In advance of the World Cup races at Gällivare this weekend, there are some good things to read about the U.S. team, including an interview with the best men's skier, Kris Freeman (his training regime runs to about 85 hours of training per month, and one six-hour workout each week - and this is a guy who rarely places in the top 30 in a World Cup race), a report from the U.S. team's training site at Kiruna, Sweden (check the pictures) and an overview of how the Canadian and American teams stand to do this season. With a stronger record of recent accomplishment (seventh in the "Nation's Cup" rankings of national teams), Canada looks to be poised for the best results this season, though their two best skiers are not with the team this year. Beckie Scott retired and Sara Renner is pregnant, leaving Olympic sprint champion Chandra Crawford to lead the way for the women and Devon Kershaw and George Gray to pace the men. The U.S. has a relatively weaker team (17th in the Nation's Cup), but many American racers are seemingly prepared for high-level results. On the men's sprint squad, Andy Newell already has one top-ten finish this year, and Torin Koos and Chris Cook have also trained well. The men's distance team, led by Kris Freeman, needs to take a big stride forward in order to begin to score points consistently, but many members of the team could well do so, especially early in the season. (Sprinter Newell placed highly in an elite race last weekend.) The women's team is young and untested on the elite international scene, but Kikkan Randall did well in the sprint at Torino and in a late-season World Cup sprint.
With all that in mind, here are my picks for this weekend's races, based on what information is out there on who will be racing (and bearing in mind that I correctly picked just two of the twelve podium spots at Düsseldorf: the women's sprint winner (Bjorgen) and the show team in the women's team sprint (Finland) - a paltry 16%.