wrote:
Thanks for the link. I always wonder about the substance of these
disputes. While a certain esprit de corps can be beneficial, this is
basically an individual sport. The USST initially tried to run up
against that (still?), but then backed off to some degree (Kris Freeman
is hq'd in the east and there's the Alaska bunch). OTOH, if you don't
have a national center with athletes focused around it to some
substantial degree, there's a tendency to devolve. I wonder how the
Norwegians, Swedes and Finns handle this, granted traveling distances
are much less.

Vegard Ulvang and Bjørn Dæhlie came from Kirkenes and Nannestad (near
Oslo), which is about as far apart as you can get in Norway.

I.e. about 2500 km road distance or 1300+ as the crow flies (passing
over Finland and Sweden).

1300 km is the same as the distance from Arizona to Canada.

It worked because most of the athletes don't train together except
during the training camps.

Terje

--
- Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"