among ocean and mountain

With a glance back, time's march forward hinges halt. In the post-Lahti Ski Games race analysis, the final words read, "Find a way to win. I can. I know this. I know this better today than yesterday. I need to know this just as well tomorrow as today. Now it's how I can make this happen."

From Finland, I take away another sight. It comes from the ski jumps in Lahti. On a hill visible throughout the town, a progression of six ski jumps rest, a reminder to the young Lahti jumper where the ultimate goal lies. And this goal, to fly through the air far past the big hill 130 meter K-mark as forty thousand rowdy, stumblingly intoxicated countrymen cheer you on at the Lahti Ski Games.

Skiing by, I see kids five or six years old heading off the 25 meter hill. The jump, comparative to last night's big hill competition, makes for a short flight. But still, for one revealing moment, the young jumper gets into the full flight before touching back upon earth with a telemark landing. Icarus would like the effort. So would Janne Ahonen. Or America's Billy Demong.

From Lahti, I head west to Trondheim, Norway. Walking along the Nidelva river, heading to the open ocean fjords of downtown Trondheim, I'm taken aback by the cityscape scene. Cobble stone walkways and wooden bridges give way to the Atlantic. The sky is clearing and the last rays of day's sun make a final appearance. It's March, yet drifting piles of whiteness from yesterday's snow collect on the ocean front docks, yet there's only open water in the harbor. Ah, to take in the beautiful incongruity of a 64 degree latitude matched with a zero foot starting elevation.

First I pass by the Nidaros Cathedral - a tower of granite and craftmanship and copper seen from every house and hamlet, built in 1152 in this onetime pagan Viking land.

On the hill overlooking city and fjord, an austere white castle looms. It's the Kristiansten Fortress, built to keep out Swedes with a thirst for conquest.

On the aquatic side of the street, reclaimed old brick buildings that once hosted maritime dry-dock operators and ship builders now house college students, cafes, corner markets and small boutique shops.

It's then I have the thought. All cities are built along some source of liquid, with perhaps the better measure given to those residing along an expanse of salty ocean water. But the best of cities? The ones atop my list have but one requirement - a place where ocean and mountain meet.

Raceday came yesterday. Instead of using gooey klister or a purple-hued hard wax concoction in the wax pocket - the centermost part of my classic skis - I go on my "zeros." The name comes from the conditions the ski works best in; that is, fresh snow falling within a degree or two from zero centrigrate. Zero skis are made by taking sixty grit sandpaper and roughing up ski's wax pocket. This operation leaves micro-hairs of flourinated polyurethane that cling to the snow when compressed against it, then release when the compression ends.

Not everyone likes the feeling of skiing sandpapered skis. Not everyone can change their technique to make zeros a viable raceday option. For this very reason perhaps I love racing on "zeros".

And yet, as in everything in life, there's two distinct areas of enterprise: There's things you can control. And there's the things you cannot.



In Trondheim, I drew starting position number one for the interval start, race-against-the-clock, prologue. Normally this would be fine. Today, though, a just before raceday snow storm settled in, blanketing the race loop with a layer of wet, slow, suctiony powder I got to plow through. In the race against the clock, this was an added challenge.

I layed it out on the course. Fifteen seconds later, Fabio Pasini of Italy finished. We're within a tenth. Next, two-time World sprint medalist Johann Kjoelstad crosses the line, half a second back. Then comes, Nokolay Morilov, fresh off a bronze at Worlds, +4.5 in arrears.

Okay, I've done what I need to do. Now it's off to get the effort out of my body and to get ready for the head-to-head racing that'll determine first to thirtieth. Only, it's not to be today. The once powdery tracks soon glaze. Gliding velocity speeds up. I finish 37th, my racing day ending early. All that awaits me today is hard intensity, away from the nine thousand spectators lining the course.

Next week, racing around the King's Castle in downtown, Sweden awaits. Another opportunity. Not losing the feeling I had in Lahti, going out and skiing strong and big and fast in Stockholm is totally, 100%, within my control. The King of Sweden will be there. So too, will be, Princess Madeleine. A personality of intrigue, to be sure.

Wait, what's that I hear in the distance? Could it be? Yes, it is. The bells of Nidaros Cathedral ring. They ring for you. They ring for me. I'm coming Miss Madeleine...

Still among the shadows

"Even though the sport inspires magic, it's magicians need the latitude to be human." -A friend after a hard day.



"For I fancy I do know the nature of courage, but somehow or another, she has slipped away from me and I cannot get a hold of her and tell her nature." - Plato

Ciao for now. -Tk

Such Great Heights

Melville once wrote “winter isn’t a season; it’s a place.” Nearing the top notch in Foscagno Pass of Northern Italy, leaving the mountain playground of Bormio behind, with the glimpses of the Livigno Valley opening up ahead, one begins to feel the truth to Melville’s words. You feel a connection to the scene - to the mountains, to the snow you just plied your trade on, to the cold, dry, high altitude air – becoming, at least in one’s own mind, a Khan of the mountains, a King of the Alps.

Nearby, weekend jet setters from Milano and Lake Como share these heights, hitting the slopes from the hours of eleven to two, to receive the good tidings of these mountains. Curiously, untold miles of wind-loaded, off-piste terrain remain untracked, just waiting for a light human touch to add to the mountain’s perfection. All I know is I want to come back right here with a beacon, a pair of reverse camber Rossignols underfoot and a little forgiveness from the gatekeepers of this hauntingly beautiful land.

This last part is perhaps the most important part. The name Livigno traces its roots back to the Middle Ages, where its Latin name was "vinea et vineola." This has nothing to do with vineyards and everything to do with mountains and snow. "Vinea et vineola" means avalanche. Looking out to the whiteness of the mountainscape all around, I appreciate that name.

Today, though, I left the Alps behind and made my way to the Jizershe Mountains of the Czech Republic in Liberec. The World Championships are just around the corner. I’ll take to the start line in just under a week. Ahh, to have one’s muse appear upon company time.

Traversing the Alps

This summer a friend asked me where my favorite European spot for ski training was located. The answer wasn't hard to come by - Ramsau am Dachstein. Since Russia, this has been my home for the past week.

Tomorrow, though, I'm off to the Northern Italian town of Bormio for the last World Cup before the big show, the World Championships. Leaving the the schnitzel, the spetzle, the sauna, and most importantly the trails that run steps right from the hotel will be a little easier than usual.

With the World Championships just around the corner, new faces have joined our team. It's good to get a bigger U.S. crew over here. Last week, three younger athletes from the U-23 Championships rolled into Ramsau. Today, ITA's own Laura Valaas made her way into the neighborhood.

I'm sure the next days will bring some stories to write about. Until then, enjoy the days. -Tk

My Muses, My Mission, Sing In Russia

The Russia I see is a rugged place. Resting to the north and east of Paris, Madrid, Milano, backed up against Mongolia and sharing the Caspian Sea with Iran, perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise.



Outside the city of Cton I am awoken to wheels bouncing over chunks of ice on a patchwork road. Outside, grey plumes from coal burning smokestacks mix with the white winter sky. On the ground, grey ribbons of footsteps once trodden, over and over, mark the path across the winter snow from blown-out apartment buildings to bus stop.

Stopped beside a bus at a traffic light, I see only a muddle of bodies behind the window, the condensed humidity of huddled people checkering the glass white with frost.

Beside the bus line, a convenience store sells smokes and supplies. A pack of Russian branded cigarettes costs ten rubles, or roughly 1/24th what Marlboros cost at home. A tall, thin can of sugar-free Red Bull, fifty-nine rubles. Some indulgences cost more than others.

Inside the apartments, the sight of color finally presents itself. Inside, laundry hangs to dry. A teammate says, “People living on top of people.” It’s more than a sentence. It is a statement. For this Southern Vermonter, who just purchased seven acres of land in Weston, condo living of any kind comes as an abomination. To some - to most perhaps - Stalinist era architecture leaves something left to be desired.

The Russia I see is a self-reliant country. Just as the Russian military designs, builds and flies Mig airplanes, we flew to Russia aboard a Tupulov Tu-204-100. The aircraft is designed, built and exclusively flown within, and to, Russia. The low bypass turbo fan engines burn more fuel than a similar sized Boeing or Airbus. The jet engines run in even the most extreme arctic conditions, though, and the Tupulov can land and take-off on unpaved, gravel airfields. With the weather too cold to race on Sunday – I awoke to -28C – perhaps this is a good thing. The world is full of compromise and negotiation, I guess.

The Russia I see on the World Cup, too, work in isolation. On the World Cup, the U.S. has an Estonian and two Swedish servicemen. As an athlete, I’ve had two American, two Norwegian and one Swedish national team coaches in my eight years with the US Ski Team. Growing up, my club coach came from Oslo before a scholarship at the University of Wyoming, followed by the Western U.S. lifestyle, lured her away from Scandinavia. In contrast, Russia employs Russians, and only Russians, in its coaching and service ranks.

The way I see this, the knife cuts both ways. By employing foreigners, we gain a perspective outside our own country’s way of working. These coaches and servicemen have a specialized set of skills and body of knowledge not easily acquired, nor in abundance within America. The study of economics might contribute something to this. Keynesian economics says demand creates its own supply. Maybe America has a surfeit demand for football commentators while Russia demands Russian-born, international-ready cross-country ski coaches.

Maybe this is a problem. Then again, maybe it is an organizational strength of the U.S. Team, free to hire and fire the best in the world, regardless what country of origin a passport comes from. Maybe we just need to collectively channel what my friend Colby, while hearing Obama’s inauguration speech, said to me. “Obama promised to continue ‘protecting and promoting America’s interests abroad.’ I say we start protecting and promoting skiing domestically. That’d be a fight well worth all of our time.”

The fight well worth my time these days is to do all that I can with the chances I have on the ski trails. Otepaa, Rybinsk, Val diDentro, Liberec, Lahti, Trondheim, Stockholm, this is mine, and my team’s, mission. I hope our sense of urgency, our professionalism and love of the sport leaves no other word to describe it. “This is our mission…” and you believe it, and follow it and join in on it too.

I am reminded of this sense of mission while reading through I Had a Hammer again. Told through the words and experiences of Hank Aaron, I Had a Hammer is the story of a shy and quiet and confident kid who would hit more home runs than Babe Ruth or anyone before him ever did. Mr. Aaron is also a man who did just about more with the home runs he hit than anyone.

Mr. Aaron was driven. And I don’t mean driven in a typical - or even major league ballplayer - sense. Rather, Hank had the kind intensity of purpose that stretches beyond all but the most Olympian of ideals, to attack one’s chosen profession with a Jesse Owens or Jackie Robinson-like sense of duty and opportunity.

“Damn it all, I had to break that record,” wrote Aaron when bearing down on Babe Ruth’s 714. “I had to do it for Jackie and my people and myself and for everybody who ever called me a nigger.

“Baseball’s role reached back to times when discrimination was an Irish concern, a German concern, an Italian concern. Since it first took shape in the grass of Hoboken, New Jersey, the diamond has been the Ellis Island of playing fields, offering its basepaths and batter’s boxes for the hungriest and readiest of able young men.

“If there’s a single reason why the black players of the 1950’s and 1960’s were so much better than the white players – it’s because we had to be. And we knew we had to be. There was too much at stake for us to screw up. Black people had been crying out for opportunity in this country for two centuries, and we finally had it.”

To get closer to the ideal set by Mr. Aaron each and every day; to help turn endurance sports into the Ellis Island for more Americans, young and old; to take the opportunities I have in front of me and pursue them with all my resources, this is the mission. “This is our mission.”

On to Rubinsk, Russia

The Tallinn night scene after the races in Estonia.

The days in Estonia have come to an end. Now I await a charter aboard Red Wings Air, headed to the Yaroslav, Russia military airbase for next week's World Cup in Rybinsk. I'm flying aboard a Tupolev Tu-154. N.A.T.O. calls this particular model of aircraft "Careless." I hope that isn't in correlation to the safety rating.

Honestly, though, I'm looking forward to heading to Russia. The course is good one. The Russians are into nordic skiing and make racing in front of them like you're putting on a performance that they share in. And I'm in getting in good racing shape these days with the World Championships around the corner in just under a month.

among mountains and clouds

My attention drifts with the sights of Vancouver's skyline as I wind through the city streets. It's turning dark. Humidity drizzles from the sky. A caravan of three minivans carries a group of skiers that have converged from various outposts - Anchorage, Alaska, Wenatchee,Washington, Park City, Utah - to the capitol and most populous environ of British Columbia. The caravan snakes its way through Friday night's stop-and-go traffic. Modern towers and high-rise condominiums along the waterfront. The occasional Burberry store and clean-swept sidewalks with hedges groomed to the nines speak of the city's affluence. And its influence. In just over a year, the best sliders, skaters, skiers, hockey players and curlers will descend into Vancouver for the 2010 Olympic Games.

After passing by and taking in the eye-candy roaming around the University of British Columbia we roll through the forested grove of Stanley Park. The canopy of Western Red Cedar, Doug Fir and Western Hemlock reach heavenward, at times upwards of 250 feet.

The green, narrow-leafed Western giants remind me of my latest book, Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean. The book unravels a story about the universe's four forces at work - sky, fire, earth and young men during a fire in the Gates of the Mountains in Montana, a wilderness area just east of the Missouri River. Partway down a ridge between the Mann and Meriwether gulleys sixteen Smokejumpers descended upon the burning forest just before the it turns into a blow-up, the most deadly - and least understood - fire. Of the sixteen, thirteen would never return.

"Smokejumpers were the fastest the nation had in getting to where there was danger," wrote Maclean. "They got there by moving in the magic realm between heaven and earth. When they got to a fire, they almost made a game of it. None were surer they could not lose than the Seventh Cavalry and the Smokejumpers."

Young Men and Fire is the story of how America's best and bravest got into more than a game with fire. The crown fire helped start bundles of spot fires. These turned into firewhirls, which in turn became the worst kind of blow-up known as a Halocaust that enveloped four square miles in ten minutes. A forty-foot wall of flame raced up the 76 degree Mann Gulch slope at seven and one-half miles an hour. All but three young woodsmen would suffocate, then burn to death within sight of the ridgeline. Young Men and Fire is a terrible tale. I highly recommend it.

In time, the evergreens give way to the Lion's Gate Suspension Bridge, named after the pair of peaks that definitively end the city's northern expansion.

Inside the Dodge, Gang of Four's on heavy rotation. The Leeds, England outfit cranks out a harsh, funk/punk sound with distraught lyrics layed atop.

Ought to control what I do with my mind
Nothing in there but sunshades for the blind

Love'll get you like a case of anthrax
And that's something I don't want to catch

Listening to Gang of Four comes as a sort of baptism by fire. The guitars, the beat, the lyrics hit immediately. I can imagine Dave Allen's slap and speed bass playing influence on Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist's own style when he says, "The Gang of Four is the first rock band I could truly relate to. These limies rocked my world."

Go4 guitarist Andy Gill even left U2's Bono with a sort of superior-inferiority complex. "Hard. Angular. Bold. Andy Gill's chin is the black hole of '90s music we should have all disappeared into if we had any sense; a dimple atop the body politic, a pimple on the arse of pop. A Gang of Four metal guru, a corporation of common sense, a smart bomb of text that had me at home feeling like a typist."

After a sushi stop in Squamish, the road winds higher along the Sea2Ski Corridor to Whistler. For the next ten days - and the fourth time this year - this valley has become my home; to breathe in its maritime air, get lost and found in its fog, to slide on its various configurations of snow crystals. And dream out loud. My first chance to do this is Friday, January 16th when the World Cup makes its debut on the Whistler Olympic courses.