Randall takes second straight sprint title

Twelve years ago, in Soldier Hollow, Utah, Kikkan Randall made her first World Cup cross-country skiing start. She finished 24th and, at the time, as she recalled Saturday, "That was so exciting." Times certainly have changed.

On Saturday, after qualifying 11th and powering through the heats, Randall skied past world champion Marit Bjoergen by a boot length to win a freestyle sprint in Lahti, Finland.

"My skis were awesome today and it's really cool to see what a well-oiled machine we have become," Randall said afterward, underscoring the emphatic reality: in the sprints, the U.S. cross-country program has emerged as a genuine threat to win.

The victory Saturday clinched Randall's second straight World Cup sprint championship.

Barring injury, Randall will start next season as one of the favorites for an Olympic medal next February in Sochi.

Maybe more than one.

A few weeks ago, Randall and Jessie Diggins won the team sprint title at the world championships.

An American has not won an Olympic medal in cross-country skiing since Bill Koch in 1976.

No American woman has ever won an Olympic medal in the sport.

The race Saturday marked Randall's 100th career World cup start. As she said, she was "really hoping to make it a special one."

It turned out to be her 11th career World Cup or World Cup Stage victory. For the season: her sixth World Cup or World Cup Stage win.

The win gives Randall 488 World Cup sprint points; Justyna Kowalcyzk of Poland has 280. That's a 208-point lead; there are two sprint races remaining, meaning the most anyone could make up is 150 points.

On the men's tour, Sweden's Emil Joensson wrapped up the men's sprint title by defeating Ola Vigen Hattestad of Norway; Joensson now has 466 points. Andy Newell of the United States is second, with 236.

Bjoergen was the only woman Randall had yet to face in a skate sprint all year; the Norwegian skier, long viewed by many as the best in the world, had missed every skate sprint before Lahti because of heart trouble in December.

The race Saturday -- on a short, twisty course -- came down to a photo finish.

Bjoergen didn't quite have the lunge, Randall did, Randall winning by seven-hundredths of a second.

After the finish, the two racers shared a hug.

Bjoergen understandably said later, "I have not raced that much so I feel like the World Cup season has just started for me."

As Randall told the website fasterskier.com, "We're good friends and we got to laugh about it. I asked her what World Cup start this was for her. I said, 'You're probably over 200 by now.' And she said, 'Yeah, probably.' "

Randall also said, thinking back to her first start 12 years ago: " … It's pretty funny that, 100 starts later, we're in the hunt for the win every time in the skate sprint now. I got to go up against one of the world's greatest athletes today and it was definitely close there at the end.

"She was coming on strong but it's just nice to know that … it's taken me a lot of races and a lot of time to get to this point but if you put in the work and stay dedicated then you can be the best in the world.

"And it's pretty fun."

U.S. cross-country skiing breakthrough

It's only one race. And most of America won't pay it much notice -- not on a day when USC and Notre Dame were playing football.

But for Kikkan Randall to finish third, and fellow American Holly Brooks fifth, in the women's 10-kilometer freestyle event on Saturday in Gallivare, Sweden, 62 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the opening cross-country World Cup meet of the season -- that is big stuff looking toward the Sochi Olympics, now just a little bit over 14 months away.

The Norwegians, as usual, dominated both the women's and men's events. Marit Bjoergen captured her 56th individual victory, winning in 22:31.8. Another Norwegian, Therese Johaug, took second, 12.6 seconds behind. Randall crossed 25.9 seconds behind, with Charlotte Kalla of Sweden fourth, 15.92 back.

Bjoergen has seven Olympic medals, three gold. Johaug won gold in Vancouver in 2010 in the women's 4 x 5k relay. Kalla is the Vancouver 10k gold medalist.

Martin Johnsrud Sundby won the men's 15k -- his first World Cup win and just second individual win overall -- in 30.37. Alexey Poltoranin of Kazakhstan took second, 8.9 seconds behind; Sweden's Marcus Hellner took third.

The United States has not earned an Olympic medal in cross-country skiing since Bill Koch's silver in Innsbruck in 1976 in the 30k.

But like the U.S. Nordic combined team, which broke through to win four medals in Vancouver in 2010, the trajectory of the U.S. cross-country team -- as Sochi draws into view -- would seem to be pointing in the right direction .

Randall, already a three-time Olympian, is last season's World Cup sprint champion.

Brooks skied on the Vancouver Olympic team.

Both are based in Alaska.

Brooks turned 30 earlier this year. Randall will turn 30 at the end of December.

"I like to say cross-country skiers are like fine wine," Randall said Saturday after the race, adding, "We get better with age. It just takes a lot of years to train the systems for endurance sports. You see it in triathlon, you see it in marathon … it takes maturity and experience."

It takes mental strength.

Brooks said she has with her now a "vivid memory" of a blog post written by Kris Freeman, a top U.S. male cross-country skier, in which he said, paraphrasing, enough with the hero worship. Freeman was the top U.S.men's finisher Saturday, in 32nd, in the 15k.

For far too long, she explained, "American skiers have looked at Scandinavians and automatically put them on a pedestal. We have thought they are better than we are. That they are superstars. That they grow up on skis, have skiers on cereal boxes and we are just not as good."

Um, why?

Since it was football rivalry weekend back home in the States, why not break out a variation on the football cliché -- everybody puts their skis on one at a time, right?

Out of 77 racers -- one more did not start -- Brooks drew the number six start slot Saturday.  She posted sweet splits but thought little about it, knowing the seeded group of racers, those expected to break through to the podium, were coming much later in the day. She crossed in 23:00.3.

When she finished, as the race leader, Brooks was led to the reindeer-skin leader's chair. And there she sat -- for a very long time.

Through the racers who drew start slots in the teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, even into the 50s.

"They kept telling me, 'You can get up and do something. I was not to get up and leave. As far as I was concerned, that was the best seat in the house.' "

Randall drew start slot 56. She had intended for the race Saturday to be nothing more than a hard workout. Still recovering from a stress fracture in her right foot at the end of the summer, she spent September -- when she typically is ramping up for the season ahead -- on a doctor's-orders 50-percent reduction in her training that included running not on dry land but in a pool.

Upon arrival in Europe, last week, she still had not done any demanding intervals. Then, on Friday, the U.S. team did a workout and, she said, it felt "surprisingly good."

The real surprise, though, was Saturday's third-place. It marked Randall's first-ever non-sprint podium finish.

"The joke on the World Cup circuit now is that everyone needs to do intervals in a swimming pool," Brooks said, laughing.

Seriously, though -- two Americans in the top five. This is how Olympic medals -- plural -- become real possibilities. Another American with experience in the Vancouver Olympics, Liz Stephen of East Montpelier, Vt., who turns 25 in about a month, was skiing in the top five before crashing and breaking a pole; she finished 21st.

The U.S. women are expected to be contenders in Sunday's 4 x 5k team event.

"It's breaking down the barriers and doing this once and making sure you don't underestimate yourself," Brooks said. "If I can do this once, I can do it again. If I can do it. my teammates can do it."

Before Saturday, the refrain had always been, as Brooks noted, "Oh, you're just an American and an American has never been on a distance podium before." She paused. "There's no way. Having these results," she said, "is contagious."