November 18, 2011 (Sjusjøen, Norway) – Over a dozen North Americans will be in Sjusjøen, Norway, this weekend to contest the opening World Cup races of the season. The weekend’s events include individual freestyle distances races on Saturday and team relays on Sunday. Originally scheduled for Beitostolen, the events were moved to Sjusjøen last week when it became apparent that the lack of snow, plaguing most of Scandinavia, would force a move.

With help of snow cannons and cooler temperatures conditions are set for Sjusjoen and although none of the snow is natural, officials and competitors are relieved to finally have decent snow and conditions to race. Check out this video with Torbjoern Broks Pettersen, Chief of Competition in Sjusjøen as the FIS Cross-Country World Cup opener will soon be underway.

Members of the USST will all converge in Sjusjoen this weekend after beginning early-season preparations rather dispersed. With the exception of Ida Sargent, who raced last weekend in Muonio, Finland, these will be the first races of the season for everyone on the team. While most of the men have been training in the ski tunnel in Torsby, Sweden, for the last two weeks, Kris Freeman and Tad Elliot finally left the US this week to join Andy Newell, Simi Hamilton and Noah Hoffman. Also joining them is 2011 overall Super Tour winner, Lars Flora.

Most of the women, on the other hand, including Kikkan Randall, Holly Brooks, and Sadie Bjornsen, chose to stay in Alaska, where ski conditions have been far superior to Scandinavia. Liz Stephen opted for dryland training at home. All made the trip to Scandinavia this week.

All ten USST athletes will race in the freestyle distance races on Saturday – 10km for the women, 15km for the men. The line-ups for the relay events scheduled for Sunday will be determined after the individual races, according to Head Coach Chris Grover when reached by SkiTrax. With no sprint event this weekend, the USST’s best hope for a top performance is distance strongman Kris Freeman, as long as he can shake off the jet lag in time. Freeman spurned the scrappy conditions in Scandinavia in favour of dryland training at home, and hopes to transition onto snow quickly and achieve a breakthrough performance this season.

“I’m still chasing that elusive podium, as you know,” Freeman told SkiTrax‘s Peter Graves in an interview yesterday, “I’ve got a lot of fourths, I’d like to see a top 10 in these earlier races and by the time we get to Rogla and the Tour de Ski I’d like to be in podium form.”

Sargent is the one USST athlete to have tested her fitness against a quality field so far this year, and whose performances there included a promising 10th and 26th in the sprint and classic events in Muonio, respectively.

Five men will don a race bib for Canada at this weekend. Racing in Saturday’s men’s 15km F event will be four members of the Senior World Cup team – Devon Kershaw, Alex Harvey, Lenny Valjas and Ivan Babikov – along with Graham Nishikawa (2011 FIS NorAm Champion) who is  training and travelling with the team.  With the exception of Babikov, who has been training on snow in Canmore since mid-October, the Canadian men have been in Ostersund, Sweden, for the past two weeks.

Expect Kershaw to come out looking to redeem the 28th place he posted last weekend in Bruksvallarna, Sweden, his “worst start ever” to a World Cup season according to the Sudbury native. Hopefully Babikov, who left Canmore on Wednesday, will get off to a better start than he did last year when he failed to crack the top 30 in almost every race until he  found his form in the Tour de Ski.

This weekend’s events also feature a men’s 4x10k relay, although the make-up of Canada’s relay squad has yet to be determined. “We will make the decision about the relay after the race on Saturday,” Head Coach Justin Wadsworth told SkiTrax.

On the women’s side, the Canadian women will forego racing in Sjusjoen in favour of preparing for the mini-tour event in Kuusamo, Finland, one week from now. Chandra Crawford, Perianne Jones and convergence group skier Alysson Marshall “were originally scheduled to race in sprint and short distance events in Rovaniemi, Finland but the events have been cancelled due to lack of snow,” according to a press release issued by Cross Country Canada today. Joining her teammates for the Kuusamo races will be Dasha Gaiazova, who leaves Banff on Saturday.