Robbins Nest: TV is key for Rhine races

One weekend down and one-third of the nordic World Cup season is under way. Less than 150 days to go!
    Cross-country opened with its usual big crowds along the Rhine River in Düsseldorf, Germany, during the weekend. That was the idea — big crowds in a scenic setting, something to goose the early season interest in cross-country skiing. Why let alpine, with its end-of-October races on the Rettenbach Glacier above Sölden, Austria, have the stage to itself? Machine-made snow on an 800-meter loop, with the Rhine as a backdrop, makes for a pretty picture and some terrific racing, too.
ONE WEEKEND DOWN and one-third of the nordic World Cup season is under way. Less than 150 days to go!
    Cross-country opened with its usual big crowds along the Rhine River in Düsseldorf, Germany, during the weekend. That was the idea — big crowds in a scenic setting, something to goose the early season interest in cross-country skiing. Why let alpine, with its end-of-October races on the Rettenbach Glacier above Sölden, Austria, have the stage to itself? Machine-made snow on an 800-meter loop, with the Rhine as a backdrop, makes for a pretty picture and some terrific racing, too.
    Or does it? Terrific racing, for sure. Even on tight tracks. Pretty picture — well, yeah, for those who got to see it. But without ZDF broadcasting the race, the media reach wasn’t quite what it could have been. And that threatens the Rhine races for the start of next season.
    “Düsseldorf has come quickly to be a traditional site, so the problem is not Düsseldorf. They didn’t transmit on the biggest channel in Germany. We had the races live in seven countries, even including Russia, but not on the biggest in Germany,” FIS cross-country chief Juerg Capol told Ski Racing Tuesday. “We have to discuss this; it’s very important for promoting the sport.”
    Capol, a one-time World Cup racer before getting a marketing degree in college, was in Bormio, Italy, going over arrangements for World Cup Finals in March. But the frustration from the weekend was more than just a pebble in his shoe. “The print media likes the early race. ‘We need competition to write about. We can’t just do the other stories,’ they tell us. We have interest from other venues [for the opening races], other countries have shown interest, but we have no confirmation at this point, so we still have discussions to make.”
    Sticking with langlauf, Capol was enthusiastic about a couple of tweaks that have been made to the Tour de Ski (www.tour-de-ski.com), the new-last-season non-World Cup mini-series of races in which athletes must complete eight races to be eligible for World Cup points. This winter, the eight races will award World Cup points on a half-basis, i.e., 50 points for first place, 40 for seconds, etc., provided the skier completes the entire series. And there will be midrace sprint bonus times for the distance races.
    “Instead of just the World Cup points for the top 30, as we did last year, we will have World Cup points on a half-basis," Capol said, “but you must finish the entire tour. So, you have points from the race and, if you are top 30 [based on overall time] at the end, you can get more points.”
    The sprint bonus in distance races will be “minus time,” he said, i.e., seconds shaved from an athlete’s time. “We think it will be good motivation for them; if you see you can get bonus time after, say, three kilometers, you will go for it.”
    The Tour de Ski (II) begins Dec. 28-29 in Prague. The inaugural tour also was to have begun in the Czech Republic — at Nove Mesto — but warm weather torpedoed that effort. This winter, providing winter arrives, the photogenic downtown area near Prague Castle will be the setting for this season’s Tour de Ski lid-lifter.
    BACK TO THE FUTURE: On the left side of the Atlantic, we so often concede Norway and Sweden with having a large share of the brilliance in cross-country skiing. “It’s in their DNA,” has been said more than once.
    But if that’s true, how come there so often seems to be such turmoil, too? Maybe it’s the eternal pressure of excelling. (What’s Norwegian or Swedish for Steinbrenneritis?) As Sweden took control of the men’s XC scene in the 1980s, Ake Jonsson was the head coach. Norway purloined him to be its head coach as the Norwegians took off through the ’90s; Jonsson would just smile and shake his head, disclaiming credit by saying, “I’m just the babysitter. They have their own coaches.”
    A couple of years ago, Sweden reached back across the border and piled Swedish kroners high enough to land Inge Braaten, who was exceedingly successful with Norway’s men (and a coupla guys named Ulvang, Daehlie  and a couple of youngsters named Alsgaard and Jevne, among others), as head coach for the men’s and women’s squads. Braaten lured Alsgaard to be his chief lieutenant, guiding the men. Something worked for ’06 — the Swedish men came home from Torino with double gold — Thobias Fredriksson and Bjoern Lind winning the first Olympic team sprint and then Lind taking gold with Fredriksson the bronze medalist in the sprint — while Anna Dahlberg and Lina Andersson were women’s team sprint champs.
    Now, though, it’s turmoil again in Sweden. Braaten and Alsgaard had a falling out. Braaten and the Swedish Ski Federation had a falling out. The top four men in recent seasons — Fredriksson and his brother Mathias, Lind and Anders Soedergren — bolted from the national team last spring. They formed their own team, got their own sponsors, train by themselves. Bengt Stattin, former Swedish women’s coach and then a club coach in Sun Valley, is the new men’s head coach, and icon Gunde Svan has been named team director with a primary goal of healing the rift; he got them to compete in Düsseldorf and it appears at least short-term reconciliation is under way.
    Speaking of reaching back, Canada has named Steinar Mundal, the Norwegian who replaced Marty Hall as head coach in the ’90s, as its Europe-based World Cup coach. He reportedly signed a three-year deal, taking the team through the Vancouver Olympics.
    GOLD-MEDAL RETURN: Not to be overlooked in the U.S. smiles coming out of Sölden over the weekend is the return of Dane Spencer in his first race following that horrendous crash — coincidentally, just a few hours after Ted Ligety won Olympic combined gold on Valentine’s Day in 2006. Ligety was second Sunday in the opening giant slalom and although Spencer didn’t qualify for the second run, coach Sasha Rearick was quick to note, “Ted did a great job, no question, but — to me — Dane getting down that tricky course after what he’s been through over the past 18 or 20 months is as good a story.” No argument here. Rearick said there clearly were some very emotional elements with tingling noses and watery eyes from more than one observer in Spencer’s comeback.