17 février 2006

Allan Maki

The race was lost the moment Beckie Scott stepped into her skis and took off for 10 gruelling kilometres of cross-country torture.

Perhaps it was the sudden change in weather that undercut Scott, a change from sunny and clear conditions to clouds and rain. Perhaps someone picked the wrong wax for her. Perhaps she picked out the wrong skis, which, coupled with the wrong wax, made her feel as if she was wading in knee-deep mud.

Truthfully, it was all of the above that left Scott in 30th place until judges ruled she had committed a lane violation near the finish line and disqualified her. Not that it mattered: When you're a two-time Olympic medalist and not in the top 25, you know something must have gone wrong.

And for Scott yesterday, it was having the wrong equipment on a day better suited for umbrellas than racing cross country.

"I had very slippery skis, very unfit for the course," said Scott, who won a silver medal earlier this week when she and Sara Renner combined in the team sprint. "I knew that from the first [time] split that I was going to be in trouble. . . . I was already 24 seconds off the pace at two kilometres, that's huge. You can't make that back."

While Scott was in trouble early in the classical-style event, Renner scampered away like a startled rabbit. She posted the fastest time at the first interval but slipped to second at the 7.7-kilometre mark only to finish in eighth place, 41.6 seconds off the winning time of Estonia's Kristina Smigun.

Renner's game plan was to go as hard as she could for as long as she could.

"Sometimes I last 10 km and today I think I lasted seven," she said. "The last climb [up a hill] was really difficult and I caught a German who was 30 seconds in front of me and she actually pulled me up that hill because I was seeing stars."

So if Renner had the right wax and skis, and simply ran out of gas at the end, how did Scott end up with the triple whammy -- wrong skis, wrong wax, no hope ?

Scott said the Canadian cross-country team has a staff of eight that works on the skis. She tried several pairs before the race but eventually acknowledged that, "We haven't had these conditions here yet this year. We made some last-minute adjustments. That happens in a panic."

Canadian coach Dave Wood said the wax wasn't the problem because Scott and Renner used the same kick wax [for going uphill] and glide wax, and that Renner was able to move along without slipping off course and into the forest.

"We'd done a lot of testing, but you get a complete change of snow overnight so that means all that you've done doesn't mean anything any more," Wood explained. "I don't think it was anything with the wax because you have to have the right ski and the wax job fits the ski. I suspect that perhaps there was a mistake with ski selection."

So who makes the final call on which skis to use ?

"Usually the athlete does the final selection because they're the one who skis on the skis," said Wood, who then noted that, "Often we take chances. They can look like geniuses if something works really well. If it doesn't, it's a little bit slower."

Wood went into a lengthy explanation about cross-country skis, their camber, flex, base types even their wax pockets. He said Scott has 50 to 60 skis to choose from, all of them suited to different snow conditions. Suffice it to say, the moment Scott locked into her toe bindings yesterday, she was skiing in slippers -- and doomed to bypass the podium.

"Obviously I'm unhappy," she said. "But those [ski technicians] take it harder than we do in a way. They can see right away that they hadn't done an adequate job on the skis."

All this waxing on technicalities aside, Canada's cross-country skiers have produced a sixth-place finish in the 15-kilometre pursuit, a silver in the team sprint and an eighth in the 10-kilometre classical. There are also two more races to come in the relay and the sprint and two more chances for Canada to add to its medal count.

Although angry over what happened yesterday, Wood pointed out that anger is a sign of just how far Canadian skiers have traversed in the past eight years.

"If we go back two Olympics, we would have been ecstatic if we had a single top-30 result. In Nagano, we didn't," he said. "And now here we are where we have only one in the top 10 -- or one that was kind of close to the podium but didn't get there -- and we're kind of pissed. I think it shows where we're at has evolved a long way and what we expect has come a long way. I don't think our expectations are off base, either."

Now all they have to do is pick the right skis and avoid the Turtle Wax car polish. They do that, they're in the running.

page mise en ligne par SVP

Consultez notre ENCYCLOPÉDIE sportive