June 5, 2009 – Hold it! Just what’s going on here. Kikkan Randall just won a silver medal at the FIS World Championships, which is a very, very big first-ever for a U.S. women skier. Canadians Alex Harvey and George Grey were on the Whistler World Cup podium in February, Andy Newell and Torin Koos had a World Cup fourth place in a team sprint, Randall was sixth in another World Cup in Italy and there are a few other top 10s. Good standings for the North Americans, but not that many to hang their hat on when you think of the numerous opportunities available throughout a full season!

Early this winter, I examined the period before Christmas as I see it as a sort of a microcosm of what I thought the sprint race season would look like. This included some World Cups and a couple of other opportunities with good international fields. The Americans and Canadians were at the World Cups together. There were 19 individual qualifications for both sexes in the top 30, which, of course, affords the qualifiers the chance to move up in the results as they continue to qualify throughout the subsequent heats.

Out of the 19 opportunities, only three skiers were able to improve their positions in the heats, while 16 efforts resulted in skiers being left farther back in the results. As well, during this timeframe, there were three disqualifications and two falls in these heats. Which leads one to ask just who represented the U.S. and Canada? They were such top names as Newell, Randall, Koos, Sara Renner, Devon Kershaw, Grey, Stefan Kuhn, Perianne Jones and others. This means there was an 84% failure rate! That’s just awful!

Here is a hypothetical example of what is going on here: Athlete A qualifies first and moves on to the heats and ends up 26th in the final results, indicating that he/she only made it through the quarterfinals. This means that something must have gone drastically wrong in order to end up in 26th place when earlier on the skier demonstrated in the qualification that he/she was the best in speed and effort that day!

As a longtime coach, I would say that this was not good racing, and I’m sure if you were to look at the results for the rest of the year, they would parallel this. There are many opportunities for better results being missed by skiers from both countries. What would make these skiers more productive so they can move in the right direction?

I will qualify my next set of statements by saying that I’m at a disadvantage by not being at the races, but many of the skiers write very elaborate and candid blogs about many of their sprinting episodes. As well, with many webpages having reporters on site, there is more than enough information available so one can piece together what happened at these sprint races. Regarding the skiers’ blogs, I’d like to make these points. Please keep doing them, as younger skiers can learn a lot from them. And Randall, Kershaw and Harvey do excellent write-ups. Good going!

Now for my summations of what isn’t happening and what should be happening. I think the North Americans are weak in “SIQ,” my new term for sprinting IQ. There are just too many mistakes being made in all phases of sprint racing. How the heck can you make strategic mistakes in qualifying? Quite easily, it seems. Though I won’t give any names, this actually happened this winter. There was a short-course 800-metre sprint (less than two minutes of sprinting) in slow snow, leading the racers to decide that they needed to pace themselves in the qualifying round because of the slow snow. Needless to say, when the courses are usually 1,200 metres, the strategy should have been to have the afterburners on in the qualifying round. Yepper, no heats for them.

Strategies and tactics aren’t being well thought out before or carried out in the race, leading to such things as stepping out to pass another racer without checking to see if one is being passed, therefore causing a collision and getting wiped out; not being totally familiar with the courses so one goes inside a corner and finds oneself in soft snow; and trying to barge through openings that aren’t really there, ending up in the finish area in a near fist fight with the coach and skier from the other team!

And there are way too many falls, by way too many people! Newell, in my estimation one of the top sprinters in both techniques in the world, is approaching a dozen falls this winter. In my opinion, the possibility of falling is likely in his head now. Could this be influencing him to fall?

For sure, I think the Americans don’t race enough, not even Randall, even though she is doing more distance races and achieving a measure of success. The Europeans do more of all of the races and therefore are much more race-fit than anyone who is sloughing off these races to be ready for the sprints. You only get racing fitness by racing. I think this lack of fitness catches up with some of the North Americans in the later heats, and this is one of the reasons they can’t hold to the high-end speed, which then causes falls, tactical mistakes and, in some cases, disqualifications. Why aren’t these sprinters doing more sprint races on the Europa Cup to fill in the gaps and stay racing fit?

These sprint races range in time from two to four minutes and require 100% concentration, alertness as to where everyone is, complete knowledge of the course and a definite strategic plan that has been worked out with the sprint coach well before the start, so you can rehearse it multiple times before the race. You must also develop a coping strategy in case your planned strategy breaks down.

I think the talent and potential is there, but execution on a consistent basis is not, therefore leading the North Americans to underperform.

If you have questions, my e-mail address is misterxc@aol.com.

Keep Them Pointed Straight Ahead!

This Hallmarks column on sprinting by Marty Hall appeared in SkiTrax Spring 2009.