This weekend’s World Cup races are:
Saturday December 20
Women: 2 x 7.5 kilometer pursit/skiathlon
Men: 10 kilometer skate
Sunday December 21
Women: 10 k skate
Men: 2 x 15 k pursuit/skiathlon
Trond, Congratulation with very good results in recent World Cup races!
Can you give us a “situation report” before this weekend's races? Where are you on training at the moment, how are the conditions, the skier’s health and mood, which races are you planning on racing, what are the plans for the skiers after this World Cup trip, are you going back for US Nationals in Rumford and when are you going back to Europe for more World Cup racing?
We are in Ramsau, Austria right now. The snow is good and we are looking forward to
racing under the lights here. It will be on a 2.5 km loop with race start at 5.45 PM for men on Saturday and 5 PM on Sunday — prime television time. The boys are looking good. Carl is feeling great. Lars is recovering well after his food poisoning and Kris has been feeling good, but got a little sore throat on Tuesday. We are hoping he is
going to recover by this weekend. If all goes well we are hoping to have
one top 10, one top 20 and one top 30 in each race this weekend.
It should hopefully be a good race weekend. There is lots of snow here, so racing should be good. Kris is currently 23rd on the World ranking list, so if he stays top 30 we will skip Nationals and go on to race more world cups in early January.
Editor: The top 30 skiers become part of the seeded “World Cup Red Groupâ€, which gets travel and accommodation covered by the race organizers (as well as for one coach each).
Everyone is now seeing that it is possible for American skiers to do extremely well in
World Cups. I also think we have 4-6 racers in the US that can score World Cup
points, so I am very excited to see that US racers are getting to be competitive in the world.
We will make plans for the rest of the year after this weekend. As of now
it is US Nationals in Rumford, Maine Jan 3 — 11 for everyone and then we’ll go over with a full team to start the rest of the World Cup period with the Marcialonga marathon race.
