The 2008 Vasaloppet will take place on Sunday in central Sweden. The Vasaloppet is a big race in every sense: old (held since 1922), huge (regularly featuring 15,000 or more skiers from all over the world), prestigious (it's the New York or Boston Marathon of cross-country ski world - the race everyone wants to win), and looooong - 90 kilometers (56 miles: roughly St. Paul to Menomonie, Wisconsin, or Minneapolis to St. Cloud).
In terms of both participation and spectating, the Vasaloppet is one of the biggest sporting events in Sweden, and Swedish national TV has about a zillion different stories on the race and its week-long run up (including a lot of attention paid to the weather: they might get more snow the night before the big race, exactly the wrong time). Unlike the Super Bowl here in the States, "Vasaloppet Week" is pretty much about skiing: there are a good dozen different events over the ten days in front of the race, including freestyle and relay races on the full 90km course, 45km classical and freestyle races, and family-oriente skis and women's-only races along the last third of the course.
Given all that, the main event is also a damn good race, with lots of action every year. The 2004 race is a good example. A big leading pack had skied through the (almost) midpoint of the race at Evertsberg. Soon after, Anders Aukland (Norway, bib #177, bareheaded) and Raul Olle (Estonia, bib #6, in the white toque) broke away, working together to establish and extend a lead: 20 seconds at Oxberg (62km), nearly a minute at Hökberg (71km), nearly two minutes at Eldris (81km). Having shared the duty of pulling on the flats and the privilege of drafting on the downhills, the skiers had cooperated so well that when Aukland fell flat on his face at about 74km, Olle waited for him to get up rather than taking advantage of the misstep to establish an easy, possibly decisive, but surely cheap five-second gap.
But there were only 9,000 meters of snow between Eldris and the finish at Mora, so each knew that only a big attack could prevent the possibility of a sprint down the finishing straightaway in Mora - of settling the race rather than setting up a gamble. Just after the 7km-to-go marker, with 212 minutes and 83 kilometers of racing under their skis, the attack finally came.
Vasaloppet 2004 from Christopher Tassava on Vimeo.
(Full disclosure: the WIkipedia article to which I linked above included a lot of stuff I've added, including the table of recent female winners and the nerdy stuff about the male winners.)