Congratulations to Chandra

One of my favorite athletes is Canadian cross-country skier Chandra Crawford. I had never heard of her before the 2006 Winter Olympics, but she shocked the world (the part of it that cares about X-C skiing) by winning the sprint race. Then she endeared herself to anyone who caught her exuberant national anthem performance at the medals ceremony (you can see it here - this is not a new thought, but isn't "O, Canada" one fine national anthem) or her delightful interviews (here is the Canadian version; the American interview, while considerably shorter, was pretty charming too).

However, as often happens when someone comes out of nowhere to win a gold medal, Chandra's career seemed to sink back into a series of middle-level performances. The rest of 2005-06 was pretty non-eventful, and last season didn't improve on that much.

One problem, apparently, is that there are two techniques used in X-C skiing. That seems odd to me (and now, the Olympics backward marathon!), but it's how they do things. Chandra won her gold using the freestyle technique, which looks like skating, but has struggled with the classic technique, where the skis remain parallel. (That's it, I've exhausted my knowledge of the technical aspects of the sport.)

This past week, Canmore, Alberta, Canada, a lovely town in which I spent part of my vacation this past year, and the host of the 1988 X-C Olympic events, hosted a World Cup meet (match? tie?). Unusually, they held sprint events using both techniques. Our Chandra finished 12th in the classic event, which is a real step forward. Then, yesterday, she won the gold in the freestyle. You might say that she had a huge advantage, since Canmore is her hometown. But it's still great.

One story is here. I eagerly await her own account on her web site, which is mostly a collection of what amounts to blog posts, quite well-written and interesting. My congratulations to her.