Canadian cross-country skiers improvise with camps in the US

By Published On: August 14th, 2014Comments Off on Canadian cross-country skiers improvise with camps in the US
Harvey, Valjas and Babikov get chased by Stratton skiers. Patrick O'Brien

Harvey, Valjas, and Babikov get chased by Stratton skiers. Patrick O’Brien

For cross-country skiers, July and August are months spent flocking to summer snow. Whether to the Southern Hemisphere, Austria or Alaska, on-snow camps are a tenet of the summer training log. As much was true for the Canadian national team up until this year.

As a result of budget cuts for summer training, the Canadian national squad — comprised of four athletes and two coaches — changed its summer training schedule to include dryland camps in the U.S., starting with Bend, ending in Park City and, this past week, based in Stratton Mountain, Vt.

“To see new faces in training is good!” exclaimed Tor-Arne Hetland, two-time Olympic and five-time World Championship medalist, who moved from Norway to coach the Canadian team. He chose Stratton because of its success with the elite T2 Team. “When we can train together with different athletes from the U.S. and Canada, both groups are getting stronger.”

The Canadian team, made up of Devon Kershaw, Alex Harvey, Ivan Babikov and Len Valjas, has joined SMS T2 and U.S. Ski Team skiers Andy Newell, Simi Hamilton and Ben Saxton for several of their workouts, presenting opportunities for sprint-specific focus amongst longer distance sessions. Kris Freeman also arrived from Maine to train for the second half of the camp.

“Kris and Simi and Andy are good skiers, it’s good to train with those guys,” said Kershaw. “And we would be lost without Andy. There’s no way we could come to a place like this without local knowledge of the area.”

“It’s a great opportunity to bridge these two great training groups. We’re all very close on the world cup but we don’t see each other too much during the summer so it’s both beneficial from a training perspective and from a cultural perspective to hang out with them during the training season,” said Hamilton of the joint practices.

Additionally, Stratton has been hosting junior camps throughout the weeks, allowing young athletes to gain exposure to what high-level training looks like. SMS T2 head coach Patrick O’Brien commented, “Having five plus extra elite men here is both a benefit to our T2 athletes and to the other programs we have going on. For example, the junior kids can come by and watch them in strength.”

The training sessions have consisted of mostly rollerskiing with distance running or strength added to increase the volume of each session. One thing all of the athletes agreed on was how well paved the roads of Vermont are and how varied and accessible training is. The athletes don’t lament not training on-snow in New Zealand, as they usually do this time of year, because they still created a camp that allows for solid training and remote living but much closer to home.

“The most important thing for a camp is just to be somewhere that’s not home,” said Harvey, who was pleased with the rare opportunity to drive to this camp from his home in Quebec. “You need to be able to really focus on training, eating and sleeping and not get pulled in other directions.”

When asked if Cross Country Canada’s budget cuts had pulled away from their summer training, the men agreed that it hadn’t.

“We have enough money to do what we want to do for the World Cup,” commented coach Hetland. “The training is free and the possibilities in Canmore and Quebec are perfect. We have a service team that is working and will be competing with the best nation for the best skis and the best athletes in the winter.”

As a new coach to the program, Hetland noted the difference in ski culture between North America and Norway, where he said there is a community that has not been reproduced elsewhere. He hopes to simplify the North American approach of getting faster.

“There is no secret in cross-country training. It is the hard work that you do on each day for the training that is the difference between first and second,” he said. According to Hetland, the Canadian men are doing that work. “I am also looking forward to fighting against Norway,” he added, with a smile. The Canadians now head home for a few weeks before traveling to Park City to train alongside the U.S. Ski Team camp in October.

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