Steffen Hoos, aka "Hoosie", Toko's International Race Service Manager
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One of
the most exciting and anticipated cross country races in the Games just ended. The 30 km Men's Pursuit race
which involves 15 km in the classical technique followed by 15 km in the
skating technique to see who is the most complete cross country skier racer. This is a mass start race with a
running clock during the transition. With
similar weather conditions to yesterday, the Swede Johan Olsson came out of the
transition to skating with about a 10 second lead. He then kept the gas down in the hopes of
staying away. He did stay away, but only
up to 500 meters from the finish line. Only the winner Marcus Hellner
and Tobias Angerer could still catch him. Some of the favorites could not
go with the fast pace and fell off the lead. Similarly, the Norwegian Northug
one of the strong favorites had bad luck and broke his pole 1 km from the finish.
Unfortunately he could not close
the gap and lost a lot of time.
The technical team had to work
hard again as both the classic and skating skis needed to be optimally prepared.
The problem is that one must
always look hours ahead, because before the pursuit race begins, the skating
skis needed to be prepared. This requires a lot of
experience and cleverness. Due to the strong sunlight, the
track changed a lot. What worked perfectly a half
hour before, two hours later would not be very good, especially in classic. In our testing this morning, for
example, very different products worked early on compared to during the race. Therefore, we as waxers always
needed to be "ahead of time."
The Alpine
Super-G race of the ladies was again marked by numerous falls on the very hard
and compact snow. Luckily there were no major
injuries. The technically challenging
track did not allow for mistakes. Favorites like Maria Riesch,
Anja Paerson, or Julia Mancuso were far back because of mistakes in the middle section
of the course. We were able to recommend the
same products as what was used for the Men's Super-G yesterday as the
conditions were the same.
The days at the Olympics are
very long, but they disappear in a flash. It is a privilege to be allowed
to work here. We
are very close to the action because of this and experience things that are
truly rare. For example, we witnessed the victory of Simon Amman in ski jumping and immediately
after, we went the 200 meters for the start of the Nordic Men's 30km Pursuit
race.
Until tomorrow then, in
brilliant sunshine again ....
Steffen
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Canadian Band at the Ski Jumps
Security Blimp
German Team Post Race Wax Room Celebration
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