A day after the opening world cup in Düsseldorf and I’m already on my way back to the States. The first sprint race of the year wasn’t the success I was hoping for but the “Düsseldorf” experience is definitely something that can get anyone fired up for the season.

During the months off in the summer, I sometimes forget the magnitude of the cross-country world cup scene. The echoing yell of the announcer, the smell of flouroes smoking off irons, the hustle of testing skis, and the sound of a couple hundred thousand Germans screaming in your face. Its almost like a wake-up call that takes you back to an athletes favorite place to be…a heightened sense of awareness, the feeling of being untouchable…being in the moment.

Nothing brings you back to this place better than the inner city sprint race that is the Düsseldorf Opener. Even though it’s 50 degrees out, they make snow indoors, and lay it down on the streets of the old city next to the Rhine River. With three different Germans taking the top honor of the World Cup over all champions in the past four years, xc skiing is big in Deutschland to say the least. It could be one of those things; if you have beer they will come, but every year Düsseldorf brings out some of the biggest crowds of the year. A reported 200,000 showed up on the day of the sprint and you could hear every single one of them as we raced though the narrow course.

The two-lap qualifier didn’t go as well for me as I’d hoped. Even though I kept my breakfast down, I ended up 13th on the list of the top 30 fastest prelim times. The qualifier doesn’t count for much other than whom you end up racing in the heats, but it serves as a way to compare your max speed to the other races. Just like the pole position in NASCAR. In a lot of ways xc sprint racing and NASCAR are very similar. Tactics like drafting, boxing out, and the slingshot are all commonly used race moves.
That’s where I ran into trouble on Saturday.

In my quarterfinal heat of six, I was able to slip into a solid 2nd position going into our final lap, but made a few tactical mistakes in the last 300 meters. I pulled out from behind Norwegian Peter Northug in order to box out some of the competition over the little hill, but by doing so allowed myself to get pinched out going into the final hairpin turn. The final stretch was quick and fast so I was unable to advance from my 4th position.

Despite ending up 19th on the day, it felt great to get back into the excitement of the World Cup. There’s really nothing that compares to having thousands of fans cheer you on as you race head-to-head against the fastest skiers in the world. It’s a gladiator-type feeling that you can’t find anywhere else other than on the streets of a city sprint. With a few weeks break until the next world cup, I’m going to stay home in Vermont and train on roller skis and in the gym to get ready for the next sprint. The team will be heading back over to Europe on Nov. 19 to train in Finland and get ready for the world cups in Kuusamo.

Check out the races from Düsseldorf, only on WCSN.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 11:24 am and is filed under andrewnewell. 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.