italy, which breaks the tie. So three medals for Alex.

Of course there is more to the story of Harvey’s 20km pursuit medal in Tarvisio with a similar situation behind it as Scott’s gold in Salt Lake City. Czech skier, Ondrej Horyna, who was 3rd in the 20km pursuit at the the 2007 Nordic Worlds, tested positive during an anti-doping agency out-of-competition test and initially received a 6-month sanction. He was subsequently disqualified from the 2007 Nordic Worlds and Harvey, who finished 4th, moved up to claim the bronze. Horyna appealed, but in the end his penalty was lengthened to two years and was upheld by the Court of Arbitration.

All of this has been going on behind the scenes and I just happened to stumble onto it when I was looking at some of last year’s results for some other writing I’m doing and found Harvey listed in 3rd place for the two events and thought there was something wrong as I knew he’d initially only won the 10km bronze medal at the 2007 Junior Nordic Worlds. A couple of e-mails later and I had the answer.

So Harvey’s second 2007 Junior Nordic World’s bronze medal presentation is forthcoming in the near future.

End of story!