January 21, 2011 – Kikkan Randall is flying around in rarified air now leading the World Cup Sprint category. There are three categories in the overall World Cup title, sprint, distance and of course the overall. To lead these or win them for the year in the overall is a real feather in your cap and of course to win them all in one year is the ultimate stamp of being the King or the Queen of XC skiing.

In the US and NA there is only one other skier to have reached this mark in the modern (WC) era – Bill Koch in 1982 when he won the overall World Cup in it’s first year.

NA XC history continues to grow in a good way. Hurray to you Kikkan!!

Concussions – is Marty crazy to have this reference in his column? It’s been the top medical issue on every professional sports list over the past 12-15 months and  I think it has merit being on our XC radar screen.

I guess you could say we’re not a contact sport until you do a spill at 35-40 mph and get whip lash on a very hard track, or you get taken out on a corner and get involved with a tree.

Ida Sargent did not get injured skiing but in a car accident, and has had issues getting back into a normal racing procedure – at the Super Series in Placid she raced the first day not the second almost a month since the accident.

Coaches need to be looking into this so they can take the proper steps in dealing with these types of injuries – concussive forces can wreak havoc with the brain.

Please take the time, so you don’t make a serious mistake some day.

Noah Hoffman, is the man!!!!!  Finally a set of back-to-back result -2nd the first day, and a crushing 1st the next. Been watching him these past few years waiting for this breakthrough and I’ll bet it was more mental then physical. Nice present to yourself to head off to Europe with, Noah!

Liberec Team Sprint this past weekend, and the Canadian women’s team has a fairly commendable result – 5th place. But I’ve watched the video of the race and I think it’s time to stop using the ‘Chandra is getting better at her weakest technique’ excuse.

I can tell you from what I’ve seen on the videos in this race that she is not being held back by her technique. She isn’t your top choice as a technique demo skier, but neither is Dasha Gaiazova and she certainly had the jets on. There was a lot more money on the table to be had by this team if Chandra had been doing her homework before heading off to Liberec. Where were the two teammates the week before heading off to this WC…? Gaiazova was in Thunder Bay at the Haywood NorAm Trials putting the finishing touches on her racing fitness to be ready for the up coming show in Europe. While her teammate Crawford was in Canmore I presume… why wasn’t she getting primed on the start line as well?

To me the simple answer to Crawford’s situation is that she hasn’t raced enough to be in racing shape and doesn’t have the fitness to hold her speed for 3+ minutes of sprinting and definitely to do the heats in a row as required by the Team Sprint event and the individual sprint. If it’s her technique that’s holding her back in classic, what about the individual skate sprint the day before where Dasha (12th vs Crawford’s 19th) dusted her again in the qualifications?

I would venture that Crawford is 10  to 14 races behind in her racing season so far when comparing herself with other WC competitors. She needs to soon wake up to the fact that there are truly no women skiers specializing in sprinting any more. The game has changed and all you have to do is see how Kikkan has changed her program in the last two years to get into the ball game.

Well, she has three more years to wake up!

PS. I’m venturing a guess that she passes up her start on Saturday in the 10km classic.

The Sad Thing for all of these successfully maturing skiers in NA and the ski programs in both countries is that there are not going to be any opportunities to see them in the next 5 to 10 years at WCs in NA – for adoring fans. With the present leadership in both programs – weak in Canada and totally lacking of money in the US – it just isn’t going to happen. Also, there are some fences to mend when it comes to  Canada’s snub of the FIS last year in it’s quest to get a Tour de Rockies program started, primarily in Canada. There’s some real racing star power in both programs and it’s definitely growing as we move towards Sochi in 2014. The big problem is that Sochi is in the the other direction and doesn’t really connect to NA. Anybody for a World Championships?

For Andy Newell – and I know he doesn’t want to hear it – I went back over his results well into 2008 and here is the verdict on the 33 sprint races he completed during that time period – we are comparing his qualifying position to his final position. He improved his position 10 times, fell back 20 times and stayed the same three times. All these races are on the FIS calendar, so you’re talking WC, World Champs, Olympics and FIS point races (mostly in the US). A total of 66% of the time he is failing to seal the deal. There is a ton of money he has left in the bank, if you want to look at it that way. This can be fixed, but he has to want to fix it. He is too good an athlete and skier to continue to doing it this way – he should be in the mix for the overall sprint title, which is still wide open for this year – he’s in 7th place right now.

See you next time…