December 13, 2010 (Barrie, ON) – Is anyone going to beat Marit Bjoergen this year? She easily won two more races that were very different, in distance and format, this weekend in Davos, Switzerland – a 10km classic interval start race and a skating sprint race.

She not only won, but she won them easily. In the 10km race on Saturday she started 30 seconds behind her closest rival, Justina Kowalczyk from Poland, caught her just after 7km and skied behind her into the finish. Kowalczyk was 2nd with Teresa Johaug (Norway) finishing 3rd. Johaug is the “energizer bunny” on skis and she is starting to show the great promise that we saw in Sapporo a couple of years ago at the Nordic World Championships where she finished 3rd in the 30km classic as a junior. Look out for her in Oslo at the Worlds in March.

In the skating race Bjoergen powered away from the field on the uphill on the 2nd lap to win the sprint easily. Arianna Follis showed that last week’s win (when Bjoergen did not race) was not a fluke and finished 2nd. Kowalczyk deliberately cut off Kikkan Randall in the last 200 meters and finished 3rd but was relegated to last by the jury moving Kikkan up to 3rd. This is the second 3rd place podium finish in a row for Randall in two weeks and shows how much she has improved this season. In the past her podium finishes have been sporadic, but now she has shown that she can be consistently with the best skate sprinters no matter what.

I lost a lot of respect for Kowalczyk watching what she did in this race. She knew exactly what she was doing when she changed lanes and cut Kikkan off. She had a clear lane in front of her and there was no reason to change lanes except to block. Hats off to the jury for making the right decision and relegating her to last in the final.

Chandra Crawford paced her qualification poorly and finished tied for 30th but did not make the heats because the tie-breaker goes the skier with the lowest FIS points. After a great result last weekend in Dusseldorf Chandra showed that there is still work to do before the Oslo World Championships. Dasha Gaiazova and Liz Stephen also skied poorly in the qualifyer to finish 39th and 54th.

Slovenia’s Petra Majdic continues to struggle. She barely squeaked through her quarter and semi-final rounds as a lucky loser and faded badly in the final. At one time she dominated women’s sprinting but not anymore. She was also out of the heats last week in Dusseldorf.

The men’s race on Saturday was very interesting. Alexey Poltoranin, a  relative unknown skier from Kazahkstan, just nipped Alexander Legkov (Russia) by 0.9 seconds to win the 15km classic race. Poltoranin is so new that his name is spelled two different ways on the FIS websites. He’s more of a sprinter and his best result up to now came in Kuusamo, Finland in the classic sprints where he was 2nd and before that he was 5th in the sprint and team sprint at the 2010 Games in Vancouver. He placed 2nd at the U23 World Championships in 2009 as well.

Poltoranin said after the race that he has been working hard on his classic technique and watching him I think he still has a way to go. He does not have a great weight shift and does some funny things with his feet when he pushes in diagonal stride. Lukas Bauer (Czech Republic) paced his race perfectly and came from behind to finish 3rd.

The Davos course really is a hard course. It has a big long climb every lap, is at altitude and there was over 50cm of new snow at -1C for race time. Pacing and having good skis are the keys to skiing this course well.

Canada’s Devon Kershaw had great skis and paced well to finish 9th just 21 seconds from 1st. Devon is now showing that he truly is in the top tier of racers by consistently finishing near the top. The next step for him will be to move up to the podium in distance races. He has already been there in sprints. Being on the podium in men’s distance races is the hardest thing to do in xc ski racing. It takes much longer to make it in distance racing and the fields are much deeper.

Kris Freeman did not pace his race well and faded badly to finish 23rd. He was coming off a cold and tried to follow Russian skier Maxim Vylegzhanin when he passed him early in the race but it was too fast and Kris “blew up”. Freeman knows that he can finish in the top 10 so it was a good tactic but he just didn’t have the fitness on Saturday to carry it off.

George Grey and Ivan Babikov skied a little better than earlier in the season finishing 32nd and 38th. They are still a long way from where they want to be and should be. They need to get much faster, soon. I question the strategy of going back and forth from Canada during the World Cup. Jet lag and travel stress are very hard on the body and for sure this travel will not help them. I know that there are other reasons for them to do this, but I believe that this is hurting them. Sometimes you can race well in the first couple of days after you travel to Europe but for the first 10 days the jet lag makes it almost impossible to be anywhere near your best. We did a big study on this in the 1990s and found that skiers were not at their best until 12 to 14 days after they travelled.

The rest of the men from North America continue to struggle in distance races. Stefan Kuhn was 67th, Noah Hoffman was 69th and Brent McMurtry was 75th. Skiers need experience in Europe to ski well but as I said earlier – men’s distance racing is one of the toughest sports.

The same cannot be said for sprinting. Len Valjas finished an incredible 17th in the men’s sprint on his first trip to Europe. Len surprised everyone last year winning the sprint race at the Canadian Championships and this is his second top-30 result on the World Cup this season. Along with Phil Widmer who had a breakthrough 18th place they have both qualified for the World Championships in Olso in March. These are great results for both of them.

Simi Hamilton also had a breakthrough result finishing 16th after qualifying 11th. Veteran Andy Newell continued his disappointing racing in the heats. After qualifying 4th, he didn’t make it out of his quarter final heat by not paying attention to what was happening around him. He was nipped at the line by Italian Fulvio Scola and finished 13th for the second week in a row. We all keep waiting for Andy to make a breakthrough… but it doesn’t seem to happen.

Sweden’s Emil Joensson is now officially the best sprinter in the world after winning twice in a row. He has the best technique and is the fastest in the last 200 meters right now. For the first time that I can remember there were no Norwegian men in the final. Can you just see the headlines in the Norwegian newspapers? This was a disastrous weekend for them with no one in the top 5 all weekend.

Finally, I have to ask – where is Petter Northug? He came back to racing this weekend and was a non factor in both races finishing 28th in the sprints and 13th in the 15km classic. This is a long way from the dominance that he displayed in winning the overall World Cup last season and I am sure that there is a lot of concern in Norway. There is still plenty of time before Oslo in March for him to come back for the World Championships, but the World Cup is slipping out of his grasp. I don’t care how good you are, if you over train you will pay. He is paying now. Next week the WCup race in La Clusaz, France is one of his best events – a 30km skating mass start race. Let’s see how he does.

La Clusaz is the last stop before the Xmas break for the World Cup. It is a time for the skiers to analyze, make new plans and get ready for the Tour de Ski. We will do the same thing here at SkiTrax.