Dirty Conditions in Europe
Do world cup skiers race on some of the nicest trails in the world? The answer is yes. Sometimes, but more often than not, World Cups can be held on some of the scrappiest conditions imaginable. That has been the case for the past two weeks over here on the Tour.
We left the beautiful conditions of Canmore and flew directly to Otepaa Estonia. Estonia has not been a country very long in the general scheme of things and shares a unique balance of old Eastern Europe and a new development. We flew into the city of Tallinn and then took a 2-hour shuttle to Otepaa. I’ve seen some crazy drivers over the years during my travels abroad but little can compare to the drive from Tallinn to Otepaa. Where there should be a several lane highway there’s just a small two-lane road where you’re either passing or being passed by someone else. There are always a few times during the drive when you find yourself driving 140 km’s an hour into head on traffic.
The weekend of racing in Otepaa was a lot of fun but took a toll on our race skis. Three days of rain and fog leading up to the races made the already thin snow no more than just dirty, grayish colored ice. It was unbelievable. We would come back to the wax cabin after training with a nice layer of dirt and pine needles sticking to our klister. By the time Sunday’s sprint came around, there were standing puddles of water on some sections of the course making sprint tactics and choosing your lane even more important.
Looking at the results it wasn’t one of my better finishes this year but despite that I felt pretty good about the day. I felt a lot more snappy and quick than I did two weeks ago in Canada and felt like I was able to stride with the best of the world on the uphill. We had two days to kill in Otepaa after the race and thankfully it snowed the day after the sprint otherwise we would have been running with poles for training. The night before our flight we drove into Tallinn and walked around the old cobble stone streets and went out to dinner. The old part of Tallinn was amazing with some old gothic style castles around the central square.
By Thursday we had made our way to Prague and on to the town of Liberec, site of the 2009 Nordic world Championships. Liberec is a fairly big city and we were met with green grass and blue skies, making our hopes for better racing conditions pretty grim. The Czech Republic has been plagued by the same warm weather as the rest of Eastern Europe giving the organizers very little time to make any snow for the race trails. In the end, the World Cup distance race took place on a 1.8 km loop. During the men’s competition each racer had to do six laps around the mushy dirty snow covered loop.For the Sprint Relay the organizers really stepped up their game and actually put together a clean hard packed loop making for a good, fair competition. I paired up with teammate Torin Koos for the 3 laps each of the classic course. Again I felt like my fitness had improved over the week and like I was skiing as fast as I ever have this season. Unfortunately as a team we didn’t do that well and missed the final by a few places.
Things are looking positive going into the last three sprints of the world cup. We are in Falun Sweden right now where we will compete in a relay this weekend before heading to Stockholm for the annual Royal Palace World Cup. This is a really cool event! We race on the old town streets of Stockholm including a climb up the steps of the Royal Palace of Sweden. It’s for sure one of the coolest races of the year, and it takes place at night so there are always tons of fans. I will make sure to get some pictures and post them next week.