December 8, 2009 (Dusseldorf, Germany) – What a weekend of sprint racing on the streets of Dusseldorf! These races are the ultimate in thrills and spills with lots of crashes where every pass is an adventure – kind of like Indy or Formula One car racing.

At least six men when down in the heats of the individual sprints and Arianna Follis (Ita), after qualifying 1st, went down in her heat and did not make the final. Kikkan Randall (USA) was tripped right out of the start gate in her quarterfinal and lost too much time to get back into the top two and move on to the semi-finals.

But the best one had to be Robin Bryntesson of Sweden who was disqualified for obstruction on Christoph Eigenmann from Switzerland. Eigenmann was so mad at the finish that he head-butted Bryntesson to the snow. Looked like he had been taking lessons from Zinadane Zidane. Eigenmann received a written reprimand for this, but was not disqualified. The FIS said that they were going to clamp down on obstruction but these fouls are like calling a blocking foul in basketball and are very subjective.

Chandra Crawford (Can) got a big monkey off her back by finishing 12th in the individual sprints on Saturday and making the Olympic qualifying standard. I am sure that Canadian High Performance Director Tom Holland and the rest of the staff at Cross Country Canada are breathing a huge sigh of relief with this result. Imagine being the person to announce the Canadian Olympic team without the defending Olympic Champion – this is what Holland and Co. was facing if Crawford could not prove that she was fast enough this year.

Like the other Canadian skiers who have made the qualifying standard, Crawford has not been officially named to the Canadian Olympic Team, but she will be in January. Now her goal is to continue to get faster – as she says – there are 67 days to go!

The USA’s Andy Newell with his 7th place finish in the individual sprints and his 6th in the team sprints is knocking on the door to step up to the podium. This is where he feels that he should be. He is in great shape and I think that this is going to come very soon. Once he does it the first time I think that he will be on the podium again and again.

This past weekend Ola Viggen Hattestad (Nor) proved that he’s human. He was off the back in the individual men’s final on Saturday and never had a chance to win. He also finished 9th in the team sprints – he wasn’t even named to the first team.

Russia’s Alexey Pethukov is an interesting story. He won twice over the weekend – his first wins ever on the World Cup. He has been 2nd before in the World Cup sprint in Rybinsk last year and 3rd in Dusseldorf. In the post-race interviews he said that he was disappointed that Hattestad was not very fast in the final, that he was looking forward to battling him for the win, not the other Norwegians.

He also defended the Russian team against the doping attacks and positive tests. He very strongly stated that he was clean and that the rest of the sprinters on the Russian team were clean. He tried to distance himself from the dopers saying that it was outsiders that have caused the problems.

How about the Swedish women’s team? Three in the top-7 in the individual sprints led by unknown 20-year-old Hanna Falk. This was Falk’s 2nd World Cup ever – last week in Kuusamo where she finished 7th was her first. Her best ever result was last year when she was 5th in the World Junior sprint. She finished 2nd in the team sprint with Ida Ingemarsdotter who also had her best ever result of 4th in the individual sprints. The Swedes also have Anna Olsson, Charlotte Kalla and Anna Haag who have been on the podium already this year.

It was a bit of a surprise that there were no Canadian men in the races this weekend. Instead they went to Livigno in Italy to train at altitude and regroup after the disaster in Kuusamo. They are getting ready mentally and physically for Davos. This will be a very important weekend for them for results. They need to do the same thing that Crawford did and have a good weekend to take the pressure off a little and gain some confidence. With races in Davos, Switzerland and Rogla, Slovenia remaining before Xmas, they do not want to go to the Xmas break with more poor results to stew on.

On to Davos….