Becky is ahead!

My daughter just phone from Canmore. Becky Scott has a 10 second lead at
the 1/2 way point in the 15 km World Cup Race.

Go Becky!!

Scott

Update.

The race is over. Gold for Becky Scott.

Scott

"Scott Elliot" wrote in message
news:_gYof.8343$ic1.488@edtnps90...
My daughter just phone from Canmore. Becky Scott has a 10 second lead at
the 1/2 way point in the 15 km World Cup Race.

Go Becky!!

Scott

Becky blew them away. It was on CBC at 5:00 pm. Canmore looks to have a
great course and facility there. Alberta spent $23 million to upgrade
the facility and comments from the international ski community were
calling it "the best in the world".I think CBC is showing the sprint
races next Saturday. Those are always fun to watch.

From Karl Saidla's Dec 15 report on fasterskier.com about the courses:

Interestingly, I happened to overhear two red group male skiers
discussing the [5k Olympic] course. To paraphrase, one said
something like “ I heard that 23M was spent to upgrade the facilities
here, but I am not sure if maybe I don’t like the old courses better.
These new ones have so much steep climbing, but the old ones were maybe
a bit more interesting and had more technical skiing.� Apparently some
will like it and some will not. All, however, will suffer!

3.75 Olympic and Centennial Loops (to be used for 15k (W) and 30k (M)
classic mass starts on Saturday.

These are essentially two shorter loops that use portions of the
Olympic loop. Once gain, they are of the “up then down� variety. In
fact, skiing these is arguably harder because the parts of the loops
which have been eliminated are the flat ones. The grade for much of the
climb might be described as just shallow enough that if your wax is
good and you are relatively fresh you can stay in the track and run up
them. There is not much free speed or rolling terrain. Read long,
tough, grinding climbs with relatively fast but non technical
downhills.

Gene

"Stephen Maturin" wrote:

Becky blew them away. It was on CBC at 5:00 pm. Canmore looks to have
a great course and facility there. Alberta spent $23 million to
upgrade the facility and comments from the international ski
community were calling it "the best in the world".I think CBC is
showing the sprint races next Saturday. Those are always fun to watch.

No reports I've seen mentioned this, but David Goldstrum starts
off Thursday's Canmore race broadcast by saying that, "Unlike the one at
Vernon, this is artificial snow, altho there is about 20cm on the side
of the track of the real stuff." Not obvious looking at shots of the
area. Did they add man-made snow on top?

Gene

"Stephen Maturin" wrote:

Becky blew them away. It was on CBC at 5:00 pm. Canmore looks to have
a great course and facility there. Alberta spent $23 million to
upgrade the facility and comments from the international ski
community were calling it "the best in the world".I think CBC is
showing the sprint races next Saturday. Those are always fun to watch.

Yes, I noted that also. I though....that's a lot of artificial snow.
Sure didn't appear like snow was in short supply...everything appeared
well covered on and off the trail.

The great fear in Canmore is that they can get a Chinook. That is a warm
dry wind that can come down the mountains and eat snow very fast.
Fortunately they got a light snow storm before the race, but to be sure they
had enough snow they manufactured as much as possible.

On the other hand, Sovereign is located on Silver Star Mountain that sticks
up from the surrounding terrain. The usual weather flow is for air to cool
as it lifts over the mountain and precipitate snow. As a result, they
almost always have lots of snow and snow making equipment is not installed
because it would be of so little use. Often the problem at Sovereign is not
lack of snow, but too much dry powder that is difficult to consolidate into
a solid base for a good race. Fortunately, there was not too much snow
before the race so conditions were near perfect on natural snow.

Scott
"Gene Goldenfeld" wrote in message
et...
No reports I've seen mentioned this, but David Goldstrum starts
off Thursday's Canmore race broadcast by saying that, "Unlike the one at
Vernon, this is artificial snow, altho there is about 20cm on the side
of the track of the real stuff." Not obvious looking at shots of the
area. Did they add man-made snow on top?

Gene

I replied in private to Gene Goldenfeld's query about snow conditions
at the Canmore Nordic Centre for the WC races and we subsequently
carried on a conversation that he urged me to post for public viewing.
What follows is a WC volunteer's report on the races last weekend in
Canmore.

------cut here

The Canmore Nordic Centre staff made a ton of artificial snow in the
week prior to the World Cup races. Then 15 cm of the real stuff fell on
the Monday before the first race (last Thursday). After they had run
the groomers over the trail several times the surface thus consisted of
a mixture of real and artifical snow. It was really cold on all 3 race
days (I was one of the volunteers standing for hours out there, so I
know!) -- so the track was extremely HARD and probably felt to the
skiers like 100% artificial (it certainly looked like that).

Thursday the cold wasn't too bad but Saturday and Sunday were beyond
the pale -- and a wind came up on Sunday, too boot. I'm not sure how
the other volunteers fared; I got one short (10 minute) pee break each
day, which started at 8am and ended around 1:30 pm. By Sunday I had the
situation dialed, though: I snagged a propane heater, wore down booties
inside insulated overboots, stood on an insulated pad, and used a table
turned on its side as a windbreak.

Yesterday (Monday) the weather was essentially identical to Saturday
and Sunday. I classic skied both 3.75 km competitive loops (Centenial
and Olympic). I'm not a super-fit skier (the better part of 61 years
have taken their toll...) but I had to abandon the tracks only once --
a steep short (10 m) section at the bottom of the climb to the high
point of the Olympic Loop. There are lots of intimidatingly steep and
sustained climbs on these fabulous trails; but if you're waxed right
and have good technique they ski extremely well (the downhills are a
real blast! -- very high speed, but quite doable technically) Further,
I was not discomfited in the least by cold. In short, the athletes
enjoyed superb conditions.

It sure was a lot more fun skiing than standing at my volunteer post
for the races. My job was to "marshall" the corridor leading from the
VIP viewing area at the finishing line to the stadium area, where a lot
was happening (interviews with athletes after they finished, ski
marking, ...). Unfortunately, that was also where the timing devices
and photo-finish cameras were set up. After the Germans got the cameras
set up and dialed in at the finish line (FIS brings their own crew of
experts to do the timing) my orders were to not let ANYBODY through
(imagine the consequences of a VIP stumbling and knocking over the
finish line camera! "Sorry guys, we're going to have to run that one
over again." ) Over the course of 3 days I got to know the FIS techies
pretty well; boy, do they ever smoke a lot!

One thing that was notably missing from the Canmore WC "scene" that
happened at Vernon is informal interaction on the ski trails between
the WC skiers and the public. The entire Canmore Nordic Centre was
officially (and pretty effectively) closed to public skiers in the week
before and during the races. At Vernon the Sovereign Lakes Nordic Ski
Club trails were never closed to the public. I don't know (but suspect)
that the competitive trails at Vernon were off limits to the public,
but I'll bet that WC skiers strayed from time to time onto the public
trails, leading to informal one-on-one interactions between the WC
skiers and the public. At Canmore the only informal interaction I had
with WC skiers was in the local supermarket, where 3 Italian racers
were ahead of me in the checkout line; I was quite amused to note that
their huge pile of "groceries" consisted of coke, candy bars, potato
chips, and other assorted junk food.

I appreciate why they closed the Canmore Nordic Centre prior to this
year's races: just getting the venue completed and prepped for these
races was a huge challenge to the Nordic Centre staff; having the
public around would have been an additional burden. But the next time
that the WC comes to Canmore (I believe that 2007 and 2009 are already
pencilled in on the FIS calendar) I'll lobby hard to have the
non-competition trails at the Canmore Nordic Centre be open to the
skiing public both before and during the races.

-Cheers,
Everett