Hello spring!

As our ski season closes out, the cross-country ski racing season is also nearly over. The US Ski Team had a pretty sad time at World Championships in Trondheim, Norway. Rain, trail grooming problems, ski Ior wax problems, injury and illness, and killer teams from Norway and Sweden,ndividual skiers had good performances in a couple of events, but those who follow the team or XC racing expected more.

All the more reason it’s worth remembering that the entire cross-country ski team, but particularly the women, were struggling in the early 2000s. it took decades for the US to become a challenger to the Nordic countries on the World Cup circuit. One particular woman’s career is associated with the rise of the US Cross-country Ski Team.

A few years ago I did a ‘Throwback Thursday’ featuring a video of Bill Koch: https://acrossthesnowline.com/2021/10/07/throwback-thursday/. That one is worth a watch too. Dang, that guy could ski! And he really just loved to ski.

There’s a real feeling of the times being different if you watch both. The Koch video was clearly made for a different audience, but there’s also a sense that the way we have fun and regard competition have changed over the decades. Yet the personalities of Koch and Randall feel authentically American and original. Very different people, but cut of similar cloth I think.