Wow; that's a big deal.

Wow the Americans must have gotten nebulizers installed in their waxing truck;)

Hugh

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Yes it is a big deal :-)

Hopefully the USA Skiteam can start promoting the sport, world cup and world championships. Not just the olympics.
Hard to go to sponsors when you only focus on few events happen over 2 weeks every 4 years.

and a pretty good day for Canada in the juniors biathlon :-)

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run well, run happy
george

Calgary kid :)

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___________________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/...eoesophageal_fistula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_palsy
2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
Canadian Record Holder 35-39M & 40-44M - 200 m Butterfly (LCM)

Is there any way to watch the complete races? Not just at the World Champs, but World Cups as well. Looks like the FIS youtube channel just has highlights. I love XC skiing on the trainer, but I've never been successful finding a lot of full length races.

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Any run that doesn't include pooping in someone's front yard is a win.

The races are usually available on youtube.
This is a good channel with English commentators. Quite good actually, not from NBC.
https://www.youtube.com/...assicSkiTrack/videos

Oh man, that is perfect, thank you. I frequent similar third-party youtube channels for cyclocross races (those are almost exclusively in Dutch).

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Any run that doesn't include pooping in someone's front yard is a win.

we find some of the biathlon races on youtube. not much there from this year at Orsblie yet, but lots from earlier events, e.g the championship at Hochfilzen.

we ski for fun and training, and don't do biathlons but the biathlons are more fun to watch. we try to find videos with German language commentary - my wife is German and I am trying to learn. But there are many videos with commentary in English or other languages.

Occasionally, there are videos on German television websites, but these are often geo-blocked outside the country. I suspect other national broadcasters in Europe would have the same restrictions.

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run well, run happy
george

I have a house full of Swedes right now and they were glued to the computer this morning. I had no idea what was going on, but then they told me we had 3 in the final, I didn't know if that was good or not. Now I know a lot more about that kind of racing, and yes the Americans kicked some serious butt in a sport that no one here even knows about. Of course my guests were quite disappointed having 2 in the final and no medal, but they seemed happy for me, NOT!!! (-;

The interesting thing is that the USA has a lot of youth skiers, have more paid coaches than any other countries, some college coaches get more paid than national coaches from other countries, but sadly the focus is just on the olympics and not on the sport.

The top xc-skiers are making USD 2-3m a year, mostly from sponsors.
When I was back in Norway last week I read an article about a skier, he is maybe top 30 in Norway on a good day. He gets in USD 50,000 from sponsors a year.

I am not sure how this is compare to triathlon and the USA. But I guess the numbers in the USA has to be bigger since both the country and sport is bigger.

Hi Halvard,

Whenever I see Americans or Canadians doing well in cross country it seems to be the sprints. Any idea why we North Americans can do well in the sprints but have more trouble breaking into the longer events. I thinks sprints are what 1500 m races?

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

This is a good question.
I think the reason has to do with training culture.
In Scandinavia you will find youth skier (14y and older) doing a lot of their training without a coach.
An important part of xcskiing training is the zone 1 work, easy running, rollerskiing or skiing.
When you know what to do, you do not need a coach to monitor every step. Any 15y old can run for 2h in talking speed without a coach.

But I think it is an expectation that a US coach should take part in all training sessions, and it is many parents that do not feel comfortable with youth being out alone.

I also think that it is more common to just follow a program from a coach instead of taking part in writing your own program.
As a Norwegian D1 skiers said to me, no of the skiers from Scandinavia got a program from the official coach. They all made their own programs.

Can Americans be good distance skiers? Of course. Diggins is really close, she is the best 5k skate skier in the world.

I have to mention one thing.
Americans in the xcskiing community, coaches and athletes are really dedicated and have nothing but love for the sport.
It is not easy to be a skier in the USA compare to Scandinavia, so everybody in the skiing community is driven their passion for skiing :-)

Amazing day for the USA.

There's an expression up here, often seen on bumper stickers:

Alaska Girls Kick Ass.

The US women have the best chances in sprints, but get podiums some other distances

5K win
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0cgjwmxmL0

10K 2nd and 3rd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsNLoEjodt4

Alex Harvey of Canada is a threat at many distances.

15K win
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EN-28ZH7_U

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http://www.jt10000.com/

Sadly the Americans have not had good distance skiing this world championship.
The women are not strong enough in classics to get a medal in the relay, they are close.
The men are struggling.

Alex Harvey has been the best from North-America over years. But he is sadly alone.

Videos from the world championship and world cup can be find here https://www.youtube.com/...assicSkiTrack/videos

I still have a house full of Swedes and we are watching every night on the 60" screen the championships. For a brief minute I thought that the 2nd and 3rd place teams in the Womens relay would play cat and mouse, and let the American catch up for a possible sprint finish, but their coaches began to yell at them both when they lost about 6 seconds and they stepped on the gas. Of course my guests were quite happy with the outcome, they were resigned that no one is going to beat the "Beast" on the last leg and first was a foregone conclusion.

So something for each of our countries here, Germany seems to be off this year. And of course the Russians have sent the B team since mostly their top athletes were swept up in the drug scandals..

3 letters. VPN. :)

The relay today was a great one (especially for Norwegians).
Norway without Northug managed to win ahead of one fast Russian Ustigov.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhHNkz27I2I

Interesting fact, the organizer of Lahti 2017 has sold over 160,000 tickets for this world championship.
Yes people are willing to pay for standing outside in the cold watching endurance sports (and some jumping).

In the women's 30K the US was very solid, behind the dominant Norwegians.

And in the 50K today, Alex Harvey of Canada showed his total class again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhprSUj3i0M

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http://www.jt10000.com/

Big win for Alex. Cool to see the combo of endurance and ski skills with the last downhill and the sprint.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Alex Harvey just played with the others today. He took down Ustigov in the finishing sprint with easily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qge5c6lqP_M

I think this is the first North American distance gold ever (I could be wrong).

Now I hope Team Canada will get some better funding.

This is maybe not great for me as a Norwegian. BUT it is great for the sport.
7 different nations in the top 10. And UK is better than Norway :-)
http://www.langrenn.com/....5964576-114053.html

...those were just masterful tactics. At 48K he surges up the massive climb, but chooses not to take the lead going downhill in second pace and hitting the flats with more speed and squirts past 1st place with ~300m to go and gets into the turn "first" and takes the inside lane and "shuts the door" on everyone else. Now they have to go around him but when he's going that fast, you just can't. Awesome combo of biking racing and ski racing tactics...using wind-glide-slingshot-climb-decent-turn to optimze energy used for best position. You can't teach this stuff better: