we drove from Sweden to Ruka finland yesterday on some sketchy snow packed roads but after about 6 hours of driving we made it here for the Nordic Opening weekend. This is one of my favorite events of the year, not only because its the first sprint of the season, but because it’s one of the biggest word cup weekends of the year. that’s because it’s one of the few times a year when jumping, nordic combined, and cross country are all together at the same venue. It makes for a lot of action, a lot of spectators, and a lot of media running around. I like it when we can bring everyone together because when Nordic combined is here with us we go from one of the smallest teams on the world cup, to a good size crew. Not only are we a good sized crew, but a crew that can get some wicked results here in kuusamo. I think last year Jonny was on the podium and Billy D was too. It definitely adds to the stoke of the group when we have people on the podium on a world cup weekend, and you can see it reflected in the way everyone else races. All of a sudden everyone is frothing for the chance to get out there and prove themselves. 

Today was an easy day of skiing for me, and then tomorrow we will start with some ski testing and our pre race routines. The conditions are usually pretty stable and cold here in Kuusamo so the waxing should be no problem, but there is also a new sprint course here this year so we will have to take some time checking that out tomorrow too. here we go!! 

our trail side crib. pretty nice condo’s here. those are lighted mogul runs outside our window. 

the resort town or Ruka

Everyone is together here in Kussamo. The outrun of the big ski jump literally runs into the xc stadium. 

The excitement of a new world cup season is here. You can feel it, you can smell it, and you can see it everywhere here in Gallevare. the organizers have been working non stop since we arrived here on Monday putting together the course. The xc world cup is the only place that there can be not even a kilometer of skiing on tuesday, and have a perfectly groomed 5k loop complete with stadium, fences, banners,  jumbo screens, and tv cameras all ready to go by Friday.  They even brought in reindeer for the side of the course to make it look better on TV. In the off season sometimes you can forget the magnitude of the world cup. everything that goes in to putting and event this big. I call it the ‘big show’ and it’s what fires me up to race. knowing that millions of people will be tuning in this weekend to see the worlds best battle it out. It all begins tomorrow with Bird. He’s our only starter and should do some damage out there. The rest of us will be getting ready for the 4 by 10 on Sunday.  here are some pics from the past few days. 

the road from finland to sweden. We saw the sun so we took a pit stop. the 1:30 sun set. 

hazards of the road

 our wax bunker here in Sweden 

Sorry it has taken me a while to get a post up. We have been in Finland since monday, but the internet has been crap so this is the first time I’ve been able to get on. It’s dark and cold here but the skiing has been great and it feels awesome to finally be skiing on real snow and we’re getting fired up for the world cups. In the mornings when we wake up it is black as night until after 8, then dusk sets in again by 2:30 and it’s dark by 3:30. I guess this time of year they lose 8 minutes of day light a day so it’s only getting better from here. I dig it though. My team mates always give me crap because i always say I like northern scando better than Italy or switzerland, but I do. Something about the dark and the cold gets me into the skiing zone.

After a few days of training we officially started off the season with a classic sprint race yesterday. It was a sweet race with tons of competitors, and a lot of world cup racers in the field. I won’t get into the race too much, but went down on some ice in the semi finals pretty hard. A Russian skier that was in my heat came up to me after the race and said ‘that was awesome!’. referring to my Herman Myer stye crash. The sprint course ran down part of the alpine hill so we were taking a lot of speed into this corner and I went at it a little to aggressive. It would have been cool to have a camera on it because it was a full on explosion.

Cook raced in the 15k classic today and Bird and I will start the 15k skate tomorrow. There are 500 racers here this weekend so the race is still going on so we don’t have nay results. but Cook was looking good. After this weekend’s races we will be packing up and heading to Gallirivare Sweden to get ready for the first weekend of the World Cup tour.  

                             enjoying the brightest part of the day

                          Oleg and Justin 

             Cook striding it out in today’s race