Today I was lucky enough to watch the second half of the nordic combined team event at the Vancouver Olympics, a 4x5km relay race in which the teams are seeded according to their ski jumps earlier in the day. The American team came in as one of the favorites, along with the 2006 Olympic champions, Austria, and last year’s World Champions, Japan.
The four Americans – Brett Camerota, Todd Lodwick, Johnny Spillane, and Bill Demong – didn’t disappoint, generating a spectacular race that ended with a silver medal. The medal was the second American silver of the Games (after Spillane’s silver in an individual event earlier in the Games), the second medal in all of American nordic combined history, and just the third in modern American nordic skiing history.
I won’t recap the actual race here except to say that each leg of the relay was more incredible to watch than the last, and that each American racer buried himself in chasing the gold medal that ultimately rode away down the last downhill on the Austrian anchorman’s faster skis. But goddamn, what a great race! It goes down in my personal list of great sporting events I’ve seen: the final stage of the 1989 Tour de France, the Packers’ win in Super Bowl XXXI, the 50km mass-start marathon at the 2005 Nordic Ski World Championships… With one more nordic combined race to go, I still have reason to hope the NC boys will add another item to the list.
Loved it! Don’t you also just love Chad Salmela’s commentary? I am trying to show the boys all the nordic events that I can… I think they are finally realizing it is a “real” and “cool” sport and not something that mom and dad just do.