I Made the Olympics! And a deep dive into a quarter final exit in Oberhof

This Tuesday, the Olympic selections for US Cross Country skiing were made final. Being the second ranked sprinter on the world cup sprint rankings and well within the top 50, I was named to the team. As I have discussed before, being named was almost a formality at this point, but it was still quite a surreal experience when I did get the email confirming my nomination. Although I knew that I was going to make it since the Davos World Cup in December barring something very unexpected happening, seeing it officially in writing was an incredible experience. The biggest goal I had coming into this season has now been accomplished, but I’m still far from satisfied with the season as a whole. Regardless of the work left to do this year, I still allowed myself to revel in the achievement for a bit before letting it go and moving on.

 Snakes in the Oberhof Exotarium

The notification that I had made the team came very soon after the world cup freestyle sprint I had competed at in Oberhof, Germany. At this race, like so many others on the world cup stage, I qualified in the 20’s, selected what I thought would be a heat that would give me a solid chance of moving on to the semis, and I promptly failed to move on. I have raced 12 world cup or world championship skate sprints in my career. The outcomes were as follows: 1x did not qualify, 9x quarter final exit, 1x semi final exit, and 1x final. I have very consistently qualified for sprint heats and very consistently failed to advance to the semi-finals. The older, and more experienced I get, the more frustrating this trend becomes. Last year, I didn’t expect much of myself beyond the qualifier, but this year, I have become more focused on what happens in the heats. 

I’m not the only male US skier who has had growing frustration with chronic quarter-final exits. I have talked at length with both JC Schoonmaker and Ben Ogden who have both skied in multiple world cup sprint finals about sprint tactics, and the conclusion is generally that there is something missing for us. With how steep my progression has been in the last three years, I am in no position to complain about consistently qualifying for heats, but the topic of why the three of us feel as if we are skiing below our potential in quarter finals remains salient. This topic extends to training and experience over many years, but for the scope of this article, I want to focus on specific tactical decisions that influence the outcome of a heat. While my quarterfinal in Oberhof is still fresh in my memory, I thought I would take readers through a deep dive of this race and bring y’all along on my quest to find what went wrong in this scenario. 

Course Description

Oberhof debuted a new sprint course for the world cup this year that featured a large, steep climb that hadn’t appeared on previous iterations of sprint courses here. The start was short and immediately after it, there was a sharp corner into a long gliding downhill. Positioning out of this downhill would determine position on the big climb. After the climb, there was a very tight downhill corner that required some skidding to stay on your feet but maintaining speed out of the corner remained paramount. After the corner came a long gliding section into the final grind of a climb before a turn into the finishing stretch. 

Strategy Coming In

In an ideal world, I would have liked to get out fast and control the heat up the large hill. This could have given me the option to slow the pace down a little bit on the climb and would have guaranteed me decent position out of the last downhill assuming one or two skiers pass me via drafting on the last downhill. After this, I would rely on the energy I saved from controlling the pace and not scrapping at the back to put in a surge at the end that would keep me in second. But as Iron Mike once said, “everyone has plans until they get hit for the first time”. 

The Start

Sometimes having a blazing first couple seconds is crucial while other times, you can get away with a slow reaction to the starting gun. Luckily, despite my slow reaction at the start, the two men next to me didn’t express any interest in taking the lead, so I was able to jump out and get to the first corner next to Noe Naeff in the lead. This was just about according to plan except that I would have preferred the outright lead as opposed to being neck and neck. We then descended next to each other with me having to work a little more to stay in line due to my more aggressive line through the first corner. Regardless of these first couple hundred meters, I made it to the base of the hill with open trail in front of me. 

Go deep

The Middle

I thought I could get away with relaxing at this point and waiting to react to a move from someone to my right. I was wrong, I had eased up too soon and left a small gap to my left that Ondrej Cerny pounced on putting me straight into a battle for 4th instead of 1st. In my mind this is the first thing that went wrong. I eased up when I needed to stay on edge. I wouldn’t have been safe until we transitioned to V1, but I relaxed too early and paid the price. For that one millisecond of hesitation, I was put into exactly the position I was trying to avoid: being in the back half of the pack with no option to improve until the downhill. I hung tough on the climb, skied the technical corner aggressively and found some speed coming out of it. This extra velocity allowed me to find a way into third on the outside of the track.

The Finish

When I came out of my tuck into the last 45 seconds or so of the race, I thought I had decent speed and a lane to move up. This hope was crushed when the Italian skier in my heat squeezed by me on the left moving me back into 5th. At this point I was in contact and scrambling to find a way to move up places. I tightened up and when it came to the finish and I actually had a chance to move up from 5th to 4th, I didn’t have the energy. I finished 5th in the heat and 24th on the day, and for a while was just trying to figure out what happened. 

Another snake

What Happened?

It’s tough to learn from your mistakes if you don’t know what they are. One of the most important ways to start analyzing a subpar performance is to make as clear a judgement as possible of the ski speed. My skis were not the fastest in my heat, but I can confidently say that if I had skied better, the skis would not have been the thing holding me back. With that taken care of, what went wrong personally? I talked earlier about hesitating when I needed to go. This is a small example of a larger problem with how I sometimes approach sprint heats. When I am racing my best in heats, I go as hard as possible to get to the front and never think about saving energy. It is not that saving energy is bad, it is just that when I go into a heat with the goal of finding ways to relax, it somehow makes me feel ok with letting up and getting passed. This is more psychological than physical, but I think it is one of the most important parts of my performance. Sure, I’ve had a couple failures stemming from going out insanely hard and getting passed by everyone at the end, but these are also the only heats I have ever had success in. 

No pole work in Goms

Moving Forward

In Goms this weekend, the emphasis is on the qualifier for me, but if I make the heats I will most certainly try to tap into this feeling of fighting instead of relaxing in heats. Looking past this weekend, I’m going to have plenty of opportunities in period 4 to attack some quarter finals, and I’m excited to continue and improve my mentality in heats. But before I get to the end of season racing, I have one VERY important race left: the olympic classic sprint. Right now, I have no idea whether I’ll be starting or not, but I have no choice but to assume I am. Over the next two weeks until the games, I will be training with the sole focus of not only qualifying as best I can on February 10th but also putting myself in a position so that if and when I do qualify I am ready to attack the heats. Getting to experience a classic quarterfinal this weekend in Goms would be great experience, but even if this doesn’t happen, I’m still confident I can use my skating experience and the focus I’ve poured into classic skiing this year to perform at the Olympics, even if it is my first ever world cup level classic heat. 

Looks like it would go…