• Matias Saari is in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Games. Get the Alaska perspective here.
WHISTLER OLYMPIC PARK — Strong striding and powerful double-poling helped Kikkan Randall earn a joyful eighth place Wednesday in the classic sprint.
“My goal going into today was to make the top 12,” said Anchorage’s Randall, who improved her own best-ever American women’s Nordic skiing result at the Olympics by one spot. “I’m incredibly happy. Mostly I just felt awesome out there today.”
Randall’s results have been inconsistent this winter, but on Wednesday she put together three solid laps of the 1.4-kilometer course before being eliminated in the semifinals.
“All season I’ve just felt like there’s one gear missing, and it showed up at just the right time (today), so what a fun day out there,” she said.
A crowd of more than 5,000 — including dozens of Alaskans — reveled in the first bluebird sunny day of the games. Among them was Holly Brooks of Anchorage as a racer and spectator. After placing 38th in qualifying and missing the 30-skier cut for the quarterfinal heats, she watched the final heats with friends in the general admission area.
“I know that everyone wanted (Randall) to get a medal, but these are the best athletes in the world. It’s a tough field,” Brooks said after posing for photos in front of a giant “Go Holly” banner. “So I’m really proud of her. I think she represented Alaska well and the U.S. team well.”
In freestyle sprinting, Randall — who was second in that event at the 2009 World Championships — has proven she’s among the best in the world. But in classic sprinting, she’s not quite there yet, having never reached the six-skier final.
Randall, 27, started well in the solo qualifying round and advanced easily in 10th place.
The rest of the competition featured elimination head-to-head heats, and Randall lined up in the first of five quarterfinals. Late in the race, she moved from fourth to third with what proved to be a crucial advancement.
Only the top two in each six-skier heat automatically continued to the semis, but the next two fastest times overall got to move on as “lucky losers.” Randall had to endure the next four heats before clinching one of those spots.
The key was finishing strong by powering through a horseshoe corner and then double-poling hard down the homestretch.
“I’ve practiced that last corner probably 100 times, just accelerating out of the turn to really have a lot of speed for that final stretch,” Randall said. “That felt really good to have the preparation pay off like that.”
In her semifinal, Randall was last early on and was able to claw her way up to fourth, but no farther.
“I just wanted to lay out everything I had, and I did,” she said. “It was hard. Three times around that course is a challenge.”
The hopes for the Americans rested mostly with Randall after men’s sprinter Andy Newell crashed on an icy corner during his qualifying run, and Torin Koos also surprisingly missed the cut. Simi Hamilton, a 22-year-old from Colorado, took 29th as Russian Nikita Kriukov edged roommate Alexander Panzhinskiy in a photo finish for gold.
“It did make me want to represent,” Randall said. “I mean, those guys (Newell and Koos) could have easily been in medal contention today if it weren’t for some bad luck. I wanted to do what I could for the team.”
The crowd was appreciative, and her father Ronn was there to document her performance with a video camera. He even left the grandstand where the rest of the pink-bedecked Kikkan Fan Klub made its presence known.
“I started over there (in the grandstand) for the qualifying,” he said. “For the rounds I moved over (to the standing-room area) and was running from one end of the stadium to the other.”
Ronn Randall was impressed by all the support.
“I was amazed how many people were cheering — Americans, Canadian, spectators from anywhere,” he said.
Chris Seaman arrived in Whistler late Tuesday night and was part of a large contingent from the Anchorage area.
“There must be 25 of us out here,” said Seaman, who roamed the general admission area carrying a beer in each hand while wearing a backpack that held a large Alaska flag attached to a ski pole.
As for Brooks, she was hoping to make the top 30 and line up for a quarterfinal, but was 1.7 seconds too slow. She may have lost time negotiating a tricky downhill hairpin turn — but at least she stayed on her feet.
“I was definitely a little conservative on the downhill on the corner there,” Brooks said. “I took a huge face-plant there yesterday (in training) ... and it didn’t help that Petra Majdic fell off the cliff during the warmup on that same corner and fell 10 feet into a stream.”
After injuring her ribs in the scary crash, Majdic, a race favorite, gutted out a 19th-place qualifying run. Majdic got a little recovery time before the heats and eventually pulled out a bronze medal, though she needed help walking afterwards.
“I fought so hard for this medal, because it was Slovenia’s first,” Majdic said at a press conference. “This bronze is a gold for me with little diamonds.”
Norway’s Marit Bjoergen won her fourth individual Olympic medal — but first gold — with a dominating performance. The Anchorage crowd, however, managed to sneak into her limelight with a the strategically placed banner made by Brooks’ mother-in-law from a king-sized bed sheet.
“Whenever they introduced anyone standing at the start, the banner was in the background,” said Brooks, who watched part of the race on television before taking her turn in qualifying. “It was like, here’s Marit Bjoergen and oh, there’s ‘Go Holly’ in the background. At least the banner got a lot of TV time today.”
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