After years of seeming futility, the U.S. nordic ski program has broken through in a big way, Kikkan Randall’s silver medal in Tuesday’s women’s cross-country sprint the fifth American medal at the ongoing 2009 world championships in the Czech Republic.

Five medals already – after never having won more than one at the same worlds.

Todd Lodwick, in nordic combined, is a double gold medalist; Billy Demong added a bronze. In the inaugural women’s ski jumping event, Lindsey Van took gold. Five medals could just as easily be six, meanwhile, U.S. skier Kris Freeman finishing fourth – out of the medals by a second – in the men’s 15-kilometer cross-country classic event.

So why, all of a sudden, is this happening?

Because it’s not all of a sudden.

And because the futility, really, wasn’t what it seemed.

All that losing over all those years was not failure. It was, instead, what experienced hands expected – steps on a journey that those involved said at the outset would take 10 years, minimum, to produce results.

And it has now been 10 years.

Every April in Park City, U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn. officials meet to plan out what’s ahead, and it was at that 1999 meeting that the commitment to get serious in cross-country, ski jumping and nordic combined was redoubled, recalled Luke Bodensteiner, now the USSA high-performance director, formerly its nordic director.

“It’s not a spike,” Bodensteiner said of these 2009 worlds. “It’s something that has moved along over the years.”

It was going to take 10 years because, in general, that’s how long it takes for athletes – American, Norwegian, whoever from wherever – to mature in one of the most demanding of endurance disciplines.

Randall is a classic example. Her first World Cup event: 2001 (and a 24th-place finish). She finished ninth in the sprint at the 2006 Torino Winter Games. Last season, she won a World Cup sprint. And now – second in the world. “Just an amazing dream come true,” she said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters.

At the same time, this much is also true: as a team, compared to 10 years ago, the American athletes are in way better shape. If it’s basic, if it sounds like a football coach amid winter conditioning and spring ball with an eye toward fourth-quarter late-season showdowns, it’s also no less the fact – the team that’s better conditioned is not only physically but mentally tougher than its rivals.

Over the years, U.S. coaches and sport science experts have significantly refined the training protocols. Now those American officials can say to the athletes, with justification, we have a program that works – which then re-frames the dynamic entirely. For each athlete, the question then is no longer, do these people know what they’re talking about? With a program proven to work, the question immediately becomes, how bad do I want it?

As Bodensteiner said, “There’s a difference between being in really good shape and phenomenal condition.”

Credit, obviously, is due the athletes, coaches, trainers, sport scientists, families, sponsors – all the stakeholders. But enormous credit is also due Bill Marolt, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard chief executive, because it takes guts to stay the course. Ten years is a long time to operate in measure on faith.

Marolt, in a phone interview Tuesday, deflected such praise, saying, “This is in the truest sense an Olympic organization and Olympism is all about the coaches and the elite-level athletes doing a great job but where it really starts is at the local level – the parents, the officials, the clubs really driving this thing.”

In the truest sense, meanwhile, the success these past few days gives the U.S. team’s aspirational slogan, “best in the world,” real meaning. It was always going to be impossible to be the best if best meant best only in alpine skiing and snowboarding.

Now the Americans take that real meaning toward the Olympics next February in Vancouver – when considerably more Americans will be paying attention, in part because the only way the U.S. team can win the overall medals tally is if the nordic team, which in Olympic history has generated just one lonely medal, Bill Koch’s silver in 1976, can produce.

Olympic medals in Vancouver will be far from guaranteed, and may rest on race-day weather and wax conditions and, as well, on such technical matters as the diagonal stride in the “classic” events and the so-called “skating” style in freestyle events – all of which is bound to be beyond the casual fan.

But every American sports fan understands Olympic medals. And now it can be said the Americans are genuine contenders across a range of nordic events, Randall summing it up with succinct clarity. “Americans,” she said, “like to see Americans win.”

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 2:09 pm and is filed under alanabrahamson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.