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How Should the U S Fix Their Nordic Ski Team?



 
 
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  #11  
Old February 21st 06, 06:31 PM
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What we need is solidarity and a central organization. Without these we
don't get a lance or the popular culture.

The current American ski culture must focus on common goals; such as
becoming great ski nation and the proliferation of skiing in our
country.

Right now there are no obvious paths to greatness. There are high
school programs, college programs and some scattered training groups.
Few of these organizations work together; some are antagonistic toward
each other. Even less have a long-term plan. A respected central
organization will bring these disjoined parts into a path to greatness.
I believe that the building of this central organization has commenced
in the shape of Team Today. I think that this organization is
currently in it's youth and my not be the final central origination
that brings everything together. We need to support them nonetheless.
Definitely with money, but just an important is encouragement.

Now, as you enter the end of the "ski year," it is time to make some
new years resolutions. Rather than focus on the difficulties of our
Olympians. Ask yourself, "what can I do help out?" How can you help
your local organizations? Is there a youth ski league that you can
volunteer for? Races in the area that need organizational help? High
schools looking for more coaches? Can you get the people around you
excited and involved in skiing?

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  #12  
Old February 21st 06, 10:34 PM
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I still like Jay's idea of just sending kids to Europe to live and ski
a few years. When someone is in early 20's they don't have too many
ties. If they have Oly ambition it would seem to just be a great thing
to go live/ski over there. Nothing sweeter!

OK, Scandi skiers come here for their NCAA/college education. There's
probably a parallel where US skiers could do there for their 20's.
--Like that Community College thing that Pete V. did.

Isn't this how our core of top bike racers do it? We have quite a few
bike racers going to Europe and getting used to the hard life. They
maybe work crap jobs, then race their bike. No biggy. If they got
talent, they gotta do it. They gotta leave the nest behind. The serious
ones seem to do it readily enough.

OK, we have a lot of Jrs. Fast forward to Oly-time. How big is our pool
of contenders living in Park City at any moment? Offhand, I'd guess
THREE. Like, we didn't have a couple dozen each of brawny, healthy,
rangy skiers of guys, gals, youngsters, to work on and see who rises
up, even over time. Now, I recall a Pete article where he was inspired
by the German model: they support a bunch of skiers and just throw em
to the sharks and whoever doesn't explode ends up being fast. Well, it
doesn't seem like we have enough depth to do that---we have it in Jrs
but not in Srs. We have huge fall-off after college, basically. When
Becky S. was placing 50th was she part of a pool of potential top
Canadian skiers who were all placing 50th? Basically it seems like the
US only has a couple guys and maybe one gal who could place top 50 WC.
You can't rely on that few of skiers to make breakthrus to the podium.
You need maybe two dozen who could be at the 50th level to have one who
maybe pops up and out. Maybe. Of course that would only be once a
decade at that. Canada hasn't had a Becky in a long time, right?

Just ruminatin'.

  #13  
Old February 21st 06, 11:40 PM
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No, there isn't much difference between being 50th out of 54 or 50th
out of 75. Both results are bad either way you slice it. Those between
50 and 75 aren't Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Germans, Italians etc.
They're Croatians, Slovenians, Turkish and so on. In other words,
nations with far less monetary resources than we have. We've had a
couple of decades of skiers placing in the 50s and a couple of decades
of sending skiers to the Olympoics or World Championships that have no
business being there. We can't waste resources on skiers like that. In
the U S, we have more distractions than in Canada. Football, Baseball,
Basketball and Hockey are big draws in the U S. Canada has Hockey.

How about the idea of focusing on speed?

J Tegeder
"Keep training, lycra never lies!" JT

  #16  
Old February 24th 06, 11:40 PM
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My opinion: The US is unlikely to be a Nordic skiing power for two
reasons. First, there is so little of the nation that has a climate
for true winter sports. Yes, geographically there is quite a bit, but
in terms of population, very little of the population lives in places
where true winter sports, on snow, is part of the general sports
culture. Even the major northern cities like Chicago and
Minneapolis/St. Paul - from what I hear, true winter, with reliable
snow, is less and less common. The reliable wintery places are fairly
remote from most major population areas. I'm talkig about the ability
to ski on snow in your own town, around the block or just outside of
town. Not traveling somewhere for the weekend. To get an entire
population living and loving snow sports, there has to be regular and
easy access to snow. People aren't going to have an overall culture of
Nordic skiing by training on roller skis - it will only happen if it's
like Norway where people just ski for fun, everyone. From that the
serious competators come. So the motivation and opportunity for the
general population base that enjoys snow sports just isn't there.

OK that's the overall problem: you need the large base to produce a few
talented individuals. The next problem is that those talented
individuals have to be motivated for one or both of two reasons: reason
one is fame and glory, reason two is financial gain. Personal
achievement motivates very, very few people (relatively speaking) and
not necessarily the most talented. In the sports culture we have in
the US, neither fame and glory nor fortune is there- because our
general population neither skis nor cares about it. They care about the
sports they grow up watching or playing: hockey (because it's an indoor
sport now, isn't constrained by the winter factors I mentioned), golf,
basket ball, baseball, tennis, running, swimming, etc. Nordic skiing
because of the climate/geographic factors I mentioned above, just isn't
a sport with a mass following. Fame and glory is very obscure for
successful skiers and fortune just isn't there in a meaningful way.

So, as a life long skier from a northern state, I do not think Nordic
skiing will ever be world class in the US.

  #17  
Old February 24th 06, 11:56 PM
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Motives: fame, money. Reminds me of Lance---didn't he switch from
triathlon where he was champ to bike racing because that's where the
money was?

Gotta get em over to Europe: I recall a story of Bob Roll working as a
dishwasher in his early years as a bike pro. Is there a way to be a ski
bum on the Euro circuit? I remember in Breckenridge that we rented out
the front-hall CLOSET in our apt to a kid. We had like 7 living in this
little apt. People did this so they could ski all day where the skiing
was best. Makes sense. If I was a kid again and thinking clearer in the
head about ski racing, I'd first go to NMU for college and get on that
XC team. Heck, I didn't even know there was a college up there in the
UP! After college I'd get my butt over to Europe and live and race
there. Instead I just followed citizen racing where my nose led me.
With zero info. And I suppose I was only 75% ready for the leap anyway.
So I became a US ski bum. For a kid who's a touch more ski crazy: get
em a one-way ticket to Scandi!

Community building: Sure, gotta do it. But did Lance come out of
community building or did he come out of KICK ASS...? : ) I think the
"take no prisoners" attitude MAYBE comes first. That rallies the
supporters. What got Thom Weisel into backing Lance? --Probably Lance's
"destroy the world" steamroller. Get on or get out of the way. It seems
like maybe we need to find the kids with the unstoppable attitude, the
chip on their shoulder. So there's community, then there's "me against
the world and I'm gunna win or die trying." Didn't Billy Koch have that
bad attitude? He was a longer who raced his school bus on XC skis to
get home first. Sometimes I see the coolness of
bipartisanship---sometimes I think, Man, someone should grab something
like the problem of health care and fix it for their own glory, to show
everyone how it's done, to kick ass, to do it even though everyone said
it couldn't be done, to show they're better than everyone else, to take
all the credit, to win. (And then of course say you did it all for Ma
and Apple Pie.)

--JP
outyourbackdoor.com

  #18  
Old February 25th 06, 12:22 AM
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I don't necessarily disagree with your points. A highly motivated
individual can trump the reasons/trends I gave for sure. But, both
Lance (and before him Greg Lemond) and Bill Koch are pretty unusual
individuals - not a consistent stream of competitors like the Scandos
and the Russians - and now it looks like Canada is starting to have at
least some consistent good results. Northern, true winter countries
have the culture of snow skiing accessable and easily enjoyed by all,
across the board and this results in regular emergence of the best the
country has to offer choosing the sport - and then the society which
really values the sport giving accolades as well as $$ to that steam of
exceptional individuals.

  #19  
Old February 25th 06, 04:26 AM
doogiski doogiski is offline
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Posts: 152
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
No, there isn't much difference between being 50th out of 54 or 50th
out of 75. Both results are bad either way you slice it. Those between
50 and 75 aren't Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Germans, Italians etc.
They're Croatians, Slovenians, Turkish and so on. In other words,
nations with far less monetary resources than we have. We've had a
couple of decades of skiers placing in the 50s and a couple of decades
of sending skiers to the Olympoics or World Championships that have no
business being there. We can't waste resources on skiers like that. In
the U S, we have more distractions than in Canada. Football, Baseball,
Basketball and Hockey are big draws in the U S. Canada has Hockey.

How about the idea of focusing on speed?

J Tegeder
"Keep training, lycra never lies!" JT
You also have to remember that Canada has 1/10th the population that the USA has. So it should even out shouldn't it? Yes Canada does has hockey, but who was the basketball player to win the MVP last year in the NBA...right it was a Canadian. You can't forget about the stereotypical sport of Canada...curling. So even though lots of kids want to grow up to play in the NHL. There are still kids that want to play other sports. Cross-country skiing is still getting popular in Canada like the US, but it is no Sweden, Norway, or Finland.
Also, an excellent example to contradict your statement is about Chandra Crawford. In the pursuit she came 60th out of 64! That's horrible according to you and she "has no business being there", yet a mere 10 days later she wins the gold medal in the sprints. She even was beaten by athletes from such ski power houses such as China, Romania, Korea, Lithuania, Belarus, and even the USA!!! The average skier peaks in their late 20's. We have to allow the athletes to gain experience and if they are restricted to only national races how can they prepare for the World Cup.? The odds of the US producing a Petter Northug is very slim. Therefore you must have them race in the Olympics and World Cups. Sure some might find the results embarassing but it will be worth it in the long run. Look no further than Beckie's and Sara's results in Nagano. Need I say more?
Cheers,
Adam
Smithers,BC

Last edited by doogiski : February 25th 06 at 04:45 AM.
  #20  
Old February 26th 06, 02:24 AM
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I don't like this whole idea of limiting ourselves. the skiing
community is becoming cynical because they have too many preconceived
notions. USST officials said they wanted the points system to
eliminate subjectivity, i think that's weak. there's such a thing as
intuition, coaches rely on it all the time. Sure, the point's system
is precise, but intuition is also precise. They are taking the easy
way out, trying too hard to impose order on what should be an organic,
growing process. Every coach knows you can be systematic, but at the
same time you have to go with your feelings. You build the system as
you go.
Dave Inferra, Boulder

 




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