Long Ago and Far Away

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There are many famous innovators and trend-setters in the sport of cross-country skiing: I’m not one of those, though I was around at a time when cross-country skiing was changing fast, and when many voices participated in discussions of what the sport would become. A sports-publisher in Champaign Illinois (Human Kinetics/Leisure Press) allowed me to print up thoughts, guidance, and predictions in a timely little book as skiers decided they needed to learn more about the new “skating” technique. It’s kind of embarrassing to look back on it now (especially the inclusion of so many photos of myself performing skate-specific training techniques while sporting a decidedly 80’s haircut), but nobody else really offered sound explanations of what it was skiers were trying to do in incorporating a lateral skating stroke. Though it never became a best-seller, I suppose this little book played some part in the sport’s development.

The mid-80s were a turbulent time in cross-country skiing. American Bill Koch, skated his way to the overall World Cup Championship, and Scandinavian ski-stars were desperate to catch up. Bill Koch was (and remains) an innovator, a tinkerer, a savant, a genius. If Bill had devoted his energies to bowling instead of skiing, I have little doubt that professional bowlers would now be utilizing entirely different techniques to send the ball down the lane towards the pins. With Koch’s Crystal Globe, the sport had changed, the die had been cast: cross-country skiers needed to learn how to skate.

It must’ve been like being a high jumper after the Olympic gold medal arrival of Dick Fosbury whose revolutionary “Fosbury Flop” technique instantly made obsolete all the “straddle” techniques of high jumpers past. It would’ve been like spending an entire career mastering a specific technique, only to discover that there was a totally different—and entirely more effective—technique with which athletes were totally unfamiliar. Skiers needed to understand and master that new technique in a hurry. I got into the discussion because I was a speedskater. I had an understanding of skating mechanics—what really makes a lateral skating stroke work, and how to train for it. Cross-country skiers, on the other hand, had been involved in generations of drive-forward, push-back techniques that had little to do with generating force laterally. Like most skate-beginners, skiers had in mind a technique that pushed with one foot while standing on the other (like a kid on a skateboard). A skating stroke doesn’t really “push” at all; it creates propulsion by driving/gliding forward (kind of a miracle if you think about it long enough)—in reality, the pushing/skating ski is also the gliding ski.

I was already a skater (on ice), and I was already a writer (of screenplays). All that was needed was a situation that would combine the two. The situation presented itself that autumn in Lake Placid. I don’t remember the name of the coach of US Biathlon at the time, but I do remember he was scrambling. His sport had been turned on its ear by this new skate technique, and he was hurrying to understand how to advise his team members in catching up. I was staying at the Olympic Training Center adjacent to rooms occupied by those biathletes. Somehow, I found myself sitting in on one of their video/technique sessions as the coach tried to offer advice on the new technique. Skiers were still working through a “push back, glide forward” description. When the coach asked me how I would explain the process, I told him what thought. Coaches and athletes scribbled furiously in their note books. Later, the coach asked me if I’d write down the descriptions I’d voiced. A few weeks later, I had a book manuscript on its way to a publisher.

The little book that resulted from that set of interactions was about skating, but FIS doesn’t even really call it “skating” anymore. For many years, it’s been classified “freestyle,” the FIS designation that allows skiers to propel themselves with pretty much any technique they want—though since that original ruling, there have been numerous rules applied to freestyle equipment (including a quick outlawing of Gunde Svan’s maybe-it-was-a-joke single-pole technique). Regardless, once skiers began skating, there was pretty much no way to stop it (other than placing barriers on courses to limit lateral movements of the skis themselves, a tactic still undertaken in certain sections of Classic courses). Ironically, tracks left by early skaters effectively destroyed the tracks that Classic skiers relied on for efficient technique. Skiers had figured out a much faster way to ski—there was no going back. Rather than try to make skating illegal, FIS quickly pivoted to re-categorize the technique. Just like that, there were more events to stage, more techniques to master, more specialization to pursue, more medals to award. Swimmers must’ve felt the same way on some long ago day when the breast stroke was made irrelevant by a clever swimmer who invented the “Australian Crawl,” the stroke we now know as “freestyle.”

As writers attempting to describe a set of skating strokes, we had to figure out what to call the strokes we were describing. As it turned out, the terms we came up with (while being nicely descriptive) were nowhere near as easy, as categorizable, or as memorable as the terms used today. What we called “Symmetrical V-Skate (SVS)”—equal poling on both sides/both strokes—is what’s now described as V2. What we called “Asymmetrical V-Skate (AVS)”—double pole on one stroke, pole recovery on the other stroke—is today’s V1. Everything else is just a variation of those two options.

That little book was written long ago and far away. It arrived so early in the evolution of ski-skate techniques and technologies that a section is devoted to altering our Classic skis (lopping off ski tips and repositioning bindings) to make them more effective and efficient for skating. It continues to be funny whenever someone remembers me because of it (that doesn’t happen often). When they do remember me and this book, it’s usually because of the haircuts.