LIBEREC, Czech Republic—The U.S. ski team entered the Nordic world championships in the usual fashion, with modest goals, no stars and low expectations. A medal would have been a success; two would have been unheard of.
After collecting six, including four golds, the Americans leave this small Czech town having stirred up the traditional order in the sport and finally shedding their image as a fringe team.
“I was happy to walk out of here with a couple of medals,” team director John Farra said. “It was hard to imagine we’d even get three, let alone six. … It’s validation for us that we’re doing the right thing, and that our hard work is paying off.”
If Farra is surprised, the rest of the skiing world is stunned.
In the 35 previous world championships since 1925, the U.S. won a total of three medals—a gold, a silver and a bronze—and never more than one at the same worlds. This time they had four golds, a silver and a bronze and trailed only perennial power Norway in the medals table.
Now even the International Ski Federation is expressing hope that interest in the sport back in the U.S. will take off if those results can be repeated at the Vancouver Olympics next year.
“That helps a lot, no question. We want to get North America involved,” FIS president Gian Franco Kasper said. “We really hope that will help the Vancouver games in promoting the sport even more.”
The American coming-out party started with Lindsey Van becoming the first ever women’s ski jump world champion on Feb 20. Hours later, veteran Todd Lodwick won his first world title by taking the Nordic combined mass start event. Lodwick won his second gold in the Gundersen normal hill event, with teammate Bill Demong in third. Kikkan Randall of Anchorage, Alaska, then became the first American woman to win a cross-country medal by taking silver in the individual sprint.
The only disappointment came when Demong lost his bib in the Nordic combined team event and was disqualified from the ski jump, ending the Americans’ medal chances.
Demong bounced back to win the final individual event Saturday for his first world title, which reduced his bib blunder to a “tiny asterisk in our perfect week,” Farra said.
Lodwick said the unprecedented results will provide “a perfect opportunity for us to do something positive” to build interest in the sport back home.
“It’s absolutely incredible to have six world championships medals. I’m speechless,” said Lodwick, of Steamboat Springs, Colo. “Now, it’s just an opportunity to get sponsors on board, and get people excited. Now we have something to offer.”
It can hardly be called an overnight success, however. Lodwick spent 15 years laboring in relative obscurity before finally climbing a podium, and both Demong and Randall are veterans of four previous worlds.
“I don’t think there’s any secret (to what we are doing), but I think it has taken a really long time,” said Demong, of Vermontville, N.Y. “What’s coming through now is the hard work we’ve always done.”
The Nordic combined team had hoped their breakthrough would come at the 2002 Olympics, but they left Salt Lake City without a medal. Now they’re again facing increased expectations to deliver success in Vancouver, but Demong said they had learned to deal with the pressure.
“For four years (ahead of Salt Lake City), it was like ‘In 1,200 days we’re going to win two Olympic medals,'” Demong said. “We were so stressed about the whole thing. … But we’re older and more mature, and we know this doesn’t mean anything for next year, except it helps us on the inside with our confidence. And we know that what we’re doing is working.”
The medal chances are more limited in the Olympics, however, as women’s ski jumping is not included and there are only two individual Nordic combined events.
Still, Farra said he doesn’t feel the need to start downplaying expectations.
“It would be silly to talk about numbers for what we want out of it,” he said. “But no one can question that we’re one of the best teams in the world.”
