January 22, 2011 (Otepaa, Estonia) – After last weekend’s Sprint World Cup in Liberec, CZE, Dasha [Gaiazova], Chandra [Crawford], and I had a long 18-hour travel day en route to Otepää, Estonia. The next morning we went for a ski on the beautiful Otepää ski trails.

They’ve had a record amount of snowfall for this time of year! It’s amazing, and it just keeps on snowing. It is such a fabulous race site and they recently built a brand new chalet with huge bleachers, as well as a new waxing complex for the races. They are ready for the massive Estonian crowds that love ski racing.

I’m especially excited to be back in Estonia because it’s my family’s homeland. It’s been a while since I last spoke Estonian so I was a bit nervous to give my first ever Estonian interview. I guess it went pretty well because it made it on National TV here!

This week I focused on improving my speed after my mediocre result last weekend in Liberec. I had some really good workouts filled with short sprints. I feel much better this week, my pre-race intervals felt much better than last week. I’m looking forward to the classic sprint on Sunday.

On Wednesday the rest of our team and wax techs arrived after spending the first half of the week training in Finland. I’m so happy to have the wax techs back as we’ve been waxing out own skis all week with no tools. We had to put klister on our skis with no heat gun or metal brush… it was messy.

The distance course for Saturday’s 15km classic race is one of the toughest 5km loops in the world. It has an enormous hill that climbs from the bottom of the ski jump straight up to the top. The four brave men that started the 15km classic were Graeme Killick, Kevin Sandau, Michael Somppi, and Jess Cockney. I had the boys tell me their thoughts on their first ever over-seas World Cup.

Graeme Killick
It was a tough course and I should have asked for more grip because I was unable to stay in the track for much of the course. Overall I think it will improve from here on in and I look forward to becoming competitive at this level.

Michael Somppi
We started off our trip in Vierumaki, Finland for a couple days of training on light rolling terrain. The Scandic Hotel was awesome and I visited the Peltonen factory!  Today was my first race in Europe and boy was it a challenging one on that course.  I’m excited to be here and can’t wait to race more.

Kevin Sandau
Today’s world cup was a really good primer for next week’s Under-23 Champs. The course was one of the hardest I’ve raced on and was really technically demanding, but I thought I skied it pretty well. There were a few sketchy moments on the downhills, and some very steep climbs, but I think it was a good opportunity to learn a few things. It really puts things into perspective skiing with the best, and I’m really looking forward to next week’s distance races.

There were a couple things I would have liked to have done better, but overall I’m very pleased with the race. Racing with the best really puts things into perspective, and there’s a lot for me to take away from this experience. This being my second world cup, it went much better than my first, where I got a bit antsy at the start and sprinted the first kilometer. It’s not hard to improve on last place…

Jess Cockney
Well, today was my first World Cup and mostly it was a good chance to get some experience on the trails we’ll be using next week at the U23 World Championships. As for the race itself I’m disappointed with the end result but I have a few positives to take from it and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow’s sprint race. I often race my best with lots of hard training and races under my belt so I’m hoping things just get better and better as we get closer to next week’s races.

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We caught up with Canadian Coach Eric de Nys for his impressions as well…
Today was good.  We had two men who started their first World Cup ever and all four men and one women started their first World Cup overseas. Kevin Sandau, Michael Sompii and Emily Nishikawa have raced the WC in Canmore but this was the first time away from home and it was an eye opener. But all starters had a great experience and will take away a lot heading into next week’s races, the rest of the season, and the rest of their careers!

All were nervous of course but excited to tackle what is arguably the toughest course on the World Cup circuit. I know they’re hungry for more and this will feed their desires to become the best in the world. Racing at the WC level from the NorAm’s is like going from grade school to high school. Coming out of grade school you quickly realize that you’re not what you thought you were…..but you adapt, gain perspective, and start to work harder to become that all-knowing Senior.

We are all looking forward to the sprint tomorrow.