With the 2010 Games on this season’s doorstep, we decided to check in with the often-unsung heroes behind the scenes who are an integral part of what drives teams and athletes to success — the coaches. In an Olympic year, there’s more pressure on every aspect of the sport, upping the ante for coaches to keep motivation high while maintaining calm during what can be the most stressful time for an athlete — the Olympic Games. Here’s a brief look at the key players behind the scenes, both here and abroad.

Canada’s Dave Wood / Heinz Ruckemann

Cross-country

Norway is renowned as a Nordic powerhouse. Norwegian coach Vidar Lofshus was asked if he’s changed his training approach in preparation for the 2010 season. “For the men’s sprint, we’ve emphasized even more the idea to build a solid base in the summer months. The men’s distance team had more camps, but they were shorter, focusing on intensity to make sure the skiers push each other harder. The women’s team has been working hard on individual goals.”

The Norwegians plan on a number of on-snow camps this fall before heading to Val Senales, Italy. In early November, they will be skiing in Norway prior to the start of the World Cup season.

Norway’s Vidar Lofshus Norwegian Team

Lofshus has Norway looking for medals in Whistler, and his top gun is likely Petter Northug. “Northug is stronger than ever and a more complete athlete. Skiers such as Simen Oestensen and sprinter Anders Gloersen have also made great progress.” Norway’s women are also strong. “Marit Bjoergen has changed her way of training a lot, and is in better shape than ever. More in number but less intensive workouts seems to suit Marit well and will help her recover faster in season. And watch out for Marte Kristoffersen and Theresa Johaug — both have been doing surprisingly well.”

US head cross-country coach Pete Vordenberg also has reason for optimism following last season, which saw some strong performances by American skiers at the World Nordic Championships in Liberec. Among them is silver medalist Kikkan Randall, World Cup sprint medalist Andy Newell, top distance skier Kris Freeman, who narrowly missed a medal in the 15km classic at the Worlds, and a host of talented up-and-comers who are garnering considerable attention at both the U23 and World Junior level.

USA’s Pete Vordenberg Scott Sine

Vordenberg wrote about lessons learned from last year. “Initially, season by season, we really didn’t hone in on any particular event, but just aimed to improve, improve, improve. Then we tried to focus on a few events like the Canadian World Cup and pre-Worlds. It didn’t go well, but we learned. Last year, we really tried to focus on Worlds and put less emphasis on the World Cup. It worked fairly well. We certainly had some of our best results at Worlds, and we take those lessons into this Olympic year.”

Long-time Canadian cross-country coach Dave Wood, who this year will be working with former top Norwegian National Team coach Inge Braten, has long been considered one of the sports leading trainers. He said for the Games at home, the team looks stronger than ever. “I believe our team is stronger than it’s ever been. In Torino, most of our medal chances were with Beckie [Scott], together with Sara [Renner]. Now, we have three men with podiums last year in individual events and we have two women with Olympic medals. We’re optimistic,” added Wood.

The benefit of having the Games on home snow will have a long-term payoff, says Wood. “I’m enthusiastic that these Games will be good for winter sport and cross-country skiing in Canada. Exposing young people to the sport is key. Creating a steady supply of talented athletes is our biggest challenge.” — Peter Graves

Nordic Combined

USA’s Dave Jarrett USSA

The US Nordic combined squad will be led by 2009 gold medalists Todd Lodwick, Billy Demong and 2003 world champion Johnny Spillane. The bar has been set high for US coach Dave Jarrett. When asked which other nations might be stalking the American athletes, Jarrett replied, “We’re not focused on or concerned about other nations. We know that we have no control over what other nations do, but we do have control over what we do. That’s why we’re training like banshees and have a group of guys fighting day in and day out for their chance to compete at the Olympics.”

Canada’s chief trainer, Ilkka Jylhankangas, has had his charges in Finland from mid-July to Oct. 12, jumping and training with the Finnish team and Russian athletes in places such as Lahti, Jyvaskyla and Kupio. Among his goals is trying to be more competitive, and he points to improvements made last year. “Canadian Nordic combined athletes have been having better results during the last two winters,” he said. “Last winter, we got COC points and World Cup points, and we believe we can do better this season. Our goal is pretty high — get two athletes in the Olympic Games. It is my idea to get the skiers prepared for every competition to fight for podium results and to try and win.”

Austrian Nordic combined trainer and former US coach Bard Jorgen Elden took the reins of the Austrian team this spring and reports things are going well. “I am enjoying working with the team in Austria. First, it’s a great team; it’s a perfect mix of older established skiers and a few younger ones. The work ethic is great, and the response is all I could have hoped for. I needed to make a few changes, but I have their support . . . that makes the day for a coach.”

Many would echo Elden’s comments. “The team has strength in that everyone is working together daily and making each other better everyday. They push each other hard.” Elden has garnered much respect among his peers for his precise eye for technique and style. That’s something you can bank on.  — Peter Graves

Biathlon

Biathlon’s immense TV popularity on the European continent makes National Team coaches, regardless of the size of the program, as much superstars as the athletes themselves.

No coach is more a rainmaker than Sweden’s head coach, Wolfgang Pichler. Pichler, who hails from the biathlon mecca of Ruhpolding, Germany, took over a struggling Swedish program in the mid-1990s with a no-nonsense approach. He nurtured Magdalena Forsberg into five straight World Cup globes before she retired, and Helena Jonsson to win the 2009 overall title. Pichler stands to post Sweden’s most successful Olympic Games, led by Jonsson. If Vancouver is all it can be for Sweden, it may be Pichler’s swan song.

Back in 1991, Uwe Müssiggang took over the German women’s program. Under his cool, calm oversight, the German women’s biathlon program has been the most successful in history, yielding six gold, 10 silver and four bronze medals at the Olympic Games. For the men, Olympic champion Frank Ullrich is notorious for being a hard-nosed coach with a mix of superstars such as triple Torino gold medalist Michael Greis, with whom Ullrich has openly feuded. If the German men succeed, Ullrich will be lauded as one of the coaching greats.

Biathlon Canada’s Geret Coyne David Buston

Canmore, Alta. native Geret Coyne has coached for Canada at every major international competition since 1992, but only last year gained the trust to lead. He inherited a talented-yet-under-performing group. Jean Phillipe Leguellec, who won the Youth World Championships in 2004, begins 2010 with two World Cup top-10s in 2009. Zina Kocher on the women’s side is capable, but has battled back from health concerns in the past couple of years. Coyne feels both are medal contenders in Vancouver.

He used the 2009 season as a warm-up for a peaking plan with three simple objectives. “First was to simplify and streamline some of our training cycles, second was to shift the timing of our stronger performances to occur in the February period and third was to shift into gender-based training groups.” Coyne’s plan has yielded impressive results. From 2008 to 2009, the Canadian men’s and women’s teams nearly doubled their nation’s Cup points — the system used by the International Biathlon Union to rank nations. The men jumped from 20th to 14th and the women from 19th to 13th and saw their biggest improvements in February, key to Coyne’s focus on Vancouver.

USA’s Per Nilsson from Sweden US Biathlon

South of the Olympic border, Per Nilsson (SWE) and Armin Auchentaller (ITA) hope to combine forces to bring home the first Olympic biathlon medal in U.S. history. Nilsson was hired three seasons ago with countryman and double-Olympic-bronze medalist Mikael Loefgren. While Loefgren left last year to coach the Norwegian biathlon team, Nilsson forged ahead, focusing on physical training and hiring Auchentaller in April to focus on shooting. By zeroing in where gains could be made in specific areas, Nilsson has moved the US men’s program forward by leaps and bounds.

He attributes the recent success to a strict and structured method of training that “increased the quantity and level of all parameters of biathlon training.”

Auchentaller has introduced several new approaches to shooting that are already yielding improvements not only in accuracy, but also in speed on the shooting range.

Tim Burke has amassed nine top-10 finishes in World Championship and World Cup competition over the past three seasons, bettering by one the total by 1997 world junior champion Jay Hakkinen over the past decade. Jeremy Teela’s third-place at the 20km Whistler World Cup in January was the first podium for the U.S. since Josh Thompson in the early ’90s. This has re-ignited a fire in Teela, who has been dormant since finishing 11th in 2001 and 10th in 2003 at the Biathlon Worlds. The current program has four world-class performers, including Lowell Bailey, who’s come within striking distance of a World Cup podium several times.

“For us Swedes,” said Nilsson, “we often see that the American mindset can perform really good when it counts, in all sports.”  — Chad Salmela

Jumping

Virtually all the ski-jumping programs are now heavily focused on the build-up to Vancouver. One main difference between ski jumping and the other Nordic disciplines is that the Summer Grand Prix counts as  points earned during this summer period count toward Olympic quota spots, making for very little variation in training and preparation for most ski-jumping programs.

Mikka Kojonkoski, head trainer for Norway, announced in the spring something to the effect that, “Norway is going to put a lot of emphasis on competing at a higher level at the Summer Grand Prix.” Whether in the previous summer this team was too casual or because of the Games, it’s time to get down to business.

With 31 World Cups starting in November and finishing at the end of March (not counting World Championships or the Olympics) and eight Grand Prix events from August to October, it’s possible to get burned out or fatigued too soon.

So it was no surprise when Austria opted to keep its top two stars — Wolfgang Loitzl and Gregor Schlierenzuer — out of the early Grand Prixs to keep them at home and focus on training.

The US contingent will be led by Jochen Danneberg. In his third season as head coach, Danneberg was a silver medalist at the Innsbruck Olympics and a previous Four Hills Tournee winner. In the past two and a half years, he was instrumental in turning things around for the U.S. During the past three periods of World Cups, three athletes scored World Cup points, something that had not happened since 1986.

While recent results have been encouraging, the US jumpers are still quite young (20-21 years of age) and a couple years away from realizing their potential. Danneberg expects to qualify four athletes to Vancouver and, if all goes well, two to score in the top 30.

Ski Jumping Canada’s Ted Bafia Heinz Ruckemann

According to head coach Ted Bafia, the Canadian team is still struggling to regain the form they had at Torino in 2006, where Stefan Read led the North Americans in 30th on the large-hill jump. The year prior, Canada placed seventh in the team event at the Junior Worlds in Finland. While the promising young team soon faltered, losing a couple of players, the solid Mackenzie-Boyd Clowes emerged on the scene, and he and Read have the best shot at the 2010 Games. “Realistic success would be two athletes making the qualifications into the finals (top 50) and one athlete finishing in the top 30,” said Bafia.

The team’s Calgary-based program is the only one in Canada, and Bafia is watching with concern as WinSport Canada (formerly the Calgary Olympic Development Association created after the 1988 Games, which manages Calgary’s legacy facilities) has suffered from the financial market meltdown. — Alan Johnson