Coach's Olympic Review to date
Review of British Cross-country skiing at the Olympics so far….
By Roy Young, Head Coach of British Nordic Ski Team.
So how’s it been? The team has raced at the distance time trials and the individual sprints. They’ve performed well, and soaked up all the things that come flying at you when you’re at the Olympics. There have been some outstanding performances but of course, we’re never satisfied. “Better Never Stops”, as Team GB are fond of saying. We have high expectations and we’re always aiming for them, but the team have had an amazing experience and they’ll come home as better skiers.
In the Women’s 10k free Fiona Hughes did really well. It was probably her best skate race of the season and maybe for two. She was 68th from 78 skiers, held her form well and was 22% behind the winner – if we put that into Olympic perspective, the last 2 British women to compete in the 10 k were 49th and 50th from 51 skiers (both with a larger percentage off the win).
For the Men’s 15k free, Andrew Musgrave (A.M.) had a good one. He beat some very good skiers but felt he could have been better. He came 55th from 95 only 8.73% from the winner. Andrew Young (A.Y.) was 74th from 95 and 15.32% from the winner. A.Y. feels he was slightly below par, particularly after skiing so well at Canmore World Cup just before the Olympics.
The last man to race at the Olympics for GB was in ’94 and in the shorter equivalent race over 10k he was 68th from 88. He was 15% behind the winner.
Is it any wonder that many of the coaches of other nations have stopped me and said what a talent GB have developed? The British skiers are very keen to follow the advice of Yehudi Menuhin, who in his later years announced that he “didn’t want to be seen as good for his age, he wanted to be seen as good”. So this team is doing better than the last time British cross country was at the Olympics, but they have high expectations. The fact is they are seen as good by many of the teams here. It is only after that, when the other teams consider their age, that they are not sure they believe it!
The men have also raced the Classic sprint. Here it was A.Y.’s turn to shine, his run was impressive and made even more so as he fell on the fast downhill, to have maintained his ranking in this situation was excellent and shows what we can expect in the future. This was the first time that a British skier has ever skied a sprint at the Olympic Games, the event was invented during the gap of ‘94 to now. In fact only the 2 Andrews have skied sprints at World Cup and here it is clear that they skied to their rankings and yes, they both want to improve on this
The team is in good shape and really looking forward to the 30kmMen’s pursuit where Andrew Musgrave will be racing today (Saturday).
Overall it has been a great performance, better than the last British Olympic team from 1994. If we can implement just some of the things we’ve learnt here there will be an even better British Team at Sochi 2014 - which is, after all, our ultimate aim.
