The Highs and Lows of the Olympics

The Olympic are over and there’s a huge void in many of our daily routines now. To continue to live the glory I made a list of what I thought were the best and the most disappointing performances of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Top 5

1. Marit Bjørgen and the Norwegian women: Bjørgen was the Queen of Vancouver. The most decorated athlete in any sport for either men or women. The best team on either side of the gender divide. Obviously it helps when one of the stars of the Olympic Games is on your team but having 11 top ten performances plus a relay gold is a really impressive haul. Even though Størmer-Steira failed to hit the podium, she managed a top 10 in every individual race she entered (8th, 4th and 8th). Sweden’s women were second with eight top 10′s.

2. Canadian men: Over achievement can be one word to describe what they managed to achieved at Whistler Olympic Park. The ball started rolling with Babikov earning the best placing for a Canadian men when he finished 8th in the 15km skate. This led to a banner competition which was highlighted by the men’s 30km pursuit which saw Babikov in 5th, Grey in 8th, Harvey in 9th and Kershaw in 16th. It’s hard to fathom considering four years ago in Torino the men only had one top 30 placing (Grey with 25th in the 30km pursuit). Just goes to show how well the program has done the past while.  Canada also had two qualifiers (Kuhn 10th fastest in qualifying and Kershaw in 24th) in the sprint compared to the zero they had in Torino. I’ve said it before, but it’s an exciting time in male cross-country skiing in Canada. The best way to put it is “success breeds success” and it’s no more prevalent when you look at the U23 and Junior levels and Canada was able to put eight top 20 performances in Hinterzarten.

3. Petra “The Heroin” Majdic: Her feat to win bronze with five fractured ribs and a punctured lung was almost a medical miracle and will undoubtedly live in our minds for many years to come.  I truly believe that had Majdic and Fabjan been a pairing in the team sprint, another medal would be hanging around her neck today. At first she thought she might retire, but got her head on straight and has been quoted saying that she plans on coming back strong than ever and will win everything. Hopefully she can walk the walk.

4. Petter Northug: The uproar after his result in the 15km was met with some intense press from Norwegian media outet, thankfully he got back on the horse and turned those frowns unspide down. He came out of Vancouver as the most decorated male athlete and earned the right to be the flag bearer for Norway at the closing ceremonires. He proved to the world that he is the best all round skier and that he can talk the talk and walk the walk most of the time. It was mentioned that if Northug and Bjørgen had created their own country, they would’ve finished ninth in the medal table, just ahead of Austria.

5. Swedish men distance: They proved they are the strongest mens team in cross country skiing which will irk the Norwegians to no end. Hellner and Olsson are the obvious stand outs, but Rickardsson has made big strides this year and is becoming a great skier in his own right. Södergren deservedly earned his first Olympic medal in the relay after some great team skiing in the pursuit. The team should have great moment for the rest of the year and going into the summer and they will be hard to beat next year in Oslo for the 2011 World Ski Championships…the question is who will try to topple them and if there is one team that could, I’d put my money on the Germans.

6. A doping free Olympics!…so far.

Bottom 5

1. Emil Jönsson and Swedish mens sprint team: This might sound harsh and I hate to admit it because Jönsson has been one of my favourite skiers since he introduced his turbo to the world back in the 2006-2007 season. So when he was in the shape he was in coming into the Olympics, I was very happy to say the least. He was an overwhelming favourite coming into the sprint races, perhaps more so than Northug in the mass start distance races. So for the Swede to not make podium, let alone the finals, it was a major dissapointing. All four men had great qualifiers and were in the top 20 going into the heats, yet none of them made the top six. To add insult to injury Jonsson was denied another crack at the gold as he came down with sickness. The result was Sweden finishing an abissmal 15th in the team sprint.

2. Norwegian distance men (sans Northug): Take Northug out of the picture, and the once dominant force of men’s cross country skiing would have failed to earn a single top 10 position. Sundby’s 15th in the 50km would have been the top result. Now there has been a lot of media talk about radical changes to the program and I touched on it a bit, but I will be extremely surprised if the axe doesn’t fall after the season over. Apart from Bach and the juniors Thomas Northug, Pål Goldberg and Finn Hågen Krough (also possesses the elder Northug’s final gear), the only other promising athlete I see that can come in and make a big difference next season is Simen Østensen… if he stays healthy. Remember when Rønning was good? Ya me too, let’s hope he has a good summer and comes back to the form we’re use to seeing from him. With the juniors still a few years away from some good performances on the World Cup, it makes for some dire times in Norway’s mens team.

3. I know many people will be angry with this pick, but Kris Freeman ranks number three most disappointing for me. There’s a rabid debate going on over at FasterSkier about the US ski team right now after their Olympic experience but that had no influence on my decision. There were many skiers that had bad results at the Olympics, but they were able to bounce back and get the results they wanted (ie. Northug and Teichmann both finish 41st and 44th in the opening race).

What I’m trying to say here is that everyone knows that Freeman can get the job done (at least top 10′s in these competition), but when your Olympics result sheet goes 59th, 45th, DNF and you’re a red group athlete, that’s disappointing. Being from North America, you always hear the quotes from the USST (US Ski Team) such as “All In” or “Get There” or the endless stream of inspirational quotes. Just to get the point of what I’m trying to say, pop on over to TeamToday and read a couple articles and hopefully you will understand what I’m attempting to describe. For a feather in the cap of the national program, the best distance male athlete for the US was James Southam who isn’t even on the USST…

4. The Weather Gods: Have wax technicians ever come across such adverse conditions before? We had everything in Callaghan Valley over the Olympics, expect normal winter weather. Wet snow, sleet, light rain, heavy rain, heavy fog, intense heat accompanied by equally intense sunshine and perhaps some hail. It caused many dilemmas over the competition which led to some poor results. The weather Gods didn’t play nice and the wax techs earned top accolades for dealing with it for two weeks.

5. I couldn’t think of one.

That’s about a wrap on the Olympics for another four years. The majority of the athletes who are finishing the rest of this year’s World Cup circuit are already in Finland preparing for the next round of World Cup racing this weekend in Lahti. A preview will be up in the next couple days.

Until then enjoy the Olympic hangover.

Same Old Story: Northug Wins Sprint Finish

Last night I had the easy dilemma, write a blog about the men’s 50km or watch what was the most important hockey game for Canadians in recent history; naturally I choose the latter. I now sit here with a splitting headache and thoughts on the final race of the cross country schedule for the 2010 Olympics. I’m not going to give you a detailed run down of the events leading up to the finish, because there weren’t many talking points in the first 49km of the race.

Here’s a spark notes version of the first 49km:

• George Grey takes front of pack early on until he switches skis
• Södergren, Northug, Hjelmeset, and Cologna take turns leading the race
• Shiriaev and Freeman drop out
• Gaillard switches ski but gets ski strap wedged on ski rendering it useless. Spends the better part of 30 seconds trying to pry the strap off with no success and proceeds to throw the ski to the ground in frustration. Ski tech comes onto course and is able to pry strap off. Event only become funny in hindsight as he is able to catch up with the lead group
• Crash at 22km sees Bauer taken out in big pile up
• Sundby breaks free after Bauer and Cologna switch skis and expands lead to 14 seconds before being caught by chasers
• Legkov leads and attempts to string out pack; he is partially successful but ski 19 skiers in and around the lead group

Essentially, you could have turned the TV with two hours of the race gone and really not missed any of the action. There was still 19 skiers within 10 seconds of each other at the final time check at 47.1km. It wasn’t until the “staircase” climbs behind the stadium with 800m left that the first move was put in as Teichmann didn’t want to suffer the same fate he had many times

before and turned the screw. You knew that it was too little too late as Northug was right beside him sneaking glances at him as if to say “you’ll have to do better than that if you’re going to beat me.” However, Teichmann’s surge did manage to break many of the skiers and coming into the stadium there were six contenders. Teichmann, Northug, Teichmann, Olsson, Cologna and Kershaw.

Teichmann lead them around the 180 degress left hander into the finishing straight and Northug pulled along side the German and the rest is history. Northug didn’t make it look as easy as in the relay but he still was in control of the situation.

The fight for bronze was really exciting too as Cologna was side by side with Olsson going into the finishing straight when he lost balance on the icy corner and hit the ground ending any chance of a medal. Olsson was able to sprint to a bronze while Angerer and Kershaw desperately tried to catch up to the Swede to get on the podium but failed to do so. In the end, Angerer was able to out-lunge the Canadian by half a boot. Veerpalu was next across the line six seconds off of the gold medal.

Results

1. Petter Northug
2. Axel Teichmann
3. Johan Olsson

If you want a more in depth race reprt you can head over to FasterSkier and read this article.

Norwegians are finally happy after the tedious start to the games for Northug. He comes out of his first Olympics with four medals (two gold, one silver and one bronze) which is not too shabby. All he need is a faster team around him and maybe they will be able to challenge the Swedish men. Even with all the fuss early on, Norway did have two of the best skiers at the Olympics in Northug and Bjørgen but the depth of the Norwegian men will be a point of a lot of discussion in the future.

There was a lot of talk about Veerpalu and how he can peak for every major competition and get results without racing a lot prior to the competition. While he didn’t get on the podium, he still had a great race but didn’t have the sprint in him to compete in the last kilometer. He says that it would have been much better if it was an individual start but he can compete with the younger skiers in a sprint finish. The 39 year old also said this will be his last Olympics and won’t be in Sochi. It’s crazy that this was his sixth winter Olympics. Only two other cross country skiers have that honour; Harri Kirvesniemi and Marja-Liisa Kirvesniemi-Hämäläinen.

You have to feel bad for Teichmann. Will he ever beat Northug in a finish? Maybe he will sign a book deal when his ski career is over and his autobiography will be aptly name “Out-Sprinted by Northug – The Axel Teichmann Story”.  If he ever beats the Norwegian it’ll be a remorable day for German cross country skiing.

The Germans were led by Teichmann as all his teammates had great races too. Angerer picked up the wooden medal with Filbrich in 16th and Sommerfeldt in 21st. That’s impressive depth. The same can be said for the Swede’s as Olsson led the Swedish men to yet another very successful day as he won the bronze. Rickardsson was in seventh and Södergren was in ninth and Hellner was in 22nd.

Coming into the race, much of the press the Canadian’s were recieveing was about McKeever notbeing selected to race the 50km and thus denying him to make history. In hindsight, perhaps he could’ve done better than Babikov and Harvey as all the racing caught up with them, but you can’t make that decision as Babikov was the strongest Canadian at the Olympics and Harvey won the bronze medal in the distance in Trondhiem last year.

After the race, all the press was about Kershaw. How awesome would it have been for him to step on the podium and earn Canada’s first ever medal in men’s cross country skiing on home snow? He skied the perfect race and 0.6 seconds off of the podium and ended up fifth, tying Babikov’s 30km pursuit performance for best ever result by a Canadian man in the Olympics. It was a great day to end a very successful Olympic Games for the men. This team is going to be awesome to watch and if they stay together until Sochi, well I get excited just thinking about it. They have turned a lot of heads and are now mentioned in the same sentences as Sweden, Germany, Norway, and Finland. That’s pretty cool to me…

For those of you who want to re-live all the races or if you were American and had to suffer through the NBC coverage of some of the events, you can now download all the race via bit torrent as seen on Eurosport. Good quality and full length. Links can be found on the media page.

Congratulations to Matt Wylie for winning the NordicXplained “Pick the Podium” Olympic version. We only had seven contestants this time round but hopefully the game will grow in subsequent versions.

There’ll be some more post-Olympic fall out over the next couple days.

Until Then.

50,000m Until the End

The Grand Finale is finally upon us. There are only two events left to be decided; the men’s 50km mass start and the men’s gold medal hockey game. It’s not a lot of sporting action but sometimes quality is better than quantity. The men will be dealing with similar conditions to the women but without the depressing spattering rain. There are a handful of men that can reach the podium (like any other race) but there path to success will depend on how the race is run. It will be very difficult to ski away from the pack with the wet conditions and this will play into the hands of Northug and his sprint. The odds on favourite for the race is Bauer at 2.55 then Northug at 4.25 with Veerpalu at 9.00. Perhaps we will be treated to an early breakaway from an unknown skier much like Zolt Antal from Romania in Torino or Koons in the 30km pursuit?

Predictions
1. Lukas Bauer
2. Johan Olsson
3. Andrus Veerpalu

Being in classic style, I don’t think that Northug will factor into the race much. Bauer has yet to tast glory and will play very tactically until he thinks he can break free and then go for glory then. Olsson is a very good classical technician and with him still riding high on his bronze and gold from the pursuit and relay,I expect him to continue the good run and pick up another medal. Veerpalu is the unknown in this race. We know he has the ability to show up to big events and throw down. His legs will be fresh from no racing yet, but does he have that edge to get on the podium? I think he’ll barely do it with his old-man strength.

There will be a lot more men challenge and I’m going to be keeping an eye on Jauhojärvi who has shown he can race the distances. He also has the sprint speed if it comes down to that. Cologna will be up there and wants to improve on his pursuit result while Hellner will be hungry but he is much better in the skating technique. Angerer will be up in the mix and poor old Legkov will be trying to get on the podium after another heart-breaking fourth. The Canadians will be looking to get on the podium for the final time and have their relay team in the line up. This means history will not be written.

Earlier on this winter Brian McKeever was selected to the Canadian team to race and become the first winter athlete to race in the summer and winter Olympics. However, the coach decided to stick with the hot skiers which meant that McKeever won’t be hitting the start line. You have to feel a little sympathy for him since he has been peaking for this race but that is sport for you; cut-throat and unfair at times.

Here’s to another great race to close out another astounding Olympic Games

Until Next Time, come on Canada and get that gold in men’s hockey!!!