Friday marked 50 days to the opening of the World Cup cross-country skiing season in Düsseldorf, Germany: on Saturday, October 28, men's and women's individual sprint races (in the freestyle technique); on Sunday, October 29, men's and women's team sprints (again, freestyle). Düsseldorf is a crazy venue: the organizers use trucked-in snow (some saved from the previous winter) to lay down a twisty kilometer-long track along the Rhine. but it attracts a good crowd, exposes a new audience to ski racing, and of course shows who might be in shape to ski in November, when the season starts in earnest at Gellivare, Sweden, or in March, at the World Championships in Sapporo, Japan.
The Düsseldorf individual men's race has been the domain of Swede Peter Larsson for the past few years, and the men's team event that of Norwegian and Swedish duos, but this year, we can legitimately hope for Americans to race well, with both Andy Newell and Torin Koos gunning for good results as they aim for World's.