February 15, 2010 (Whistler, BC) – I arrived to the Vancouver airport Saturday night, made it to

the US Ski Team wax house in Whistler at 11PM and was waxing skis by 7:30AM on Sunday. It took me a bit to get situated and make the transition from full-time shop worker (my day job) to wax tech at the biggest ski races on the planet. By the end of the day, however, I was feeling situated, comfortable and excited. The US Ski Team XC wax team for this Olympic games consists of 11 people. Each person has different areas of expertise and responsibility.

I think it’s a sign that we have some great people because the team works amazingly well together given that it is a large group performing under stressful conditions in very tight quarters. The wax cabin is the size of a small trailer, and we have skis and poles for 11 athletes skis, about 40 pairs of test skis, wax and all of the miscellaneous tools and accessories for waxing required to compete at this level. Including an espresso machine.

Each person on the wax crew has responsibilities that range from helping athletes pick and manage their race skis, to testing waxes and structures as well as applying the final race wax. Monday is the first cross-country race, a 10km/15km individual start skate race. We have eight athletes competing in this event, so we had to prepare the athletes’ skis for testing this morning and then go out and ski with them to help them choose which skis we will prepare for the race. We also had to manage the athletes who are not racing Monday, but needed classic skis to prepare for the Sprint Race on Wednesday.

At the same time, we had to prepare test skis to test as many variables as possible to find the fastest wax and structure solutions for tomorrow’s races. We had to juggle all of this around a tight schedule because the Nordic Combined race was happening on Sunday as well, limiting access to the track.

The weather on Sunday was crazy. We woke up to pouring rain here in Whistler, and the rain was still coming down hard when we arrived at the venue at 7:30am. The rain topped and the fog lifted just as the athletes started arriving to test skis around 8:30am. We had sunny weather until around 10:30am when they closed the course.

The rain moved in again with a vengeance right in the middle of the biathlon, wreaking havoc on that race. I caught a bit it on TV just as the rain started and it was sad watching all of the favorites taken out of the race by the downpour. It made it nearly impossible to shoot reliably, and to make matters worse, the rain turned into soaking wet sharp crystals of snow that made the track horrendously slow for everyone who was still out on course. The first ten racers to go out were the only ones to have a clean run at the course, and all three medalists came from that group. It shows how you have to be ready for anything in outdoor sports, and emphasized how our service crew needs to be prepared for any occurrence during these next two weeks.

Today we tested stone grinds, hand structure modifications, base waxes, paraffin waxes, fluoro powders and a few top coats. Because of the rapidly changing weather throughout the day, every hour seemed to bring new winners to the front and solutions that were winning an hour before became the worst thing you had ever skied on.

Just before lunch, the Nordic Combined Team asked us to help test some fluoro powders for them, so I put on my boots and skied out on two different powder applications to test how they felt on the course. No pressure here: three of the Nordic Combined guys were contending for medals and I had 15 minutes to choose the fastest wax by feeling the differences as I skied with one option on each foot.

I skied the entire loop just to make sure that I would choose the wax that would be fastest over the entire course. At first, I was very nervous because the two options were very close and the winner kept switching back and forth. But by the time I finished the 2.5km loop, one was the clear winner and I didn’t have to agonize over which one to choose. I called in the test result and they waxed up the team’s skis as I jogged back to the wax cabin to join the rest of the XC crew for lunch.

After lunch, we waxed some skis and then headed out to catch the combined race, which was a blast to watch.  Not only did the US gain its first medal in Nordic since 1976, they took 2nd, 4th and 6th and all four of our guys had clearly fast skis.

After watching the combined race and screaming our lungs out, it was back out on the course for more testing. I tested four grinds that have been in the mix over the last few days on the entire 7.5km loop so that I could get a good feel for what race conditions will be like and make sure that whatever we pick will be good on the entire course. It was a long test, but really productive as I ended the day knowing exactly how each of our best four grind options compared on all of the different types of snow out on course.

After that, it was back to the wax cabin to prepare my athlete’s skis for the race tomorrow.  Zach and Erik took a large batch of skis back to Squamish to be stone ground, and they will be working late into the night preparing those skis for tomorrow. Most of the athletes’ skis are all set to go, but some athletes needed to have additional structure options that their fleets did not cover, so we needed to grind a pair or two for them in case conditions require those grinds.

A long day, but we’re already off to a great start with a silver medal, something that has not happened in 84 years for US Nordic.