Blowing & Drifting

Forecast: Significant blowing and drifting, with the possibility of heavy accumulation in rural areas.

Sapporo World Championships - Sprints

The Nordic World Ski Championships start tomorrow in Sapporo, Japan. The first event - the individual classical-style sprints - begins at 5:30 p.m. in Japan (1:30 a.m. central time in the U.S.) The fields are massive, with 83 men and 71 women on the qualifying lists, including lots of "exotics" - skiers representing countries which don't typically send racers to events. There are, for instance, Portuguese, Romanian, Armenian, Lithuanian, Turkish, Korean, Irish, and Greek racers, as well as one each from Kenya and Brazil.

Needless to say, none of those racers will make it onto the podiums for either the men's 1400m race or the women's 1200m race. In addition to the Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, German, and Italian skiers who are good bets (and I do mean "bets" - the Europeans wager on both the men and the women!), six Americans are racing. With some good recent results, Kikkan Randall (Alaska) can be considered a long-shot for a medal in the women's event, but a top-10 finish is possible or even likely. Her teammate Laura Valaas (Washington) is competing in her first elite international event, but who knows? If she skis as well as she blogs, anything could happen. The four American men are led by Andrew Newell (Vermont)and Torin Koos (Washington), both of whom have had excellent results, including podium finishes, in recent World Cup races.  Those veterans are joined by Las Flora (Alaska) and Chris Cook (Wisconsin), who have some familiarity with this level of racing, if not (yet) the results.

According to Koos, "the Sapporo sprint course seems better than most. There’s 30 meters of elevation gain spread out over two climbs," meaning that neither raw climbing strength nor raw sprinting power will suffice to do well. Some combination of those attributes, plus the finesse needed to race in a pack and a good dose of luck to avoid being stabbed with a pole or knocked off course, will be key in both today's individual races and tomorrow's team sprints. Notably, the sprints will occur indoors, in the massive Sapporo Dome. Indeed, location is the biggest wild card for this event and for the World Championships as a whole, and could be an advantage for the Americans, Canadians, and I suppose the Brazilian. The World Cup usually entails racing in Europe among Europeans, but these worlds, occurring on what might be called neutral snow (or at least a place where jet lag and cultural discomfort should be equal), might be just the place to see some excellent North American results. My picks:

women's classical-style sprint

1) Virpi Kuitunen (FIN), 2)  Marit Bjørgen (NOR), 3) Petra Majdic (SLO)

men's classical-style sprint

1) Jens-Arne Svartedal (NOR), 2) Tor-Arne Hetland (NOR), 3)  Andrew Newell (USA)