January 17, 2011 (Barrie, ON)  – So, it finally happened – after winning nine races in a row Norway’s Marit Bjoergen finally lost a race on the World Cup. In fact, she did not even make the final of the individual skate sprint race on Saturday. She got tangled up with another skier in the semi-final and did not have enough time to get back to the front of her heat and she was eliminated.

This left the door wide open and the USA’s Kikkan Randall was the one to walk right through it to win her 2nd World Cup race. Kikkan is one of the best skating sprinters in the world and her dominant result on the same course where she finished 2nd at the World Championships in 2009 establishes her as a favourite for the podium at the World Championships in Olso, Norway in early March.

Dasha Gaiazova qualified well in 12th but could not get past the _ finals and finished 14th. Chandra Crawford qualified 19th and finished 26th. Not great results (probably affected by jet lag) but they redeemed themselves in the team sprint on Sunday by finishing 5th. This result was especially good for Chandra as it was a classic team sprint. With this being the same team sprint event coming up at Olso there are a lot of positive vibes in the Canadian camp for this pair.

Bjoergen redeemed herself on Sunday in the team sprints by crushing the field in her last leg to win easily with her partner Maiken Caspersen Falla. The Norway 2 team of Kari Vikhagen Gjeitnes and Celine Brun-Lie also finished 3rd just behind the Italian duo of Magda Genuin and Marianna Longa. The Nowegian women are so strong this year no one can touch them.

It is good for the rest of the field that at the World Championships they will only be able to put in one team. The big question is who will it be? Bjoergen has said that she will not race in the team sprints, but even without her they will win. The Italians and the Swedes and the Slovenians are there but the door is open to teams like Canada and the US to sneak in for a medal.

Without the world’s best male sprinter, Emil Joensson from Sweden in the field, Norway’s Ola Vigen Hattestad finally was able to win a skating sprint race. Two years ago he dominated the world of sprinting but he has fallen on hard times and this was a big result for him. There was a good chance that he would not be on the team for Olso but now he will be there for sure. Then he teamed with his 2009 Worlds team sprint gold partner, Johan Kjoelstad, to win the classic sprint relay on Sunday.

Once again the Norwegians had a second team finish 3rd. They used to dominate sprinting like the Norwegian women are now, but with the strong Swedish team and the resurgence of the Italians and the Russians they have not been dominant this year until this weekend.

Andy Newell had another mediocre result on Saturday qualifying 11th and finishing 13th. Len Valjas, suffering from jet lag fatigue could do no better than 42nd and did not qualify for the heats.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again – jet lag affects everyone, no matter how many times that you travel. It’s worse when you go from West to East. Most people can race well for the first couple of days after you travel, but from day 3 until day 10 there are big effects on energy and ability to ski and race. This is why it is so hard to get the Europeans to come to North America to race. They know how hard it is to race well with jet lag – and they are going in the easy direction.

Skiers going over to race need to travel at least 10 days before any major race or it is a waste of time and money, as far as I am concerned. Fortunately for Len this World Cup is just a warm up for him for the World Cup in Estonia next weekend and the U23 World championships in two weeks (Jan. 27-30) also in Estonia – so he should be fine by then. Dasha and Chandra also have another weekend of racing and should feel better as well.

The talk about doping in the Russian team is starting to get louder and louder again. It seems that any time one team does much better than expected that fingers start to point. The Russian men did extremely well on the World Cup before Xmas but since there have been issues. Maxim Vylezhganin was stopped from racing at the Tour de Ski for hemoglobin levels that were too high and he has not returned to racing yet. Alexander Legkov and Ilia Chernoursov both left the Tour de Ski with the flu which is likely legitimate.

However, the latest revelation is that Nicolai Morilov, Alexey Pethukov, Vasili Rochev, Dimitri Vasiliev and others have failed to notify the Russian Anti-Doping Authority in early January of their whereabouts. This is a violation of the Anti-Doping rules as all top athletes in every sport must be available for no- notice testing at all times during the year. Failure to do so can result in suspension.

This is significant. Every top athlete knows that they must notify their anti-doping agency about their whereabouts. Professional cyclist Michael Rasmussen from Denmark did the same thing a few years ago and he was pulled from the Tour de France when he was leading and banned from cycling for two years. Now he’s not able to ride with a top pro team because no team wants to deal with doping issues. He never actually tested positive for any banned substance but not being available to be tested was enough to put him out of the sport.

How can the rest of the ski world not be suspicious about the Russian team after these things have happened, especially with their history over the past few years. Where there is smoke there is fire, and there is a lot of smoke here. This was all supposed to be cleaned up with the firing of coaches and administrators, but it doesn’t look like much has changed. Stayed tuned – there is much more to this than we know now.

Meanwhile the “white circus” moves to Otepaa, Estonia next weekend for a weekend of classic racing with distance races on Saturday and individual sprint races on Sunday. It will be good to see a distance race again on the World Cup. It was a little bizarre to have the longest race be 1.6km on the cross country World Cup this past weekend, but it did give the distance racers who raced at the Tour de Ski a weekend off to recover. I think that this is good planning by the FIS Cross Country Committee.