January 26, 2010 (Barrie, ON) – What was the FIS Cross Country Committee thinking when they staged an XC World Cup during the third week of January in an Olympic year? If I was the Russian FIS representative I would be very upset at the timing of this event – there was nobody there.

The biggest field of any event was the men’s sprint with 43 racers. The women’s sprint had 34 racers – 17 of them were Russian. It was even worse in the distance events. In the women’s 15km there were 23 finishers (12 Russians). The men’s 30km had 21 finishers (11 Russians).

There were no Norwegian, no Swedes, no Finns, no French, no Czechs, no Americans – well, you get the picture. How can they call this a “World Cup” when the world isn’t there?

There were some Canadians at the races, but they were all sick and many did not race. Graham Nishikawa had a very credible 17th place finish in the men’s 30km and in the sprints Sean Crooks was 26th, Brent McMurtry was 29th and Phil Widmer was 32nd.

Artem Zmurko (who?) used the opportunity to win the 30km race finishing ahead of Ilia Chernousov and Sergei Shiriaev. This was likely the last race of their Olympic qualifications so these relative unknown skiers may actually make it to the Olympics.

At least World Cup leader Justina Kowalczyk from Poland was there to lend some credibility to the women’s events by winning the 15km by 10 seconds over Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle (GER) who has had a terrible season so far. The World Cup points she garnered in Rybinsk will come in handy even if she earned them over a weak field.

The fields for the sprint races were a little stronger but Vesja Fabjan and Katja Visnar from Slovenia were 1st and 3rd – team mate Petra Majdic chose not to travel to Russia, though.

For the men’s sprints the strong Russian men’s team dominated with Nikolai Morilov winning over Alexei Pethukov and Nikita Kriukov. The Russian men also won the Sprint relay while the German women won the sprint relay.

The FIS Cross Country Committee needs to take a hard look at their schedule in the future to avoid what I see as embarrassing fields. The OPA Cup this week in Germany would be better competition than this World Cup. And why schedule a World Cup during the same week that every Scandinavian nation traditionally holds their National Championships? Surely Norway’s Vegard Ulvang, who is the head of the FIS XC Committee, knows this yet still went ahead with it.

Perhaps there was nothing he could do about it – maybe the Russians pushed to have a race on this date and everyone knew attendance would be risky but still went ahead. Not the best optics in my opinion for the World Cup or the Russians although they certainly picked a lot of World Cup points and moved up in the Nations Cup standings.

To me a weekend of poorly attended races like this calls into question the credibility of the World Cup and cross-country skiing. It’s happened in the past with races in North America or Asia, but to have such poor fields in a nation like Russia is embarrassing. Bad press, especially this close to the Olympics, cannot help a sport that is trying very hard to market itself as “cool” and gain credibility.