2010-2011: The Fantastic Four

There were so many highlights this year and to talk about them all would require a book deal from Random House, so instead I’m going to highlight the four best performances, teams and/or athletes of the past four months. But first lets take a look at the sprint, distance and overall standings and how the Nations Cup went this year…

Overall

	Men	Points	Women	Points
1.	Dario Cologna	1566	Justyna Kowalczyk	2073
2.	Petter Northug	1236	Marit Bjørgen	1578
3.	Daniel Rickardsson	981	Arianna Follis	1310
4.	Lukas Bauer	923	Therese Johaug	1173
5.	Alexander Legkov	796	Charlotte Kalla	1100

Distance

	Men	Points	Women	Points
1.	Dario Cologna	706	Justyna Kowalczyk	1039
2.	Daniel Rickardsson	568	Marit Bjørgen	775
3.	Lukas Bauer	553	Therese Johaug	671
4.	Petter Northug	512	Marianna Longa	518
5.	Alexander Legkov	503	Arianna Follis	518

Sprint

	Men	Points	Women	Points
1.	Emil Jönsson	580	Petra Majdic	480
2.	Ola Vigen Hattestad	407	Arianna Follis	437
3.	Jesper Modin	300	Kikkan Randall	427
4.	Alexey Petukhov	277	Marit Bjørgen	403
5.	Fulvio Scola	275	Justyna Kowalczyk	314

Nations Cup

	Country	Points	Men	Women
1.	Norway	11507	4807 (1.)	6700 (1.)
2.	Sweden	7745	4107 (3.)	3638 (2.)
3.	Russia	6244	4467 (2.)	1777 (7.)
4.	Italy	6131	2571 (5.)	3560 (3.)
5.	Finland	4265	1279 (10.)	2986 (4.)

Now without further adieu and in no particular order, here are my top four…

1. Norway: When it comes to a country hosting the World Champs, it will take a long time, or probably the next time Norway hosts the World Championships to top the performance of the home country both on the trails and off the trails. From the tens of thousands that camped on the trails to secure spots to watch the races, to the 150,000 that flooded University Square in downtown Oslo to celebrate the relay golds, and absolutely dominating the 12 day event by racking up eight gold, four silver, four bronze.

I realize that the FIS want the sport to grow in less traditional market and thus, they want to put the World Champs in those places (read: Sapporo 2007), but how can you beat Oslo for location, atmosphere and all-round awesomeness when it comes to he second biggest nordic event behind the Olympics. They know how to put on a show and they know how to do it right. I think they should have Norway into the hosting the World Champs every third rotation. They have the facilities and the enthusiasm to do it, so why not?

As for their athletes, Bjørgen and Northug continued to dominate at the big show and account for the majority of Norway’s medal haul. Add a couple great performance from the men’s distance team and a small women call Therese Johaug and a great supporting case and you have the best ski team in the world.

2. Kikkan Randall: Newell was the first American sprinter to turn head when he landed on the scene in the middle of last decade and Randall had continued to move the American flag up the leaderboard. Her rise to prominance over the past few years has been impressive. This year was by far and away her best year to date as she earned third place in the Sprint Cup. It should be interesting next year as Majdic and Follis, both who finish ahead of her, are retiring from the sport and with Randall’s continual improvement of her aerobic capacity, she not only established herself not only as one of the best sprinters in the world, but also a top 20 regular in the distances too. She landed on the podium four times including two wins in Liberec and Drammen.

What’s even more impressive is that she averaged 53.4 World Cup points for every race sprint race she entered this year, only Bjørgen had a better average at 57.6 points while Majdic, Follis and Kowalczyk were 43.6pts, 39.5pts and 34.8pts per race respectively.

3. Emil Jonsson: While he still has not won a gold medal at the Olympics or World Championships, it’s difficult not to argue that he is the best sprinter in the world when he is on his game. Not only that, but this year he was also the most dangerous and consistant sprinter in the world. He averaged an amazing 72.5 points per sprint race this year and that included three races that were only half due to the tour format. Had they been worth full amounts, he average would have been 85.3 points per race. he also won six of the eight that he entered this year.

His sprinting was so good this year he finished 6th in the overall rankings, but his place was bumped up with help from some of his good distance skiing in the tours where he finished 7th in the pursuit in Falun and 8th in the 10km classic at the beginning of the year in Kuusamo.

4. Alex Harvey & Devon Kershaw: When you say these two names, we all think the team sprint gold from the World Champs; and that was a phenomenal performance. While this was the highlight of the season, it takes numerous great performances to finish in the top 10 in the World Cup Overall standings which both did as Kershaw finished 8th and Harvey was 10th. Only Sweden had more athletes inside the top 10 (Rickardsson (3rd), Jonsson (6th) and Hellner (7th)).

Kershaw was a force to be reckoned with in the first half of the Tour picking up three consecutive podium that was topped off by his first ever World Cup win as he out-lunged Cologna at the line. Harvey also had some memorable performances such as his win in the 30km U23 pursuit where he out sprint Russia’s Belov. Also, his gutsy move to ski two laps in the very same race at the World Champs that didn’t pay off but still secured him a 12th and a few days later just missed the medals and finished 5th in the 50km mass start.

I’ll be back with more fall-out from the year in the next couple days so stay tuned.