December 05, 2012 – The World Cup passed through its second stop of the season at Ruka, which is just outside of Kuusamo in Finland, this past weekend and this is what I think I know after the three races that took place there:

– Marit Bjoergen and Petter Northug are the best skiers in the world right now. Bjoergen dominated winning all three races and is undefeated on the season in the World Cup. This comes on the heels of some talk in the Norwegian press that she was losing a step after having been beaten in some early season races. Northug did not win any of the races on the weekend – he was 2nd in the sprints to Russian Nikolai Kriukov and 2nd again to another Russian, Alexandr Legkov in the 10 km but he won the overall sprint at the end of the third race from another Russian, Maxim Vylegzhanin. He is now leading the World Cup overall.

– The Russian team is ramping it up in preparation for the Olympics in Sochi in 2014. In addition to the above mentioned men’s results they had 5 men finish in the top 10 overall at the end of the three days and that did not include their sprinters like Kriukov. The Russian women’s team is also getting better and better with Julia Tchekaleva 3rd in the 5km and Evgenia Shapovalova 2nd and Anastasia Dotsenko 3rd in the sprints.

– Justina Kowaczyk (POL) is still the 2nd best female skier in the world. She is starting to round into form after a very hard summer and fall of training and she finished 2nd to Bjoergen overall at the end of the weekend. She will be a force in the Tour de Ski after Xmas for sure.

– Kikkan Randall is the real deal in distance racing with a second podium finish in the 5km. It is interesting that she is doing better in distance than in sprints so far this season. She will challenge Bjoergen, Kowalczyk and Terese Johaug of Norway for the overall World Cup this year.

– The rest of the American women are also the real deal. Ida Sargeant had a career best 9th in the sprints and joins Kikkan, Holly Brooks, Liz Stephen and Jessie Diggins to make up one of the strongest women’s teams in the world right now. They should do very well in the Canadian World Cups over the next two weeks.

– Perianne Jones (12th)and Dasha Gaiasova (14th) had great sprint races but continue to struggle in distance races. Chandra Crawford is struggling everywhere and needs to get it together quickly if she is going to race well at home in Canada.

– Devon Kershaw and Alex Harvey are starting to come out of their funk. Both had decent results over the weekend but it is nothing like how they finished the year last year. The pressure is on to perform in Canada, especially for Harvey in his hometown this weekend in Quebec City. I wonder what they will do?

– Noah Hoffman is starting to shine. As a junior he had a great engine but poor technique but it seems that he is starting to put it all together. Last year he was a medalist at the World U23 games and his 19th place in the 10km and 26th place overall shows big improvement over last year. The other men on the US team are still back in the pack and need to pick it up soon.

– Many of the top skiers will not be coming to Canada for the World Cups. Marit Bjoergen and Petter Northug stated after the races in Ruka that they would not attend. The Finnish team will only send 5 sprinters to Quebec City, but will send more to the distance races in Canmore including Aino-Kaisa Saarinen. This means that there will be more World Cup points available for North American skiers, as the fields will be diluted.

– Having World Cups in Canada is also a great opportunity for younger, less experienced North American skiers to show what they can do against the best. Careers can be jump started by having a great race over the next two weeks. These are the skiers that I will be watching closely. Now is the time for them to get on the “escalator” that will take them to Sochi in 2014. By skiing well now they will get more opportunities to ski at this level later on in the year which will give them more chances to qualify for their National Teams and for their Olympic Teams. It will be very hard for skiers who are not on the escalator now to make it to Sochi next year.

– All of the Canadian races will be shown on either CBC or Bold over the next three weeks. Consult your local listings for time and dates and set your PVR – there is going to be some great racing!

January 18, 2012 (Toronto, ON) – Calling all cross country ski racing fans! The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has announced that it will broadcast highlights of the 2012 Tour de Ski this weekend, including Alex Harvey’s silver medal performance in the 8th stage in Val di Fiemme and the final climb up the Alpe Cermis.

The broadcast will feature commentary by Scott Russell and colour analyst Jack Sasseville (SkiTrax columnist) this Saturday, January 21st at 3:00pm ET. Relive the highlights of the race, including Devon Kershaw’s historic 4th place overall finish.

CBC’s broadcast schedule for the Tour de Ski:

CBC TV broadcast schedule:
– Sat. Jan. 21 @ 15:00-17:00 ET LIVE
CBC Sports Championship Cross Country Skiing: Tour de Ski 2012

– Sun. Jan. 22 @ 00:30-02:30 LOCAL
CBC Sports Late Night – Championship Cross Country Skiing: Tour de Ski 2012

cbcsports.ca broadcast schedule:
– Sat. Jan. 21 @ 15:00-17:00 ET LIVE
Championship Cross Country Skiing: Tour de Ski 2012

View the full CBC sports broadcast schedule HERE.

January 16, 2012 – I’ve got to hand it to Juerg Capol and Vegard Ulvang from FIS. They truly have made an effort to bring cross-country skiing to the people of the world. The Tour de Ski with it’s various interesting stages concluding with a climb up a downhill slope is a great example of how they have turned what was once a boring sport to watch into something that is exciting for every kind of fan.

Another example of this is the city sprints like the ones in Milan, Italy, this past weekend. Milan rarely has snow and the Milanese usually have to travel a long way to ski. To bring the best sprinters in the world to this city is brilliant.

What is also brilliant is how well skiers from North American are doing on the World Cup this year. Kikkan Randall, Devon Kershaw, Alex Harvey, and Chandra Crawford have all consistently been at the top of the results list and it has become a pleasure to report on their success this season.

As well, Len Valjas, Ivan Babikov, Perianne Jones and Dasha Gaiazova from Canada as well as Simi Hamilton, Andy Newell, Sadie Bjoernson, Holly Brooks and now Jessie Diggins have also had good races and have scored World Cup points and in some cases have been on the podium.

Every week it seems that someone different from Canada or the US is standing on a podium. The most consistent has been Kikkan Randall who finished 2nd twice in Milan, once on her own in the individual sprint and a second time with young sensation Jessie Diggins in the team sprints.

Diggins had dominated the domestic racing scene in December after a stellar junior career. She is a legitimate talent who has the speed and endurance to be a star on the World Cup.

Chandra Crawford, after a 7th place in the individual sprints, hit the podium again this time with Perianne Jones in the team sprints where they finished right behind the Americans in 3rd. Chandra has been consistently in the top 10 over the past few races and is now a contender in every sprint race.

Len Valjas was the best of the North Americans in the individual sprints finishing in 14th. Simi Hamilton continues to improve finishing in 19th while Andy Newell continued to struggle in heats finishing in 26th after qualifying 8th.

Randall is showing incredible endurance by continuing to race in every World Cup. She has said that she wants to race every one and, barring illness, she will. She continues to lead the Sprint World Cup and sits 4th in the overall World Cup. I have stopped thinking of her as a sprinter. She is now a great overall skier who can succeed in any race.

Kershaw, Harvey and Babikov have taken a much needed rest this week before returning to the World Cup circuit next week in Otepaa, Estonia. There will be classic sprints on Saturday followed by classic individual start distance races on Sunday. The course in Otepaa is one of the hardest in the world and it is one where the best classic skiers and climbers in the world can shine.

This race is another example of how the FIS has created a World Cup circuit for everyone. It appeals to the traditional fan who likes to see an individual start and classic technique race like the old days – 15 years ago!

One last question that I would like to ask all of you – do you think that the Tour de Ski with 8 races over 11 days is as hard as a professional cycling tour that would be the same number of races? Do you think that it is as hard as the Tour de France or the Giro d’Italia? And finally what makes it harder or easier?

November 21, 2011 (Sjusjoen, Norway) – Without a doubt, one of the most stressful weekends for a cross-country ski racer is the first meaningful race weekend of the year. All of the skiers have trained for six or more months and it is not until you race these first races that you know even a little bit about where you stand in relation to your competitors.

This is the nature of cross-country ski racing. There are no personal best times or world record times in this sport. You can do all the testing you want, and compete in roller ski racers or early season time trials, but the only way that you can really measure yourself is racing against your peers.

This is true at every level right up to the World Cup and if you read the quotes from the skiers from Saturday (link to this article) you will see that a common theme is that they didn’t know how they would do before the start and that made them nervous.

Here are some of my thoughts after the first weekend in Sjusjoen, Norway:

– I think that the Norwegian women are going to dominate all year long. They had seven of the top nine on Saturday and their relay teams finished 1st and 2nd in the relay on Sunday. Only Charlotte Kalla of Sweden and Kikkan Randall of the US were able to break into the top 9 – it looked like a Norwegian championship race.

– Marit Bjoergen has lost nothing since last year. She won by almost 30 seconds in a 24-minute race. If they had been racing a track and field event she would have almost lapped the whole field. Last year Justyna Kowalczyk (POL) won the overall World Cup because Bjoergen was concentrating on winning at the World Championships in Oslo. This year is going to be different.

– it’s clear that the USA’s Kikkan Randall is better than last year – 8th in a distance race is a fantastic result. Watch out!

– I also think that the US women’s team is really improving. With Liz Stephen placing 18th on Saturday and then having a decent relay on Sunday – and Randall’s and Brooks’ strong legs – the team is now showing just how much they have improved.

– Johan Olsson is one of the best technical skaters in the world and when he’s healthy he’s certainly one of the best. He had a tough year last year after two bronze medals in Vancouver but it looks like he is back now.

– I think that NO ONE – and I mean no one seems to be able to beat Petter Northug (NOR) in a sprint. It was sad watching the last leg of the relay on Sunday. None of the lead skiers was willing to put it on the line and go for the win except for another Norwegian Sjur Roethe. The lead group was going SO slow that he was able to come from 45 seconds back to pass all of them and take the lead in only 5km. It looked like Northug was just playing with those guys. He has an almost unbeatable formula now for distance races. All he has to do is hang around the leaders, never leading and then in the last km he moves to the front and wins the sprint.

– but Northug IS beatable in the individual start races, despite the fact that he’s getting better in these events as well. He was second on Saturday and is having a much better start to his season than last year when he over-trained and did not have any good results until after Xmas at the Tour de Ski. I also think that he is pretty well a lock to win the World Cup this year unless someone can figure out how to beat him in a sprint.

– that being said Canada’s Alex Harvey may be the one to beat Northug. His 5th place showed that he is in great shape and his sprint win in Oslo over Ole Vigen Hattestad to win the Team Sprint gold at the Nordic Worlds have shown that he has the fitness and the sprint speed to win. He has beaten Northug in a sprint in the past and even Petter has acknowledged that Harvey can beat him. I think that if Canada wants to do anything in relays they have to have Alex on the team as the anchor skier. This is the second relay in a row including the relay in Olso that Harvey did not race.

Next weekend the World Cup moves to Kuusamo, Finland for a three day mini-tour de ski. The skiers will likely have to race on icy, man-made snow again, but it will be colder and darker and the hills will be bigger and steeper. It will be the first chance for the sprinters to come out and play as well as the classic skiers. Should be a lot of fun to watch.

February 07, 2011 (Barrie, ON) – What would happen if you held a World Cup and nobody came? Well, you would call it Rybinsk, Russia and there would be free world cup points for just about everyone who was there.

This past weekend there were three – yes three World Cup races on the calendar, a distance pursuit, an individual sprint and a team relay. For the distance race there were only 33 men (11 Russian) and 30 women (11 Russian). It didn’t get much better for the sprints with fields of 54 men (15 Russian) and 34 women (16 Russian). The relay for women had 7 teams (4 Russian) and 10 for men (again 4 Russian).

This is brutal. There has got to be something wrong with the schedule to have so few skiers in a World Cup in the first week of February. When there have been World Cups in Canada the last few years they have been better supported. The Ontario Masters Championship in Parry Sound had almost as many skiers! This has to be an embarrassment to the FIS Cross Country Committee.

Now, I’ve been to Rybinsk and it is not that bad there. I know that some countries were having National championships, but that should be no excuse. In fact, I don’t think that this should be allowed to happen either. We have the same problem in North America, but we still send our best skiers to compete at the World Cup.

Meanwhile, it should be no surprise that the Russian skiers dominated the result list for these races – at least for the men. Alexei Pethukov won the sprint, Ilia Chernousov won the distance race and the Russian 1 team won the relay.

It shows how far the Russian women have fallen when they cannot win a race with at home against such small fields. They couldn’t even win the relay with 4 teams out of 7 in the field – the Italian women beat them. Katja Visnar and Vesna Fabjan of Slovenia were 1st and 2nd in the sprints and Justina Kowalczyk of Poland won the distance race and was 3rd in the sprints. She has pretty well cemented the overall World Cup title for this season as the only person who could beat her, Marit Bjoergen was at home, once again, in Norway training for the World Championships in March.

In the 1990’s the Russian women were unbeatable. Of course, we now know why. A good, structured, well organized doping program will do that for you. Now they are ordinary and need to get their act together quickly in order to have a decent showing in Sochi in 2014.

There’s a two-week break in the schedule before the World Cup resumes in Drammen, Norway on February 19-20 with a short distance race and individual sprints. Hopefully we should see full fields for this event and truly have a “World Cup” race.

I can’t close this week without some commentary on the World Junior and World U23 racing from Otepaa, Estonia last week. In my opinion, a finish in the top 10 at either level is a great indication that a skier has the talent and potential to be a consistent point scorer (top 30) at the World Cup level.

A good way to look at it is to look at junior and professional hockey in North America. If a junior hockey player is drafted in the first round by a professional team then they have a good chance of becoming a National Hockey League player. Not all of them do, of course, and there are players who are not drafted in the first round who make it. I think that less than 5% of junior hockey players ever play in the NHL.

Most of these junior players who are drafted end up playing for a year or more in the AHL – kind of the equivalent of the U23 level in skiing. Not all players in the AHL make it to the NHL – again a small percentage and only the best move on. Some of the very best junior players go right to the NHL, but they are the exception.

When I look at the North American results from Otepaa I see the same thing. Alex Harvey is World Champion at U23 and finishes consistently in the top 20 on the World Cup. He was on the podium a number of times as a junior, as well. In hockey he would have been a top draft pick as a junior and would likely have been in the NHL in his first or second year as a pro.

The other skiers that finished in the top 10 – Kevin Sandau, Jesse Cockney, Len Valjas, Jessie Diggins and Noah Hoffman all have a shot at a career as a World Cup skier. Emily Nishikawa, Michael Somppi, Alysson Marshall and Sadie Bjornsen had top 20 finishes – kind of like being drafted in the 2nd round of a hockey draft. They have shown some talent, but there is still a lot of work to do.

Don’t get me wrong, there are no guarantees that any of these skiers will make it on the World Cup (except Alex Harvey – he is already there). It also doesn’t mean that the skiers who were there from North America but outside the top 10 or top 20 (or those who didn’t make the trip) will not make it eventually, but it is going to take them much more time and work.

Malcolm Gladwell in his great book “Outliers” told us that the difference most of the time between those who “make it” and those who don’t is not talent but work and opportunity. He points out that it seems to take 10,000 hours of work for someone to be the best in just about anything.

At an age of 22 or less, all of these skiers have not put in the time yet to know if they are going to make it. They also need to continue to have the opportunity to race and train with the best in the world. I hope that the USST and the Canadian NST continue to give these young skiers as many opportunities as possible to do this.

January 25, 2011 (Barrie, ON) – It was so good to see a “traditional” cross-country ski race on Saturday from Otepaa. The 10 and 15km individual start classic races were great to watch. I grew up with this form of racing and it’s what attracted me to the sport in the first place. For me racing against the clock and yourself with no one to help you is the purest form of racing. I used to argue with cycling road racers about the merits of racing by yourself or in a pack, and we agreed that it takes a different kind of mentality to do these two types of races.

You can really see this in Petter Northug (NOR). He’s a pack racer and a sprinter with the perfect mentality and physiology for those types of races. He’s not nearly as good as an individual start competitor. His 8th place on Saturday in Otepaa was actually a good race for him. I believe that 20 years ago, he would not have nearly as many good results that he has achieved when most of the races were individual starts. I also do not believe that his compatriot, the great Bjoern Dahlie, would have been as good back then if they were using mass starts because he did not have a very good sprint. Most of his races were won long before the final 200 meters.

However the same cannot be said for Norway’s queen, Marit Bjoergen. She is the best at everything. She can win an individual start by over 30 seconds like she did on Saturday and also win mass start races and sprints. She is just so dominant that it has become a surprise when she does not win. Once again, on Sunday in the individual sprints, for the second week in a row she had problems with another skier and did not make it into the final.

The distance course in Otepaa is a very tough course. The 5km loop is very hilly with one big hill that goes up beside the ski jump seemingly from the bottom to the top. The last 200 meters feature 13%-plus grade and all of the skiers had to herringbone. To win on a course like this you need great fitness, great technique, great mental strength and you need to pace properly. Bjoergen had all of these and won easily.

Justyna Kowalczyk (Poland) and Teresa Johaug (Norway) also showed great skills. Kowalczyk is in great shape and very strong mentally and Johaug is the best female climber in the world. That these three women finished one, two, and three is no surprise.

The men’s 15km race was won by Elder Roenning because he paced it better than anyone else, especially fellow Norwegian Martin Johnsrud Sundby who was the leader at 10km but faded to 7th. Daniel Rickardsson of Sweden and Maxim Vylezghanin of Russia also showed great fitness and pacing to finish 2nd and 3rd. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Andrus Veerpalu finished 5th on his home track even though he is 40 years old. He is the master of the 15km classic having won two Olympic gold medals at that distance. He also does not like the mass start races with a sprint at the end and I’m sure that this race format was set up especially for him.

While the individual distance course was a true test of the skiers the classic sprint course from Sunday was not. There were not enough hills in this course so instead of watching a classic sprint race we got to watch a double pole sprint race. Yuck! I hate it when this happens – it’s like going to watch a hockey game and all they do is fight.

So, once again, with all six men in the final only double poling someone you have never heard of before – Eirik Bransdal of Norway won. Back in 2008 the same thing happened in Canmore where Bjoern Naess from Norway won. FIS tried to fix this by forcing race organizers to change the courses (they added a big hill in Vancouver to the sprint course) and we’ve never heard of Naess since. It’s a shame, really, because Otepaa obviously has the hills to make a good course. The ironic thing is that the Norwegians have been trying for years to preserve classic technique from the onslaught of skating and you would think that the head of the World Cup committee, Vegard Ulvang, who is Norwegian, would not want to have double pole only classic races. The other ironic thing is that Norwegians keep winning these kinds of races.

The female sprinters used all of the classic techniques in their race and the best classic sprinter in the world – Petra Majdic of Slovenia – won convincingly over last year’s World Junior champion, Hanna Brodin from Sweden, and Maikan Falla of Norway. Brodin will be staying in Otepaa for another week to contest the U23 World championships and she has to be the favourite to win the sprints next weekend.

Dasha Gaiazova had the best result of her career finishing 8th. She continues to improve, especially in sprinting and she has taken over the #1 spot on the Canadian women’s team. Chandra Crawford finished 27th after qualifying 17th. Her qualifying time was almost 3 seconds closer to the top time than what she did in Vancouver, so she is improving. However, she is still 6 seconds slower than the best classic sprinters so there is still plenty of room for improvement.

There were no Americans at Otepaa this weekend and the rest of the Canadian skiers were all young skiers who were there for experience and to race on the same courses that they will use next weekend for the U23 World Championships. The best results from these young skiers were the 31st place by Len Valjas (he missed qualifying for the heats by .02 seconds) and a 33rd by Alysson Marshall, also close to qualifying in the sprints.

There are no World Cup races next weekend because of these U23 World Championships which held in conjunction with the World Junior Championships. Both Canada and the United States have full teams at these events. The World Cup continues on February 4-6 in Rybinsk, Russia with a full weekend of pursuit, sprint and relay races.

January 04, 2011 (Barrie, ON) – Before Christmas I said that it was time for Devon Kershaw to make the next step up the ladder and be on the podium in a distance race noting that after his results from Vancouver last year this is where he should be.

Well, he’s there and then some! Happy New Year! In the first two days of 2011 Devon has been 2nd twice, once in a classic distance race and again in the classic sprints. He also finished 7th in the skating race and after four legs of the Tour de Ski he’s in 2nd place overall behind only Dario Cologna of Switzerland.

Being on the podium in a men’s distance race is the hardest thing to do in cross-country skiing. There is so much depth in the men’s fields – any one of 30 men can win any race. These are fantastic results for Devon and prove that he truly has moved into the top echelon of racing.

Devon has been a “streaky” skier. In the past he tended to ski fast races in bunches and then drop off and ski a number of poorer races in a row. Much of this is tied to confidence and recovery. Devon trains a lot and has been known in the past to push it too much and not be able to recover. Being tired can really affect your confidence which is the key psychological skill that all athletes need in order to perform at their best.

This is a real Catch 22 for most athletes. If they feel good and are in good shape they have good results and this gives them more confidence. When they feel tired they have poor results and that makes them lose confidence in themselves. In our society you’re only as good as your last result so a couple of bad races in a row has most athletes losing their confidence. Even the best in the world like Tiger Woods have a hard time coming back from poor results and lose their confidence.

Interestingly enough, for some athletes confidence is never a problem no matter what their results. They are labeled cocky or arrogant but really they’re thinking the way that they are supposed to be thinking. Many of these confident athletes also tend to never take responsibility for their results. If they can make it because of something other than themselves then how can they lose confidence? They’re still great, it has nothing to do with them – it was the track, or the snow, or their skis, or the weather, or their starting position, or the coaches, or the other skiers, or somethingŠ! It is not a bad thing if you understand what they may be trying to do.

Devon should now have the confidence that he can ski with the best in the world on any day. Classic or skate, sprint or distance he is there. Regardless of his results or how he is feeling he should be able to keep his confidence now that he can battle for the podium in any race.

Alex Harvey and Kris Freeman are getting close to this level too. Alex was on a distance podium a couple of years ago and Kris has finished 4th in a couple of World Cup races in the past. With Alex in 5th place overall after four races and Kris in 22nd after his 11th place in the 4th race they are both showing that they are not very far behind Devon.

This is really amazing if you think about it. Three North American men at the top of the World Cup standings would be unheard of years years ago. It’s been some time since the days of Pierre Harvey, Bill Koch, Tim Caldwell, Dan Simoneau and Jim Galanes in the 1980’s that this has happened. Couple this with the incredible drop-off by the Norwegian men’s team this year. They’re really having a lot of poor results and even their star, Petter Northug cannot win a sprint any more. Harvey came from behind to beat him in their quarterfinal heat on Jan. 2. This knocked him out of the heats and put him way back in the results.

Now if Ivan Babikov could return to his former level this would be even better. Ivan continues to struggle. He sits in 35th place overall in the tour. Two years ago he had the fastest time in the final stage hill climb in the Tour de Ski and last year he was 4th. I can’t say what the problem is right now. I am sure that everyone close to Ivan has a theory or a suggestion. One thing for sure is that he has to work hard to keep up his confidence now when his results are poor. He has to believe that these results do not really reflect what he can truly do. This will be a key for him to get back to where he wants to be as fast as possible.

Andy Newell is another skier who continues show a lack of confidence at skiing in the heats. After qualifying 4th in the classic sprints on Jan. 1st he made it through his quarterfinal round in second. Then his pattern of something going wrong continued in the semi-final where he tripped up coming out of the gate. He had to really hammer to catch up the 20 meters that he was behind but then fell again in the last 200 meters. This is happening too many times and he’s way too good a skier physically and technically for it to be a physical or luck issue. He may not admit it, but it’s got to be in his head now. He needs to take a good look at what he’s thinking about if he is going to fix this issue.

Kikkan Randall is the only North American woman at the Tour and she continues to ski in the middle of the field. She is 24th overall after the first four races. On the surface this does not look so hot, but Kikkan is just starting to try to ski well in distance races and the only sprint so far has been in her weaker classic style. However, the next race on January 5th in Toblach, Austria is a skating sprint and I am sure that she is looking forward to a much better result there.

December 20, 2010 (Barrie, ON) – I don’t know about you, but I like dynasties in sport. I like it when teams and individuals dominate a sport for a number of seasons. I was a big fan of the Boston Celtics of the NBA in the 1960s, of UCLA and John Wooden in college basketball at the same time, and of the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s and the Edmonton Oilers in the1980s for hockey (sorry I cannot be a fan of the Yankees, though).

There have been dynasties in cross-country skiing as well. In the 1980s it was the Swedish men led by Gunde Swan and Thomas Wassberg and Torgny Mogren. In the 1990s it was the Russian women led by Elena Valbe and the Norwegian men led by Vegard Ulvang and Bjorn Daehlie. This dynasty continued throughout the first decade of the 21st century.

The Norwegian women are the new dynasty for women’s skiing. Led by Marit Bjoergen they are beginning to dominate. On Sunday they showed this domination by annihilating the field in the relay. Bjoergen won her 9th World Cup in a row on Saturday and she has likely locked up the World Cup for 2011 already and it’s not even 2011 yet.

I thought that the Swedish women would give them a run for their money this year, but they have not delivered yet. They started well at home in Gallivare but faded throughout the rest of November and December due to illness. The Italian women have been strong in sprinting, and finished 2nd on Sunday in the women’s relay but they are a long way behind the Norwegians. The German, Slovakian, Slovenian, French and surprisingly the Russian women have been silent during this time.

Justyna Kowalczyk has been consistently 2nd to Bjoergen throughout this first racing period but she is getting closer and closer. On Saturday she lost in a sprint finish and I expect her to win the Tour de Ski after Xmas as Bjoergen will be at home in Norway.

Kikkan Randall has led the American women with two podium finishes in the last couple of weeks in skating sprints. She has solidified her place near the top in this discipline and is getting better in distance racing and classic. Morgan Arritola and Liz Stephen both finished in the top 20 on Saturday in La Clusaz for their best results of the campaign.

Dasha Gaiazova and Chandra Crawford were on the podium in Dusseldorf for the best result for the Canadian women. Canada’s women have been very strong for almost a decade and it looks like Chandra and Dasha are carrying the torch to the future. Chandra also had an 8th in Dusseldorf and Dasha scored points in a number of races. The downside is that there is not much depth in women’s ranks in Canada right now.

I believe that there is a dynasty brewing on the men’s side but it’s not where I thought it would come from at the start of the season. At that time I thought that the Swedish men would begin to dominate the podiums, which they did at the start of the season, but like the women they faded badly in December. The Norwegian men continue to struggle and they seem to be getting worse. The sprinters do not dominate like they used to and with Northug recovering from overtraining for most of the start of the season the distance men are also doing very poorly. Northug did come on strong on Saturday in La Clusaz for a 2nd place in the 30km free mass start race – so watch out for him after Xmas.

No, the new dominant men’s team are the Russians. Alexander Legkov is leading the World Cup standings but he is not alone at the top. Maxim Vylegzhanin won the 30km on Saturday doing something that few people have been able to do before this year – beat Petter Northug in a sprint finish. Lekgov was 3rd in this race and there were also two other Russian men in the top 11 on Saturday – and they finished 2nd on Sunday in the team relay to the suprising Swiss team.

They also have a very strong sprint group – remember that they were 1st and 2nd last year in Vancouver in the men’s individual sprint final. Alexei Pehtoukov and Nicolai Morilov are the best right now, but they have four or five skiers who can be on the podium. They have started again with new coaches and a new system and they are going to be a force in Sochi in four years.

The Swiss men surprised everyone by easily winning the Men’s Relay on Sunday. Dario Cologna has been one of the best skiers in the world for the past couple of years, but this result came out of the blue. The other three skiers – Toni Livers, Remo Fischer and Curdin Perl skied fantastic legs for the victory. Cross-country skiing is the poor second cousin to Alpine in Switzerland and in order to get press they need to win. This was a resounding win.

Emil Joensson of Sweden has shown that he is the best sprinter in the world. He has broken the Norwegian men’s domination – for now – but things can change quickly in sprinting. The Norwegians have a very strong sprinting program so look for them to be strong later on in the year.

Kris Freeman put together some great top 10 results in this period, but he was the only American male to do consistently well.  Simi Hamilton who debuted on the European World Cup scene had a superb sprint race in Davos qualifying 11th and finished 16th which is a good sign of things to come. Veteran Andy Newell continues to disappoint by following the same pattern of qualifying well in the sprints but hasn’t put his game plan together well in the heats. And Euro World Cup newbie, Noah Hoffman, also showed signs of talent starting well for a rookie with a 31st placing in the 15km freestyle at the World Cup opener in Gallivare, Sweden, but struggled as the trip went on.

The Canadian men were all over the map with their results in November and December. Devon Kershaw showed flashes of brilliance, but in other races he was ordinary. The same is true for Alex Harvey. Ivan Babikov and George Grey were nowhere near where they finished in Vancouver. In total they were not as good as I thought that they would be based on their results in Vancouver last year and all of the positive statements coming from them this summer and fall about how good they were training and how things were going. I think that everyone was expecting them to take a step forward as a group and it looks like they have taken a step backward. Is it the post-Olympic blues or something else? We will know better at the Tour de Ski and the World Championships in March in Oslo.

One bright spot were the sprint results from Len Valjas and Phil Widmer in Davos where they both finished in the top 20 and qualified for the World Championships. Len is a rookie on the World Cup as well and this was a great result for him and it was a breakthrough for Phil who in the past had the speed to qualify well but like  Newell he could not finish well in the heats.

Now it’s time to take a deep breath and get ready for the Tour de Ski that starts on December 31. Most skiers are at home while some of the Canadians and Americans have stayed in Europe. Not all of the top skiers will be in the Tour de Ski because it is very hard and difficult to recover from. Lukas Bauer (CZE) and Justina Kowalczyk (POL) were the winners last year and I believe that they will challenge for the top again this year.

Have a great holiday season everyone – ski as much as you can.