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Some outcomes relevant to cross country skiing...
Mass start races returned to World Cup last season and were set to go ahead at the World Championship and Winter Olympics beginning in 2001 in Lahti. After some difficulties with the mass start on the Lahti course in World Cup last season, the individual mass start events planned for the 2001 World Championships will revert to the traditional interval start. However, mass starts in the 15km events for women and 30km events for men are definitely on the schedule for Salt Lake City in 2002 and for World Championships from then on.
One-day pursuit events were trialed in World Cup last season, and will appear for the first time in World Championships in Lahti 2001. The distances for World Championships and Winter Olympics have been set at 10/10 for men and 5/5 for women. Skiers will ski the distance in classic technique first, take a break for one hour and fifteen minutes, and then ski the distance again in freestyle technique.
Sprint races were introduced at the World Junior Championships in earlier this year and will make their debut in senior World Championships in Lahti 2001. The event will be held in the heat sprint format, which will also be used at the Australian Sprint Championships this winter (see article on sprints this issue). The distance for World Championships and Winter Olympics is 1500m, however the distance for World Junior Championships has been reduced to 1000m. The technique used for Lahti 2001 and Salt Lake City in 2002 will be freestyle.
The FIS point ranking system is now well established in international cross country skiing, however there has been some concern about how to deal with mass start and sprint events. After researching past results, FIS has decided to use a different F-factor in the FIS point formula for mass starts and sprints. Normal interval start events will continue to use a factor of 600, sprint events will use a factor of 800, and mass start events will use a factor of 1000. (For an explanation of FIS point calculation...). This basically means that a result of 10% behind the winner will give a skier points of 60, 80 and 100 respectively. In addition, the FIS point calculations for sprint events will be done on the sprint qualifying time trial.
World Cup Qualification. The World Cup qualification standard remains at 50 FIS points for men and 75 FIS points for women in non-sprint events. (Australia’s highest ranked skier Ben Derrick is just outside this standard, with 62.6 FIS points) An exception has been made for the Pre-Olympic World Cup races in Salt Lake City in 2001, where one skier with points under 100 may start if that country has no other skiers qualified.
Future World Championships. The 2005 World Cross Country Skiing Championships was awarded to Obersdorf in Germany, which last hosted the World Championships in 1987. The 2003 World Championships will be held in Val Di Fiemme, Italy
XC is the official website of the Skiing Australia Cross Country Committee. It is produced with the assistance of the Australian Sports Commission and the Kangaroo Hoppet. The editor can be contacted via hoppet@netc.net.au.
