I really hope you’ll take the time to read this blatantly cut-and-pasted-without-permission article from the nensa site. It pretty well sums up a big part of the reason why the Far West Senior Team is trying to exist and get some support.

For anyone that doesn’t know who John Caldwell is, he’s basically the grandfather of US xc skiing. I believe he was there when Bill Koch (that’s pronounced Coke for anyone that needs help with that) won the only Olympic Medal the US has ever gotten in XC, and won the overall world cup several years later (in my opinion about 10 times bigger of an achievemant than the olympic medal.) He has remained closely in touch with the sport and is still highly respected in the xc ski racing world.

I came across this post on the NENSA website today. The ideas are nothing new to me, but it’s kind of what I’ve been trying to get people to realize for a long time. It seems like things have finally started to come around the past few years with all the new elite senior development teams around the country like CXC, APU, CGRP, MWSC, SVODT, etc. But I think a lot of people still are new to these ideas.

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Commentary from John Caldwell: Our approach with junior skiers and what we can do to keep them in the sport for a long enough time to do well on the international stage

Posted by: Pat Cote

Summary: I get kicks from reading the official FIS XC results which list names, bib number, country, FIS number, year of birth, finish times and FIS points. I find it very instructive to study these and  speculate on who got a ride during the race (by checking bib numbers), or how fast the course was (lots of fast, close times), or what the depth of the field was, and so on.

I get kicks from reading the official FIS XC results which list names, bib number, country, FIS number, year of birth, finish times and FIS points. I find it very instructive to study these and  speculate on who got a ride during the race (by checking bib numbers), or how fast the course was (lots of fast, close times), or what the depth of the field was, and so on.

In one case, I  studied the females’ World Cup 10k results at  Kuusamo in late November, 2009, and came away with the following information:

Only four of the top 30 finishers (I chose 30 finishers because these are the skiers that get WC points and are most recognized, at least in our media) were under the age of 24.

Twenty-two of the top 30 were older than 27 years, but younger than 35.

Half of this twenty-two group were 28, 29, 30 or 31 years old.

Well, that was interesting enough  and so I decided to look at the men’s ages  in the Kuusamo 15k and found this:

Only six of the top 30 were under 25,

Seventeen of the top 30 were bunched between 25 and 30,

and there were seven “old guys” over 31, the oldest being 38!

One can read a lot  into the figures. First of all, a great majority of the skiers at Kuusamo were  25 or older. It follows that we may be rushing things too much in the US by expecting good results from our younger (less than 25 years) skiers. It’s been my experience that our skiers mature more slowly than those in Europe anyway and this is important to consider, if true. Our four best skiers at Kuusamo this year were aged 26, 27,and two were 29. Two racers in their early twenties didn’t finish well. It figures.

You may be reading this (which I wrote in early December) as the Olympics are in progress and it might be interesting to note the ages of the top 30 in each xc event. You can be sure I will be checking to see if the ages line up with what I’ve written above. Of course there will be a few “youngsters” in there, but I’ll bet there’s a strong correlation.

Going on from here, I  ask how we can keep skiers competing until they mature physically, in the xc sense. We put a lot of importance and stress on the younger, junior skiers. There’s a huge emphasis on our JO’s and I have to say that the Euros follow our JO’s with the same enthusiasm we display studying the JO’s in China. In other words…..

Anyway, there are a lot of good  programs for juniors and some colleges provide a stepping stone from the junior ranks for  a small percentage of these skiers and take most of them up to about 22 or 23 years old. In addition, locally we have programs for seniors at Craftsbury and Maine Winter Sports Center. The Stratton program also invites seniors to train there in the summers. But, in general, and this has always been the case, we start to fall behind the Europeans after the junior ranks because we lack enough programs.

The few exceptions to skiers falling behind  are the serious competitors who stick with the sport well into their twenties (the average age of our best-ever men’s team, in 1982, was between 25 and 30, save for one skier, who was younger). But the ranks of skiers in the US in their mid-to-late twenties are pretty thin these days

This raises questions about any program. Should a program interested in good international results spend a significant amount of money on juniors in the 17-19 year range? Probably not because how can anyone know if these juniors will stay with the sport until they reach 25, or so? And how much would it cost to support these skiers from a junior age until their mid-twenties and older?  I hate to think of it. The USST recently encouraged skiers to delay college so they can train better, presumably. Since most college skiers graduate when they are 22 or 23, and colleges with ski programs offer what is now, overall, the best show in town for this age group, the ski team approach to college education is simply wrongheaded.

The FIS a few years ago established the World U-23 Championships. Georg Zipfel, a former racer and now a coach in Germany, was one of the instigators and he  said that most skiers are not ready for the big time ( World Cups, OWG and so on) until they are at least 24. To give these younger skiers a goal, he pushed for having the U-23 World Championships. The FIS already had the World Junior Championships for skiers who haven’t reached 20 by Jan 1 of the current race year. Now the FIS combines those two events at one location. If the USST is going to pick up and support skiers in the age bracket 20-23, it’s still a risk, but if they do they should feel obligated to carry through until the skiers reach international maturity, which appears to be between 25 and 30.

The other thing I look for in FIS results is the depth of the field. I happened on some results from Kirovsk, Russia, for a 5k ladies race and noticed that the top 30 finishers, mainly Russians with  six from the Ukraine and one from Belarus thrown in, were all within two minutes of the winner. A comparable race here in North America was the 5k at West Yellowstone in late November and 50 competitors (with Canadians in the mix) were within that two minute bracket behind the winner. I was feeling pretty good about that, thinking we had better depth in our field than the Russians. But then I found another FIS race in Russia, at Tea Vershina, yet another 5k, and they had 65 skiers (all but one from Russia) within that two minute bracket. While I was still shaking my head over this I noticed something more startling and it was that the two races in Russia were run one day and a great distance apart, with no crossovers I could find! (Ever try comparing Russian names?) I’m not going to  say if these two fields had been combined there might have been 115 skiers in the two minute bracket, but one would have to agree that the fields in Russia have more depth. It guides us on what to expect in the future. Nevertheless, it was good to see 50 skiers from North America within two minutes of the winner at West Yellowstone. Without researching it, I think that depth is better than many (or all?) previous years.

But, for me, this all goes back to our approach with junior skiers and what we can do to keep them in the sport for a long enough time to do well on the international circuit. There may be as many theories here as there are coaches. My own ideas are for another article. You can write me with yours.