2007 USSA CROSS COUNTRY SUPERTOUR BEGINS NOV. 24-25
Total purse of $130,000 over 26 races
PARK CITY, Utah (Oct. 9) – The 2007 USSA Cross Country SuperTour will have 26 races with a total purse of $130,000, beginning Nov. 24-25 in West Yellowstone, Mont., and including both the U.S. short-distance and long-distance championships, the U.S. Ski Team said.
U.S. Nordic Director Luke Bodensteiner said the races, which include three team (i.e., two-athlete) sprints, would help in determining athletes chosen for the World Nordic Ski Championships Team in Sapporo, Japan, in late February as well as the Junior World Championships and Under-23 Worlds, which will run simultaneously Jan. 29-Feb. 4 in Tarvisio, Italy.
“The SuperTour has been a development ground for our best World Cup racers in recent years,” Bodensteiner said. “Olympians Kikkan Randall [Anchorage, AK], Kris Freeman [Andover, NH], Andy Newell [Shaftsbury, VT], Carl Swenson [Park City, UT] – and even Ivan Babikov, the Russian who lives in Canada, all scored their first top-5 World Cup or World Championship results within a season of winning a SuperTour overall title.”
The schedule includes a variety of race distances in classic or freestyle (skating) technique. It also has a diversity of terrain, including both sides of the U.S. Championships (the short-distance title races Jan. 3-7 on the Michigan Tech trails in Houghton, Mich., plus the SuperTour Finals and long-distance championships March 29-April 1 at the Maine Winter Sports Center in Presque Isle, Maine), the fabled American Birkebeiner marathon Feb. 24 in Wisconsin and the Madison sprints Jan. 13-14, races downtown in the Wisconsin capital city.
The 2007 USSA Cross Country SuperTour schedule (* – designates mass start race):
