US Nordic Ski Racing - We are headed in the right direction in a big way

Sat, Mar  27, 2010 - By Ian Harvey

Now that the season is behind us, I thought I'd take a moment to reconcile how things went.  I think this is best done at the end of a season where you truly have the benefit of hindsight.  I think that US Nordic skiing is the strongest that it has been at least for the last 25 years and probably forever.

This past season, Kris Freeman finished 4th in a World Cup race.  While Kris had been 5th and 6th before, he had never finished 4th in a World Cup race.  (He has been 4th at World Championships twice). World Cups, especially early season World Cups, are the most competitive.  They have the largest and deepest fields.  This was quite an accomplishment that hopefully he will be able to build on.

Kikkan Randall had an amazing year. She finished 2nd in a World Cup Sprint race in Oslo.  She also ended the season with 3 consecutive top 20s in distance races.  Her 8th place in the Olympic Sprint Race in the Classic technique was the best individual US women's finish ever in the Olympics.

Caitlin Compton finished 14th in a World Cup distance race and 30th in the Games.  She also finished 6th in the Olympic Sprint Relay with Kikkan to provide the best US Women's Nordic result ever.  14th in a women's distance World Cup race ties Caitlin with Nina Kemppel for the best US result from the past 30 years plus (or ever depending on how you look at it).

Andy Newell had a disappointing individual race in the Olympics having fallen in the qualifying round.  That said, he had his best year ever having finished on the podium and an amazing 4th place overall in the Sprint World Cup!

Torin Koos didn't have a good year compared to some of his best years in the past.  Still though, he teamed up with Andy Newell to finish 9th in the Olympic sprint relay and 6th in the Dusseldorf Sprint relay.  He also qualified 2nd in Canmore at the Sprint World Cup Race collecting some valuable FIS points and finished in 11th.

Simi Hamilton finished 28th and 29th in his first World Cup and in the Olympics respectively.  These are very promising results for a World Cup rookie.  James Southam also had some promising results.

As a nation, we have quite a few top skiers that are especially young including Liz Stephen, Morgan Arritola, Simi, Noah Hoffmann, Garrott Kuzzy, and Tad Elliot.  The future looks bright and I don't think we have ever been as good overall as we are right now.

In addition to this, when you consider the success of the US Biathletes (Tim Burke leading the World Cup and finishing 14th overall and Jeremy Teela finishing 9th at the Games) and the US Nordic Combined team (2 individual silvers, a gold, and a bronze plus a silver in the team event at the Games) you have to be really excited about where we are at and where we are going.