OTEPAEAE, Estonia (Jan. 8) — Olympic skier Kris Freeman (Andover, NH), who has produced the best international cross country results in two decades, returns to World Cup racing Saturday in a 30K classic technique, mass-start race.
Freeman Returns To World Cup
FasterSkier · January 8, 2004
The race will be six five laps on a 6K course that's deceptively challenging, Nystad said. “It's pretty flat, but there's a hill around the stadium and they've used it as much as possible, and it's got a little bit of steep so it's a tough course…but that's good because it may help provide some gaps in the field.
The snow is “probably the best we've seen this season.” The cold is expected to make for a fast course, he added.
Freeman, a diabetic who takes up to a half-dozen insulin shots daily through a Lilly Humalog pen, has been fifth and sixth in World Cup races this season, the best American showing in World Cups since Jim Galanes was fifth in Murmansk in the old Soviet Union in March 1984.
During the holidays, he conducted a clinic for Fischer Skis at Waterville Valley, N.H., and said his major goal for the last two months of the season is to have a top-3 result, which hasn't been achieved since March 19, 1983 when Tim Caldwell and Bill Koch finished 2-3 in a World Cup in Anchorage, Alaska.