Ski Racing Roundup: Sommerfeldt speaks, Bjoergen disrobes, Alan Johnson lends a hand

Ski Racing Roundup: Sommerfeldt speaks, Bjoergen disrobes, Alan Johnson lends a hand{mosimage}Sommerfeldt wants worlds gold

Defending cross-country ski champion Rene Sommerfeldt of Germany, with one World Cup crystal globe in hand, wants World Championships gold in his homeland next February. Oberstdorf, which last hosted nordic Worlds in 1987, will entertain the nordic world again February 16-27 (Click here for details.)

Sommerfeldt, who turned 30 earlier this month, was silver medalist in the 50-kilometer skate race at the 2001 Worlds in Lahti, Finland, (behind the now-disgraced Johann Muehlegg, his onetime German teammate who was racing for Spain at the 2001 World Championships). “The World Cup, of course, is important,” he told eurosport.com, but with the championships coming back to Germany (in those days, of course, it was West Germany), he and his teammates are after gold.

A knee injury sustained while playing soccer with friends during the summer has slowed Sommerfeldt, he said, and he was unsure whether he would race October 23 when the cross-country season opens with freestyle sprints along the Rhine in Dusseldorf.

Sommerfeldt was best known as a skater until last season when he upped his classic technique and skied away from the men’s pack, winning by 350 points over defending World Cup king Mathias Fredriksson of Sweden; Germany had two other skiers in the men’s top-five: Tobi Angerer in fourth place and Axel Teichmann, the reigning 15km classic world champion.

Canadian Olympic Committee endorses inaugural Center of Sport Excellence

The Calgary Olympic Development Association, or CODA, has picked up a major backer in its bid to erect the nation’s first Canadian Centre of Sport Excellence. CODA announced in a press release the Canadian Olympic Committee “gave its full endorsement” to plans for the center in southern Alberta. CODA operates the venues from the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and looks to build new sport facilities to help further Canadian Olympic athletes. Vancouver will host the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Chris Rudge, Olympic Committee CEO, said, “The Canadian Olympic Committee sees the development of facility-based sport institutes across Canada as a pillar in its strategy to provide better support for the country’s high-performance athletes. Rudge hailed “the combination of support, research and facilities essential to a world-class sport institute” which already exist in the Calgary area. 2002 Olympic cross-country champion Beckie Scott was among the athletes voicing support for the proposed center.

Sprint champion Marit Bjoergen poses topless

Reigning world and World Cup sprint champion Marit Bjoergen, heiress apparent to Bente Skari’s brilliant record as Norway’s World Cup overall champion, said last season she hoped to some day win a major distance race. And it’s still one of her goals, she told Dagbladet, one of Norway’s leading papers; a translation was made by former U.S. women’s Coach Torbjorn Karlsen and posted at Fasterskier.com. She’s won 10 World Cup sprints in the last two winters – three races plus the World Championships sprint title in 2003 and seven of the eight World Cup sprints a year ago, missing only the opener in Dusseldorf (Italy’s Gabi Paruzzi won the opener and went on to take her first overall crown).

Bjoergen showed the newspaper one mighty reason she’s so powerful in the sprints, taking off her top and allowing the photographer to photograph her muscular back and upper body .

“My goal is still to become a complete skier,” she said. “It’s still a bit in Norway that you are not a ‘real’ skier before you have won the 50km in Holmenkollen.” Norwegian Coach Svein Tore Samdal said her oxygen uptake is as strong as Skari, who retired after the 2003 season. “Her engine is already enormous,” he said of his 24-year-old racer.

Beckie’s got gold, Neumannova’s got silver…and now Bauer has bronze

It took more than two years for the International Olympic Committee to straighten out the medals for the women’s pursuit at the 2002 Olympics. However, once Russians Olga Danilova and Larissa Lazhutina were spurned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the medals were redistributed. Canadian Beckie Scott, originally the bronze medalist on February 15, 2002, got her gold earlier this year and Czech Katerina Neumannova and German Viola Bauer, originally fifth, collected her bronze medal in a ceremony in the square in Oberstdorf. Here’s a link to the story at Eurosport.

Alan Johnson back with U.S. jumpers

Alan Johnson was ski jumping program director when the U.S. Ski Team decided to do away with program directors in 1995. But now he’s back with the U.S. squad – as a part-time jumping coach (click here for details. Johnson, whose son Anders is on the U.S. Development Team and daughter Alyssa is one of the top women’s jumpers, was named by Head Coach Corby Fisher after working with the squad on a volunteer basis for more than a month during the summer.

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Previous Ski Racing Roundups:

INTERNATIONAL, September 15, 2004

DOMESTIC, September 28, 2004

NORDIC, September 29, 2004

INTERNATIONAL, September 30, 2004

DOMESTIC, October 5, 2004

NORDIC, October 6, 2004

INTERNATIONAL, October 7, 2004

DOMESTIC, October 12, 2004

NORDIC, October 13, 2004

INTERNATIONAL, October 14, 2004

DOMESTIC, October 19, 2004