December 31, 2016 – Team US is having a solid start to the season but the squad has been celebrating even more good news over the holidays as next September they will take delivery of their new wax truck. Fundraising for the $500,000 project has been underway for a little over a year and was spearheaded by Liz Arky and Kikkan Randall.

Arky is a member of the Board of Directors and Board of Trustees at USSA, and the chair of a US Nordic Advisory group she formed. Well connected in Washington she is also the principal at Arky Group Consulting, LLC, a specialty firm providing strategic, government relations and development advice to corporate and non-profit clients.

The US team has been making steady performance gains on the World Cup with Randall leading the way over the years against many strong and well-funded Scandinavian and European teams such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France and Russia… all of whom have wax trucks for their service crews.

“We’ve been talking about this for awhile, perhaps five years, but needed to get some other fundamentals in place first,” said US XC Team head coach Chris Grover. “We wanted our wax tech team and support crews in place along with some training projects and a few other segments dialed before focusing on the wax truck. We were ranked 6th in the world at the end of last season, but the USA is only team ranked in the top-9 last year without a wax truck – now that it’s almost here it’s pretty amazing to see it all come together.”

“We’re working with the same Swedish companies as the Canadians did – Scania and SKAB who also work with the Russians and Norwegians. Our wax truck will be similar to Canada’s but we’ve customized it for our needs so it will open in three directions including a covered porch option for outdoor waxing,” Grover continued.

The US team’s head of service, Oleg Ragilo, was also heavily involved reviewing what other wax trucks offered and providing valuable design input for the US team’s utilitarian requirements. It was a real “team effort” stressed Grover. Randall says the team members were bubbling with enthusiasm and “overjoyed and pumped up” when news that the funding for the truck had been secured.

Randall and Arky were somewhat of a dynamic duo and things snowballed rapidly when the two began the process of raising the half a million price tag. It was Arky’s earlier work with the formation of a Cross Country Advisory Group to the USSA Cross Country team that was the foundation for projects like the wax truck. The Group’s mission has been to help with fundraising, visibility and messaging.

“In the two and a half years I’ve been working with the team, I’ve been really impressed with the innovation and togetherness of the team so along the way I formed a Cross Country Advisory Group. There is an incredible camaraderie and longevity of the athletes, a consistency of leadership and coaching as well as an innovative support team that has enabled high performance in spite of less resources than the nations ahead of us,” said Arky.

“I travelled to World Cup races in Davos with USSA CEO Tiger Shaw two years ago. We were both surprised to see the waxing environments and the wax trucks of the nations ahead of us. While we were impressed with how well our team was doing in spite of not having one, we became determined to level the playing field,” Arky explained.

Randall was the perfect partner as a veteran star of the US team who was the lone woman at the Torino Games in 2006 and is now surrounded by a very talented group of women coached by Matt Whitcomb.

“I helped out with the fundraising for the wax truck but it was really Liz Arky that worked the magic. She brought me to the USSA Board of Trustees meeting last year in Vail and I just got to talk about our team and what we do. A lot of the board members were surprised to hear how small our budget is compared to some of the powerful Nordic nations and how “outgunned” we are by the teams with trucks,” commented Randall.

“I shared my story from Sochi and stressed that it not only takes the world class physical and mental preparation to win medals, it also takes a world class service team and getting the right skis on the right day. I shared the stories and Liz made sure the right people heard them… then she followed up to keep them invested,” she continued.

The message hit home and things began to fall into place. “With Tiger’s Foundation staff, we appealed primarily to individuals. While we have not widely appealed to companies some announcements are coming,” said Arky. “We found many individuals who are impressed with the rising performance of the team, who agreed the truck will help the wax techs to produce consistently competitive skis in a state of the art work environment. A number of the individuals are cross-country enthusiasts who are new donors to the team, while several are members of the Board of Trustees.”

Randall’s passion for the sport and the team is infectious and she is also the Chair of the FIS Athletes’ Commission and President of Fast and Female USA. “I was really impressed with how interested the trustees were in our team and how much they were willing to throw their support behind this project. Our board tends to be dominated by the alpine world so I think it was really eye opening for the trustees to hear more about the cross-country team, how far we’ve come and how close we are to those Olympic medals,” added Randall.

Arky echoed how well the message resonated. “The Board of Trustees has always been supportive of the cross-country team, and several found the wax truck to be a tangible, viable and visible resource to level the playing field. As a group they were delighted to hear directly from Kikkan, who is of course widely admired and respected. The Trustees all look for the ways in which they can contribute to giving our athletes an edge — Kikkan brought tears to their eyes with her stories of Sochi and the World Champs, and made it clear how critical the waxing process is to high performance. We are all excited to provide a resource that will be a source of pride for the team, staff and supporters for years to come,” shared Arky.

For Grover the safety and comfort of the team is always top of mind and the working environment of the wax crew is crucial to delivering consistent top level skis at every race site. “The elements of the environment in our wax truck include consistent ventilation, more space to move about and operate, consistent lighting, customization and familiarity with the service techs work space, etc.  These things should help the staff stay healthier, work more efficiently, and provide better overall ski service,” said Grover.

We wondered how many skis the team will need to have on hand. “Right now we carry about 500 pairs. It will depend on the size of the World Cup Team and how many athletes we have who are skiing at that level,” commented Grover.

He answered the tough question about how many more podiums the team might see this way. “It’s hard to objectively say what kind of improved consistency of fast skis we can expect from the new working environment. The truck will provide an environment that doesn’t change from week to week which should allow the us to more consistently make great skis.

“This investment gives us a 20-year mandate and it’s amazing and rewarding to see it come together. The plan is to take delivery on Sept. 1 next year as we head into an Olympic season – it will be stored in Estonia until we head to Europe – we couldn’t be more excited,” concluded Grover.

For Randall the wax truck adds additional kick to her swan song season in 2018.

“I was really motivated to help fund raise for this truck because I’ve seen how hard our service team works and I know how good this truck can be for their health and their capacity to make even better skis. I also was secretly hoping it would arrive before I retire so I could get a chance to experience the truck for my final season,” quipped the legendary triple Sprint Globe winner.

Team USA’s Wax Team
– Oleg Ragilo – Head of Service, Head of Kick
– Jean-Pascal Laurin – Head of Glide
– Marek Sander – World Cup Serviceman
– Tim Baucom – World Cup Serviceman
– Andrew Morehouse – World Cup Serviceman
– Jason Cork – World Cup Coach and service for Jessie Diggins