June 04, 2010 (Fairbanks, Alaska) – There are many individuals who have contributed to the sport of Nordic skiing in North America and through a series of Where They Are Now interviews and articles we hope to provide a broader picture of the current playing field while recognizing some of the key players who helped shape the sport along the way – our first interview is with John Estle.
Alaska’s John Estle has seen the sport of cross-country skiing from many different points of view. As a racer, coach and dedicated race official and organizer Estle has a keen mind, and never stops thinking of new ways to make the sport better. In typical Estle style, this industry veteran of 30+ years, speaks candidly about time on the road and the toll that takes, why doping must be tackled head-on, and of the people that inspired him. It’s Estle at his best!
Great to connect with you again – what you are up to these days?
John Estle: I run my own business which entails a lot of different irons in the fire. I do everything from organizing the Alaska Team to the Arctic Winter Games (overseeing the selection of 380 coaches and athletes in 21 sports, arranging air charter travel to the Games for them, procuring uniforms, etc.), timing running races and bike races in the summer (including a 10km in Fairbanks with 3,000 runners), leading running and skiing training groups, organizing races for the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks (including 2003 JO, 2008 and 2009 Distance Nationals), keeping track of the local running clubs summer race series rankings, helping organize the local high school track meets (and state meet for the past five years), and whatever else happens along that looks interesting. I keep busy.
We hear great things about Alaska’s Nordic programs. What makes them work so well?
JE: As far as I’m concerned, Alaska’s the greatest place in the US, and maybe the world, to be a cross-country skier. We have a long ski season, and if you’re a skier, there’s nothing more important than that. A typical Fairbanks ski season starts in early-to-mid-October and concludes at the end of April – and you can ski until 10pm anywhere you want without lights. If you want to drive a little farther out of town toward the Alaska Range, or north into the White Mountains, you can ski even longer through spectacular terrain
That doesn’t directly translate into great ski racers, but it certainly sets the stage. The Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage and the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks are the two major clubs in the state with comprehensive programs and a broad-based membership. Both clubs are healthy and are excellent leaders for the sport. More clubs have grown up and prospered to one degree or another the past several years, including clubs in Homer (Kachemak NSC), Kenai-Soldotna (Tsalteshi Trails Assoc.), Eagle River (Eagle River NSC), Seward (Seward NSC), Talkeetna (Denali NSC), Salcha (Salcha SC), Palmer-Wasilla (Mat-Su NSC) and Valdez (Valdez NSC) to name the ones that I am most familiar with.
The clubs generally have a good relationship with the school programs in their communities, and high school skiing in Alaska is very strong. The state high school championship is a three-day event with an interval start race, a mass-start and a mixed-technique relay. Normally about 250 skiers compete in the championships.
In addition, both UA Fairbanks (the Alaska Nanooks) and UA Anchorage have very strong NCAA ski programs, and have produced several NCAA individual champions (including five championships from Sigrid Aas and Marius Korthauer from UAF and Mandy Kaempf of UAA just in the past six years). Both teams have a good mix of Europeans and American skiers, both from Alaska and the lower 48. Scott Jerome at UAF and Trond Flagstad at UAA are the coaches of those programs.
Besides the school and university programs, many or most of the clubs mentioned above have some sort of racing program for one or more age groups. In Anchorage there are several race programs that operate independently of the NSAA and the school programs. These include the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center (APUNSC-Kikkan Randall and James Southam are in this program) led by Erik Flora, Alaska Winter Stars led by Jan Buron and Alaska Nordic Racing, led by Ja Dorris. These programs work with a greater or lesser degree of cooperation with the school programs, depending upon several factors.
In Fairbanks, the NSC Fairbanks decided to take the bull by the horns and to take ownership of a club program that would have cooperation between the club and the school programs as part of its mission. The Fairbanks Cross Country (FXC) program is in its fourth year of existence and is led by Peter Leonard. The program has grown more rapidly than anticipated, and we have hired an assistant coach. At the same time that FXC started, another program started in town, Fairbanks Alaska Ski Team, led by Bill McDonnell. The skiers in that program have had success, too.
With lots of programs around the state, and lots of good coaches, it’s easy to see why we should have pretty good skiers emerging from the state on a pretty regular basis. I think Alaska can still improve in the area of cooperation between programs, and in providing more education to coaches, but it’s heading in the right direction in most of those areas.
I also take a lot of pride in seeing what great facilities and race organizations there are in the state. There are lots of venues and organizations outside of Fairbanks and Anchorage that lots of place in the lower 48 would be jealous of. And I don’t think there’s anybody in the country that organizes races any better than Anchorage and Fairbanks. Great racers deserve great races on great courses.
Kikkan Randall is an obvious star to emerge from these programs.
JE: Kikkan is very visible when she is in Alaska and when she is not. She’s not only an outstanding skier, but very personable, and aware of how she can promote the sport through being a good representative for the sport and Alaska. She also has maintained a close connection to the state, training here sometimes when she had the opportunity to train with the USST. Travel can kill you performance-wise, and I think she and her coaches have done a pretty good job of walking the fine line between traveling when necessary – when there’s a benefit to it – and avoiding unnecessary travel.
We were really disappointed in March of 2008 when Kikkan was here in Fairbanks for the Distance Nationals (we also had a sprint and a shorter race) and she couldn’t race due to a blood clot. I know that everyone in Fairbanks really wanted to see her race – but that wasn’t possible. However, she still came out for the races, said great things about Fairbanks in the newspapers, and did everything she could to promote the sport and the event without racing. That really impressed me.
When were you head coach of the USST?
JE: 1990-1993
Tell us about those years – the program, your satisfaction, what you accomplished….?
JE: Well, what I tell people is this: I learned a lot in three years, and some of it was even about skiing. That sounds a little cynical, and I try not to be a cynical person…
It definitely was a real education in the real world, and in skiing – I’ll talk about the skiing part. We had some decent results, including a few top 20s and top 25s in the Olympics and World Championships, but it wasn’t consistent. We were trying to build a unified national program, with more organized and centralized training for the team. But we were unsuccessful in our effort to do so for a number of reasons. There’s nothing to be gained by pointing fingers – our staff including myself were certainly not blameless.
A lot of the things that the US Team is doing now are things that we wanted to do. I applaud the US Team staff for their vision, their work and their persistence. I know how hard it is to accomplish what they do, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. If you haven’t lived that life for an extended period of time, it is impossible to understand how hard life that is – even though when you’re there you wouldn’t trade it for anything.
The current crew had a vision, and they’ve had the support (both in terms of backing the policy, and funding, although that’s always sketchy) from their bosses to implement and pursue that vision, and to stick with it and not panic if things didn’t proceed perfectly according to plan. You have to have a plan and you have to stick with it if you’re going to have success.
I know there are people out there, John Caldwell famously among them, who think that a centralized national program is a bad thing. I respect his right to that philosophy, but I think he’s wrong, and I think the US Team is doing things well and proceeding correctly. For further confirmation, you don’t have to look any farther a field than to Canada, which has also shown tremendous improvement with a significant degree of centralization in their national program. The USST results for instance last December in large, tough, and deep World Cup fields have been great.
I think having Liz Stephen and Morgan Arritola over there for a little exposure is a good thing. I didn’t expect them to burst onto the WC scene and start hitting the podium. That is a very rare occurrence – skiers like [Petter] Northug and [Therese] Johaug, to name a couple, have not followed the “normal” timeline to success. It’s a very slow process to become consistent in the World Cup. First you’ve got to get over there and get into the thick of things – be in the middle of the field on a regular basis, then score points occasionally, then score points regularly, then move up in the pack. That takes time.
One thing that is really critical, which doesn’t get funded enough on a regular basis, is support for the “next group” on the Europa Cup circuit in Europe. That’s an environment that is much friendlier to up-and-comers than the World Cup. With sufficient funding, having a Continental Cup group supported in Europe for a couple of blocks of racing would provide a very much needed option for our skiers just below the World Cup.
First, you get good in the US, then go to Europa Cup – not straight to the World Cup. If you do well on the “B” circuit, then go to the World Cup for a little exposure now and then, while sticking mostly to the Europa Cup until you’re kicking butt there and you’re really ready for the top rung. Alpine has operated that way for years, and the top cross-country nations do the same. The US needs to have the funding to do that on a regular basis.
Do you leave feeling good about what transpired during your years there?
JE: In the sense that I worked hard, did my best, and tried to implement some new strategies that I felt would improve the sport in the US, I do feel good. To the extent that we didn’t have any “super” results and that most of our initiatives were not approved for implementation by the powers that be, I’m not so satisfied.
I know the travel is tough and the job is pretty much 24/7…did it take its toll?
JE: My third year with the USST I was on the road 235 days (that includes some vacation time). That was just to dang much for me. It really wore me out. That was my last year as Head Coach. The next year I went to Marquette, Michigan to lead the US Olympic Education Center cross country program at NMU. While I was there I had the good fortune to become friends with, and learn a lot from the late Nikolai Anikin. Although he was a very knowledgeable coach, he was such a great person that I always think of him as a person first and a coach second.
But back to the travel – travel kills, as I mentioned above. If you travel with a group for any length of time you can see the toll it takes. It is very important to minimize travel to the absolutely necessary trips – and that takes a lot of planning and evaluation. If you’re going to travel, you have to make sure that the time spent in transit, and the time spent on-site at your destination, are correctly balanced. Trips that are too short, or too long, or have too much travel relative to the duration of the trip are the worst, and hurt more than they help.
Most of the initiatives that our staff put together were aimed at reducing the travel burden on the athletes. Besides not wearing athletes out, not traveling saves money that you can put into making the competition season travel that you HAVE to do less stressful (better accommodations, better vehicles, better airline connections, etc.) It was very frustrating that we had to continue to spend money on travel that we felt hurt more than it helped, especially when we had tight budgets.
Don’t get me wrong – you have to travel if you’re an American who races on the World Cup. However, you have to travel smart and travel as little as possible to be consistent with top performances in the races. It’s very difficult to manage. It wasn’t a world cup field by any means. But they hung in there and finished near the top.
On the women’s side, I think things are much more even, with Sara Renner for Canada [since retired] and Kikkan for the US. I see Liz Stephen and Morgan Arritola gradually moving up toward Kikkan, which is a good thing.
I really enjoy seeing both nations’ teams do well. I really like and respect Pete Vordenberg and his whole staff, and I’m always happy when the team does well – I try to drop them an encouraging e-mail now and then. It probably does more for me than for them, but I know that it never hurts to have some encouragement and support, because there’s always plenty of criticism.
I count Dave Wood as a good friend, too, and I’m really happy to see the success that he has enjoyed with the Canadian program. He has been the one constant with that program for about two decades. He’s a guy who doesn’t get the credit he deserves – despite Marty Hall’s best efforts on his behalf.
Do you see another Kochie on the US team?
JE: Kochie was not just a unique skier, he was a unique individual. To all but the closest followers of the sport in the US he came out of nowhere and really put the sport on the map. I think you can divide skiing in the US into B.K. (before Koch) and A.K. (after Koch).
Just about everything good that has happened in the sport of skiing in the US in the past 30 years has happened at least in part because of what Bill Koch accomplished. We’re still waiting for our next Olympic cross-country medal, and last year Kikkan won the first Nordic World Championships cross country medal since Kochie’s 30Km bronze in 1982. He’s still the standard that every US skier measures himself or herself by. I can’t imagine how frustrating it’s been for Kris Freeman to be fourth at World Championships. I hope he can get that one extra notch.
JE: I’ve said most of this already – they developed a comprehensive vision, drew up a detailed plan of how to implement it, had support within the organization to put the plan into action, and have had (mostly) reasonably good funding to keep the plan going. When it’s a good vision, and you’re getting good results, it’s hard for the coaches and staff not to buy in and pull together. I think they’re doing a great job.
You have seen it all for many years – assess what you see nationwide about the development pipeline?
JE: It’s getting better and better. There are more good quality programs, led by more coaches who have been better trained and educated. More and more we are seeing programs that extend beyond junior skiing and are supporting young seniors. The support of skiers between ages 20 and 25 is crucial. I think John Caldwell and I agree on that point.
I think that the USST is also right on the money when they are asking a very small number of college-aged skiers to make a choice between NCAA skiing and the USST. It’s important to note that they’re not asking them to make a choice between college and skiing – just between NCAA skiing and the USST. And, they aren’t telling every 17-or-18-year-old that they shouldn’t ski in college. For the vast majority of junior skiers coming out of high school, a good college program is the way to go. However, for a small number of athletes who have a sufficient training background and who have the right personality and emotional make up for it, the USST is a much better way to go to develop to the highest levels at an age that permits a relatively long career.
I think it is very possible for a skier to come out of a good college program and go on to success in international competition. They are just going to be three-to-four years behind the development curve of their peers in Europe (and their peers on the USST who opted to follow that track). However, for the skiers who aren’t ready for “full-time” skiing, the college ski team route is the best way to go.
You’ve spent your life in this sport, tell us what you found so compelling about it all?
JE: I’m not sure what it is. But I can’t seem to get enough of it. I’ve been involved in so many aspects of the sport – racer, coach, official, industry, commentator/author – at so many different levels, it’s always interesting. Among my best experiences have been skiing across Finland in the Rajalta Rajalle Hiihto, being Chief of Stadium at the 2002 Olympics, having a top 10 finish at the US Nationals in 1979, seeing skiers I have coached and worked with pop personal best results (I hate to pick out a single result).
My best experience now is that I can put on skis at the front door of the house that my partner Norma and I had built in 2008 and ski to the center of the Birch Hill ski stadium in 900m. And I get to experience that over and over.
You raced at UVM, how were those years?
JE: Actually, I raced at Middlebury College from 1970-74. That’s where I took up cross-country skiing. I was just starting when things were changing from wood to fiberglass. John Bower was my coach in college, and my teammates Joe McNulty (Olympic team 1972, World Champs team 1970-74), Gary Johnson (3rd 1973 NCAA), Dave Lantz and Peter Wiswell, among others really helped me – although I was pretty bad. I never raced in a college carnival.
After I graduated, I stayed in Middlebury and worked. Terry Aldrich arrived in 1975 and he was very generous in helping me out as a skier, and also letting me help out with the Middlebury skiing and running teams, which helped get me started as a coach.
I didn’t really start racing with the goal of becoming a top national racer until the spring of 1976. I raced pretty hard through the 79-80 winter, and then, that was it. I didn’t cut it, but have great memories of traveling and racing with and against guys like Howie Bean, Phil Peck, Nat Lucy, Sam Osborne, the Central “Dog Squad” of Sten Fjeldheim, Duncan McLean, Roger Pekuri, Tony Hartmann, Steve Pitmon, etc. There’s no shortage of stories from those days, and some of them are even true.
My first “real” coaching was as an assistant at UVM (1980-82) under Chip LaCasse and Perry Bland, both of whom are great guys and were great to work with. I won’t tell you my salary!
Who was your biggest role model in sport growing up and why?
JE: So many people have had an impact on my life and career in the sport I hesitate to name one, so here are a few:
John Bower – got me started in the sport. Without him we wouldn’t be doing this interview
Mike Gallagher – he was the top dog in the sport when I started and was a super all-round athlete and a great person who was always willing to give some time to help a skier – even someone as slow as I was – or a coach, and he helped me a lot in my coaching career. We have become great friends. One of my great memories in skiing was to ski (wax testing) the Holmenkollen 25km loop used for the 50km with Mike at the 1993 Holmekollen. That was a thrill
Jim Mahaffey (former coach at UA Fairbanks and AMU – now APU) – he is one of the most principled coaches and people I have ever met. He was an “old school” coach, but had tremendous success. If you ever want advice about the things in the sport that don’t change, he’s your man. He knows what’s important at the core of the sport.
Terry Aldrich – really helped me out as a skier, and helped launch my coaching career
Peter Ashley and Ruff Patterson – when I was starting out in coaching they were working for the US Team, and I pumped them for information mercilessly. They always obliged. Over the years we have become great friends. We have lots of USST Subaru miles together!
Marty Hall – he was the USST coach when Kochie won his Olympic medal. He’s probably more addicted to the sport than I am. He has always helped me out and answered any questions I’ve had and offered advice. He’s also always been on the leading edge of the sport.
Nikolai Anikin – a truly exceptional man and coach, described above.
There have been so many great athletes, does one name stand out, and if so why?
JE: My favorite has to be Juha Mieto. Not sure why, but he just seemed to have a great spirit about him. I always felt bad about his 0.01 second loss at the Lake Placid Olympics. I was very pleased to be able to shake his hand at the 2001 World Championships in Lahti, Finland.
How do you feel about the current doping talk go around? Is there a lot in your view?
JE: There’s too much doping, and I’m sick of the talk. But when there’s doping, you can’t be silent about it.
If so, what could we do about it?
JE: I’m no biochemist. Test like hell, put the most creative minds into devising the best tests, work with the pharmaceutical companies to get on top of new medications with performance-enhancing possibilities before they come out, don’t tell the “bad guys” when you have a new test, then nail their sorry butts.
How do you like the sprints, John…they came a bit after us?
JE: I really like the sprints, and the mass-starts, and the skiathlon/pursuit. Mike Gallagher and I disagree on that stuff – he’s a traditionalist! The Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks has developed a great sprint course at Birch Hill in Fairbanks, and we use it at least once or twice each winter. Our stadium can accommodate all formats, including the skiathlon (a much more descriptive name that pursuit), which I really enjoy. We have a couple of those every winter, too. I always loved mass starts when I was racing, so I’m a big fan of those.
After the 1984 FIS Men’s World Cup race at Birch Hill in Fairbanks we were able to get the club and borough to modify the trail system so that it is a spectator’s paradise. We were way ahead of the FIS and USSA in making skiing a real spectator sport. At the 2003 JO’s in Fairbanks you could stand in one place and see the skiers 12 times in the men’s 15km free. There’s nowhere else you can do that.
The course that we used for the National 50km championships that last two seasons provided a World Cup-level challenge to the racers (1,850m climbing), while still providing spectators and coaches with many opportunities to cheer, give splits, feed, etc. each lap. You could probably see the skiers 35-40 times in 50km. The women’s 30km was very similar. That’s how skiing should be: challenging, highly visible, and with spectators virtually inches away from the racers during the race. Of course it helped that it was sunny and warm for that race both years.
On top of our spectator-friendly trail configuration, we have a 10,000 square foot ski center building with 75 lineal feet of south-facing glass from which spectators have a birds-eye view of the stadium, owned and operated by the Borough Parks and Recreation Department. I don’t know of another facility like it. It’s perfect for the “new” version of this old sport.
I wouldn’t say that you should do “anything possible” to make the sport more spectator and TV-friendly, but I think you should do “anything within reason” as long as it remains reasonably faithful to the roots of the sport. Some would say we’re way past that, but I think as long as it’s all about a few athletes knocking heads on snow to see who is fastest, we’re in the ballpark.
Please give us your thoughts on the 2010 Vancouver Nordic events.
JE: The first thing I would like to say about the cross-country and Nordic combined events at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics was that NBC did by far the best job ever of a network in covering the events and devoting a significant amount of time to them. I couldn’t believe how much time they devoted to cross-country and combined. It was wonderful, and I hope that whoever covers Sochi in 2014 does the same as well.
The venue seemed like a good one, compact in the way that venues are now at Olympics and World Championships, with just enough space in the stadium to accommodate all formats. Although it’s difficult to get a real feel for the steepness of the climbs while watching television, I would have to say that it was my impression that the hills were pretty gradual, for the most part. In the individual and team sprints, it didn’t look like there were any “killer” hills where someone who was feeling good could really put in a big effort. That kept the sprints close and exciting, but didn’t necessarily help the really fit/strong/powerful types.
I’m really glad that I wasn’t on a waxing team at the Olympics. Things were changing from day-to-day and hour-to-hour, and it would have been extremely difficult to stay on top of things. Whatever those guys were getting paid, it wasn’t enough.
The warm weather on many of the days looked like it not only made the waxing hard, but made the skiing harder, as it looked like conditions got pretty wet, and sometimes sloppy. That last downhill right-hand turn into the stadium seemed treacherous for a few of the races – a real killer in the long races when your legs are tired.
In general, it seemed like the events were well-organized (other than the biathlon pursuit start), and it was a good show for the spectators and television.
Were you expecting more from the USST at the Games?
JE: The Nordic combined team’s results speak for themselves – a superlative effort from a solid organization and athletes who were ready to meet the challenge. It was wonderful to watch. Like most I was hoping for more in the cross-country events, but from my experience, there are so many variables that expectations are rarely met – from either the high side or the low side. Better to approach the Games with no expectations and focus on one day at a time.
I thought Kikkan’s sprint was a good result, and the team sprint with Kikkan and Caitlin Compton was another good result. Caitlin performed above what anyone had a right to expect, and it’s always good to see that in a “big” event.
It was a shame that Andy Newell crashed in the sprint qualifications – I think a finish somewhere in the top 10 would have been in the cards. The guys team sprint was close until late, but couldn’t hold on when the other teams went full gas.
As far as I was concerned, and with no disrespect intended toward the other members of the US Olympic Team, Kris Freeman was the only member of the men’s team that had any chance of a high finish in the distance events. When he didn’t produce results in the distance races, whatever the reasons, it had a huge effect on the American cross-country community’s perception of the results of the Olympics. If Kris had one Olympic result like his two fourth-place World Cup finishes, and maybe one more result in the teens, everybody would have felt better about the US effort.
I’m not trying to say Kris let down the team. I don’t believe that. However, I do believe that, for better or for worse, the US cross-country ski community’s hopes rested on Kris’ shoulders. That’s not really fair, but that’s the way it is. It’s also a statement about our lack of depth in distance racing.
For the women, I was hoping that Liz Stephen and Morgan Arritola could have performed at, or slightly above, the level at which they performed at last season’s World Championships (Liz 15th in pursuit, 17th in 30km; Morgan 22nd in 30Km). Had they produced similar results, or maybe improved just a little, it would have been more encouraging for the future and given US observers a little better feeling about the Games in general. They’ll keep coming on in the future.
Dave Wood has left CCC , and Justin Wadsworth has taken over, your thoughts?
JE: Dave Wood, without a doubt, has produced the best record of any coach or program leader in the history of cross-country skiing in North America. Dave has been a part of the Canadian National Ski Team program for a long time. He’s been one of the few, if not the only, component of that program that has been present from when Canadian skiers were generally far down the result list to now.
The performance of the Canadian team from the 2002 Olympics through the 2010 Olympics has been outstanding. It hasn’t been 100% consistent throughout that period, but there have been Olympic medals, and lots of high finishes in the World Cup, Olympics and World Championships – results that the US (and other countries) wishes it had on its resumé.
I don’t know any of the background of what went on behind the scenes that resulted in Dave leaving the team, but I hope that it was his choice, and that he did not get pushed out. He deserves better. Dave was definitely a straightforward guy, didn’t sugarcoat stuff, and didn’t blow smoke up anybody’s butt. It was an approach that worked, as is clearly demonstrated by the results.
I wish Justin Wadsworth all the success in the world. He definitely has an advantage compared to other non-Canadian coaches coming in to his new position. Having been around the Canadian team as much as he’s been means he’s familiar with the “players” (and I don’t mean just the athletes), and should reduce the time it would normally take to get up to speed.
On the men’s side, he’ll be dealing with some high expectations, based upon the results of the men in Vancouver. Fair or not, if the core of that group stays together through Sochi, it would be reasonable to expect a medal or two at that Olympics and/or in the World Championships in ’11 and ’13. That’s a very high standard.
The women’s team is in more of a rebuilding phase and has been since Beckie Scott retired. Now that Renner has also retired, there are some very big ski boots to fill on the women’s side, and no one is ready at this moment to step into them.
If Justin can keep the guys where they are now, and can build the women into a group approaching the strength of the guys team, he will have done a great job.
One thing that few people who haven’t worked at that level can appreciate is how hard it is to work as a national team coach year after year. All the travel and all the hard work can wear you out and wear you down. I hope that he can manage his time and energy so that he can have a long and successful run as Canadian Team coach, and still have a little zip left when he calls it a day.
Ok what’s your next favorite sport… is it baseball with Peter Ashley at Spring training?
JE: I love baseball spring training in Florida. Norma’s parents live in Tampa, which is right in the center of the Gulf Coast spring training sites. Peter and I have been down two or three times. It’s a great way to relax in the spring. I also follow pro cycling. The tactics and strategies are fascinating, and they have become more and more applicable to skiing with mass-start races and the Tour de Ski. The doping is discouraging, but the athleticism is amazing. I’d love to see Levi Leipheimer win the Tour de France.
John, it’s always a pleasure – thanks for sharing your observations and for you many years of service to the sport.
JE: Thank you.