World Cup - The Final Phase

A little more than a week after the Olympics ended, the cross country World Cup circuit started its seven-event Phase IV, which included a tough series of five races in a week in Sweden and Norway.

The first race after the Games was the grueling Vasaloppet, a marathon from Salen to Mora, Sweden. Run since 1922 - and commemorating King Gustav Vasa's return to Mora to lead Swedish rebels against Denmark in 1520 - the Vasa calls itself the biggest, oldest, and longest ski race in the world. The main event was a 90km classic style race which enrolls up to 15,000 participants, but for the World Cup, organizers ran a smaller 45km race for the elite women one day early. From the gun, Norway's Marit Bjorgen - who had left Torino early to recover from her dismal performances - and Hilde Pedersen took the lead. When two other racers came up front at about 10km, the Norwegian pair decided to make an intrepid breakaway, opening a few hundred meters' gap in the space of a couple kilometers. The break proved decisive, and after Pedersen began fading at about 30km, Bjorgen accelerated again and captured the win with a mammoth 1:22 advantage over Pedersen in second and another two minutes over the rest of the pack, led by Petra Madjic of Slovenia. The next day, in the main event, few top-ranked male World Cup skiers even competed, and only one - Anders Aukland - really showed up, finishing third. Ahead of him, two Swedish marathon specialists fought for the win, with Daniel Tynell using a frenzied double-pole sprint to beat Jerry Ahrlin to the line.

Two days after the two marathons at Mora, three consecutive days of racing were kicked off with nighttime freestyle sprints in the Swedish town of Borlange. The best racers were gunning for the podium finishes that further their goal of winning one of the six titles still up for grabs - men's and women's overall, distance, and sprint. On the men's side, Swede Thobias Fredriksson took the win over compatriot Peter Larsson and, surprisingly, Canadian Devon Kershaw, who thus took his first-ever podium spot The women's race was won by Arianna Follis (Italy), ahead of Marit Bjorgen - probably suffering the effects of her win in the Vasaloppet - and another Canadian, Sara Renner. By winning the "small final" (aka the consolation round) to finish fifth, Kikkan Randall of the United States posted the best-ever result by an American woman on the World Cup. (Randall had finished ninth at the Olympics.)

Though Beckie Scott, Bjorgen's main competitor for the sprint and overall WC titles, did not garner many points at Borlange, she remained within striking distance and aimed to make up ground in the 2x5km pursuit at Falun, Sweden. Half the distance of a normal pursuit, the race was little more than an extended sprint, which played into Scott's hands perfectly. She finished third in a photo finish behind Evi Sachenbacher Stehle (Germany) and Katerina Neumannova (Czech Republic). Bjorgen finished eighth, losing points to Scott. The men's pursuit, also over half the normal distance, went to the young Norwegian star Petter Northug, who burst out of a sizable pack to win by much less than a second over Germans Tobias Angerer and Axel Teichmann. Controversially not chosen for Norway's Olympic team, the brash Northug thus served notice (in deeds and in post-race words) that he was capable of racing at the very highest levels. Angerer's second place marked a return to something like the devastating form he displayed before Christmas and, more importantly, advanced him toward the goal of winning the overall and distance WC titles.

With heavy legs, many racers competed for the next day, their third straight, in classic-style sprints in Drammen, Norway. Run through the city center and watched by tens of thousands, the Drammen events are usually a Norwegian show. This year, the men came through, putting four Norwegians in the final. Jens Arne Svartedal won ahead of Borre Naess, Eldar Ronning, and Odd-Bjorn Hjelmeset and moved into third in the overall WC rankings. On the women's side, though, Petra Madjic of Slovenia took the win (an effective contrapuntal demonstrating of skiing prowess after her third in the Vasa). Beckie Scott finished in second, ahead of Hilde Pedersen, but Marit Bjorgen finished only ninth and lost more points to Scott.

This set up a dramatic confrontation on the sport's most famous tracks, the famous Holmenkollen trails in Oslo. Run freestyle and in the traditional interval start this year, the 30km women's race promised to shake up the standings, and it delivered. Bjorgen had won this race in 2005, but she blew up immediately this time around and ultimately abandoned the race. Julia Tchepalova, who had skipped the Vasaloppet, used her fresher legs to to take the prestigious win - and earn an audience with Norwegian King Harald V. Katerina Neumannova took second, Evi Sachenbacher Stehle third, and Beckie Scott in fourth. The abandon meant that Scott - one of only two women to finish all of the post-Olympic races - moved to within 50 points of Bjorgen with two individual races to go.

The 50km men's race at the Holmenkollen was also surprising. Pietro Piller Cottrer had the fastest split times through much of the race, but at about 30km he bonked badly, slowing down to almost a walk and finally quitting. Anders Sodergren, a brilliant Swedish racer who had never before won a World Cup event, won by 23 seconds over Olympic 50km champion Giorgio di Centa (Italy) and 43 seconds over unknown Tom Reichelt (Germany). Though he finished only 40th, Tobias Angerer sealed up the overall and distance World Cup titles when none of his main pursuers earned enough points to approach his lead.

Immediately after races, the athletes and their coteries boarded planes for Asia, where the World Cup would end with races in the Changchun, China, and Sapporo, Japan. The sprints in Changchun, a Manchurian town that considers itself the center of Chinese skiing, were staged on an almost flat track in a snow-covered soccer stadium. These unusual conditions brought some new competitors to the fore in the men's race. In the final, Thobias Fredriksson took his second win in three races, but the other two podium spots were determined by a photo finish between Christoph Eigenmann of Switzerland and Andy Newell of the United States. Newell's third was America's first World Cup podium since 1983 - the year he was born! It also culminated an enormous amount of work and points Newell, as well as his sprint teammates like Torin Koos, Chris Cook, and Kikkan Randall. With some turnover in the coaching ranks on the U.S. team, the time is ripe for excellent American results.

The women's sprint at Changchun was first and foremost a showdown between Marit Bjorgen and Beckie Scott. Racing o the two women advanced to the final. Bjorgen broke away in the last straightaway and took the win, but Scott finished second. With the win, Bjorgen captured the sprint title and increased her lead for the overall title to 66 points over Scott with just one individual race - a 2x10km pursuit in Sapporo - remaining. Having suggested that she will retire when the season ends, Scott would love to end the season with a win in the event and an unprecedented overall title. The most straightforwared way for Scott to realize the latter goal is to win the race and have Bjorgen finish worse than seventh. Sunday's pursuit thus looms very large.