Kris Freeman

Kris called this morning from Japan. Travel was long and hard, but smooth. They had seven hours of trains and cars just to get the the airplane, but once they were in the air Kris had three seats to himself and slept the whole time. They’re currently in some place I’m not going to try to spell, but not in Sapporo. Apparently the hotel is not available yet and/or the courses aren’t open for skiing. In any case, nobody is training in Sapporo. They’ve got a lot of snow and good extra-blue skiing where they are.

Kris skied an hour and a half yesterday, and felt the jet lag. He wasn’t tired - but he felt like he did before Otepaa again. Not surprising. He’ll have a couple of two hour skis in the next few days, and a few pick-ups just to get the right sensations. On Tuesday night Kris will travel to Saporro for a Wednesday flight to China for a Friday race. Then back to Japan with six days before the pursuit.

As of now Kris is not planning to start the Sprint or the Sprint relay. The schedule at worlds opens really hard - with the sprint, the sprint relay and the pursuit all on back to back days. Kris’s focus for Worlds is on the individual distance races. My feeling is that the 15K skate time trial is the race that will be the best representation of his preparation. The mass start events involve a lot of tactics and a lot of unknowns. Luck and opportunism are important factors. To a very large degree you make your own luck in an event like that. But I’m not sure Kris has the confidence to be as opportunistic as he’d need to be to bank on a great result in the pursuit. The race will unfold and he’ll have his eyes open to opportunities, and we’ll all see what happens.

The 15K is a raw test. No need to dissect that one too much. I’m looking for a good result there. And the 50K gets interesting at about the 30K mark. Until then I won’t get excited. But I think that race holds some promise, especially given the training background that Kris brings to it.

It all starts soon enough. First, China.