Men's 4 x 10km Relay in fresh snow !

Today's conditions were what wax teams have been prep'g for in the lead-up to these Olympic Games in the Callaghan Valley. Today's fresh wet snow still falling during the classic portion of the relay was compared to thenightmare of waxing during the Nagano, Japan Olympic Games. Technology has advanced significantly since with the simplest of ideas being "Hairies" (the grip zone of the ski roughed up with sandpaper to produce a hairy fibre surface).

Own the Podium has provided funding to create a special "callaghan base" specific for these conditions. The Soloman ski was used for this purpose and according to Phil Villeneuve it was looking like the fastest choice in pre-race testing.

It made the venue look magical...but kept the wax'ies runing furiously, calling back and forth to their trailers and making big decisions.

As the first two skiers of each team skied the red classic tracks, the blue skate outer loops were kept open for practice right up until ten minutes before the exchange. This was on the north end of the stadium, and the wax area and athletes compound on the south side - made it impossible to run the results over - instead communicating over radios. I was marshaling at this last-minute- test zone, which made for interesting communications in all sorts of languages. Overheard the German's referring to today's conditions as "naser Kaese" (wet cheese) !

Canada was a big hope for a medal in the Men's Relay. A strong team lead by Devon Kershaw, then Alex Harvey in classic. These two men had had only one rest day between their powerful Team Sprint race on Monday. The first two laps were a manageable pace keeping the pack together. But lap three of the red 3km proved too fast a pace for Devon who came into the exchange in the newly created third pack. Alex kept it there. Ivan's first leg of skate pulled the Canadians closer to the lead pack. As did George Grey in his first of three laps. But the strong lead of Sweden, France, and Czech Republic was too much for anyone to catch....except the superstar Norwegian, Petter Northug. He gained 10 sec's per lap and caught the French and Czech skiers right in front of my eyes. Was as if he was pulled by some magnetic force at the base of the final red/blue climb. I could only hear the crowd loose it as the three countries entered the stadium. Sweden had built up a convincing lead to secure GOLD. But the race for silver was intensely exciting as Petter skied by the other two for a personal victory and silver for Norway. Czech Republic got the bronze.
Canada was the victor of pack three finishing a well earned 7th place out of fourteen teams.

The Grooming Team changed up the start time to midnight, which they did again last night for the Ladies Team Relay today. And course marking proudly standing by their straight V-boards - measured for accuracy and visual enjoyment to the 'world feed' broadcast cameras.

Always the positive man, it makes my day as I know many skiers across Canada to see the effervescent Les Parsons - here smiling wearing his trade-mark 'Becky Scott' tuque.