Fantasy: It's Real

It's time for ski racing. For those of us with unreal VO2 capacities, unbelievable webs of fast- and slow-twitch muscles, fantastical abilities to handle lactic acid, superhuman willpower, and/or the finest pharmaceuticals in the world, there's the 2009-2010 World Cup, including once again the Tour de Ski (January 1-10, 2010) but punctuated by the Winter Olympic Games (February 12-28) in our hemisphere, on the west side of the Atlantic east side of the Pacific. Can you say "home-snow advantage"? If you can, you'd better be a member of the Canadian team.

On the other hand, for those of us with lesser physical and psychological qualities but unlimited internet access and time to burn like so much overheated glide wax, there's Fantasy Nordic, back for a third triumphant season. And by "triumphant" I mean that someone won the leagues last year. It wasn't me, largely because my draft strategy was "draft every cute Norwegian woman I can afford."

But no matter! As I write - wearing four-year old Alpina skate boots, a waxing apron, and some windbriefs - we are merely 18 days away from the World Cup season opener: freestyle interval start races on November 21-22 at good old Beitostolen, Norway. (Who's on track to be a Christmas star?) We're only 59 days away from the first event of this season's Tour de Ski at Oberhof, Germany: those funky prologues. (Are they long sprint races? short distance races? who knows! who cares! watch for the oddball podiums!). And just 103 days separate us from the first cross-country skiing event at the Olys: the women's 10k and men's 15k freestyle races. (Who's got the best line on figuring out the Callaghan Valley's crazy snow?)

So what does this mean for you - one of the very, very few people who are fans of nordic skiing? If you've ever played FN, go check airfares to Vancouver and wait for an email from the league's impresario. If you haven't played FN before but want to play this year (or if you can't remember whether you've played before, or if you've changed your email address), you should get yourself over to the Fantasy Nordic homepage rightfreakingnow to register and get yourself on the list for that email. If you're on the fence, register! It's a blast.

The draft for skiers will probably start on Tuesday, November 16, giving you just a few more days to ponder the mysteries of the nordic-skiing world: Has Astrid Jacobsen recovered from her training crash? Does Virpi Kuitunen have another good season in her legs (veins?)? Did the American and Canadian athletes train hard enough? Can Dario Cologna repeat? How many races does Petter Northug, Jr., have to win before I stop thinking he's a jerk? Do any Russian skiers not dope?

What are you waiting for - your own blog on Fasterskier? Move it!

EPO Now or Later

Gotta love Russia! Seven months after the fact, the Russian sports federation announced today that Julija Tchepalova and Yevgeny Dementiev tested positive for EPO after the final Tour de Ski races last January. Nice going, guys.

They're apparently going to retire, leaving behind a pair of pretty good - but now smelly - careers. Dementiev has an array of solid results, including his phenomenal gold in the pursuit and a silver in the skate 50 at Torino (remember that kick? hmmm...). Tchepalova was one of the best racers of the last decade, winning six Olympic medals (including three golds - in the Torino relay, in the Salt Lake City sprint, and in the Nagano skate 30), and five podium spots at World Championships, including a bronze, two silvers, and a gold at Oberstdorf in 2005.

Now, they're just dopers. Tchepalova's father, the coach of some other good Russian skiers, should be under verrrry close scrutiny. And with Yevgeny out, someone else on the men's team is going to have start rocking the Russian mullet.

Waiting for Hoffman

From the AP today:

VIENNA — Prosecutors in Austria are investigating possible blood doping by 2002 Olympic cross-country ski champion Christian Hoffmann.

Austrian Criminal Intelligence Service spokesman Gerald Tatzgern told the Austria Press Agency on Sunday that prosecutors have "reasonable suspicion" that the 34-year-old Hoffmann was involved in illegal blood enrichment.

According to the Kurier newspaper's Sunday edition, Hoffmann allegedly colluded with cyclists Bernhard Kohl and Michael Rasmussen and Kohl's former manager Stefan Matschiner. He was arrested in March and has admitted he helped Kohl with blood doping. Hoffmann has denied any wrongdoing.

Hoffmann won gold in the 30-kilometer race at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

Well, duh.

Hetland Exits

ESPN.com, that noted outlet for all news related to Nordic skiing, reports that Norwegian sprinter Tor Arne Hetland has retired from competitive skiing. Plagued last year by asthma and a nagging knee injury, Hetland still managed to finish third in the sprint World Cup standings. This finish caps a pretty damn good career: Hetland finished third in the sprint standings in 2001 and 2006, second in 1999 and 2003, and first in 2005. In 2005 and 2006, he finished third in the overall World Cup standings, as well. He amassed 30 World Cup podiums, including 11 wins as well as a good number of top-event medals: a bronze in the the freestyle sprint at the Val di Fiemme World Championships, silvers in the classic team sprint at the Torino Winter Games and the classic sprint at the Oberstdorf Worlds, and golds in the freestyle team sprint at Oberstdorf, the freestyle sprint at the Lahti Worlds, and the freestyle sprint at Salt Lake City, the first time that a sprint event was held at the Olympics.

 

In other words, he was a stud. I only hope the Norwegians can find some new sprinters to fill the the 6'1"/174 lbs hole he creates in their team.

Even More Dope

I wasn't exactly making a brave, unconventional statement when I said - to some controversy - that Veepalu's gold at Liberec was suspicious. Now the Estonian's name has come up in connection with the growing Humanplasma scandal that's so far involved the circle of cyclists and triathletes around the coaches Stefan Matschiner and Walter Mayer.

While Veerpalu's penchant for altitude training is well known, he may have been enjoyed perks beyond the thin air: "Veerpalu has stayed in Walter Mayer's house in Ramsau am Dachstein, who has been one of the focal points where the blood and drugs have come from Humanplasma in Vienna." What's more, the disgraced King of the Mountains Bernhard Kohl has said that he knows Christian Hoffmann was being treated at Humanplasma - a charge Hoffmann has denied.

The implications here are interesting for U.S. fans, of course. If these charges are borne out and the FIS went all out (or would it be all in?) with sanctions, the fourth-place skier in the men's 15km would move up one notch.

Hoffmann: No Dope

The Austrian doping scandal is widening, with cyclists, triathletes, and now cross-country skiers implicated - if only by hearsay. Today, three more as-yet unnamed people were arrested under Austrian anti-doping law, and Christian Hoffmann was asked if he had any kind of affiliation with Stefan Matschiner, the coach at the center of the affair:

... Hoffmann, who is still active, declared: "I was in touch with Matschiner just once. Years ago, I was looking for a sponsor – that’s when I contacted him. That’s it. I have never been supplied with doping substances. I disassociate myself from that." Hoffmann added he regarded the allegations as "absolutely insane."

In this context, "absolutely insane" must be code for "mostly circumstantial, but not exactly exonerating," given the apparent extent of this scandal (1,000 bags of plasma were reportedly seized at the Humanplasma lab in Vienna), his narrow escape from the 2006 Torino scandal which tripped up several of his teammates, and his remarkable out-of-the-blue racing performances.

Dopity Dopity Dope

Cologna and Kowalczyk had barely set their new crystal globes down before the doping news started emerging yesterday.

In Austria, "an unnamed cyclist and former Austrian Nordic ski coach Walter Mayer, who was involved in the 2006 Turin Olympics doping scandal, have been arrested in connection with new doping allegations." Though the cyclist is being called "K" rather than being named, that letter happens to be the first letter in the surname of the disgraced climbing phenom Bernhard Kohl, who won (and the was stripped of) the King of the Mountains jersey at the '08 Tour de France. Mayer's hijinks at Torino led to lifetime Olympic bans for Austrian skiers Jürgen Pinter, Johannes Eder, Martin Tauber, and Roland Diethart and the biathletes Wolfgang Rottmann and Wolfgang Perner. The FIS also punished Eder, Tauber, and Diethard with two-year bans which will end in November 2009.

The most prominent and accomplished Austrian skier, Christian Hoffmann, narrowly avoided being caught up in the Mayer affair in Torino, but he was tripped up at Falun, where testing found his hemoglobin levels to be in excess of his normal profile and the FIS suspended him from competitions for two weeks. The Belarussian Sergei Dolidovich was also found to have overly high hemoglobin levels and received a five-day suspension from competition. Of course, the high hematocrit levels could result simply from natural overproduction and the effects of high-altitude training...

... Neither of which contributed to the positive test for EPO by the young - and successful - Russian sprinter, Natalia Matveeva at the Callaghan Valley World Cups. Her "B" sample will be tested on Tuesday, March 24.

Matveeva's countryman, Sergei Shiraev, fresh off a doping suspension handed down after the Sapporo World Championships, posted the fastest time in Sunday's 15km pursuit at Falun - nine seconds faster than Vincent Vittoz. Presumably, Shiraev is well rested. (Maddeningly, the Eurosport UK announcers couldn't explain why Shiraev hadn't raced in 2007 and 2008, and guessed that he'd just been on bad form, and fallen off the Russian team.)

I can affirm I doped with nothing but skiing science in the World Cup Prediction Challenge.