Word: skis
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...Finns, however, will have to deal with more disappointment. They shined in the air, taking the top spot in the ski-jumping competition, but broke down on the ground, finishing seventh in cross-country. (Norway, the patriarch of the sport, came in fifth.) In the afternoon, a steady snowfall turned the cross-county course into a postcard. American Brett Camerota, who at 25 is the youngest member of the U.S. team and supposedly its weak link, finished almost three seconds ahead of Finland's Ryynaenen in the first leg of the relay, giving the Americans the lead. American Todd Lodwick...
...America's Winter Olympic hierarchy? "We were at the bottom of the barrel," says Tom Steitz, the U.S. Nordic combined coach from 1980 to 2002. "We owned last place." Over the past decade, Steitz has led the push to snare more funding for the obscure sport, which mixes ski jumping and cross-country skiing. But he recalls the days in which Nordic combined athletes trekked through Europe like broke college students, sleeping in elementary school gyms, piling into tiny rental cars like circus clowns, begging other countries to drive their skis to events (there just wasn't room...
...Games since 1924. Countries like Norway (the sport's namesake), Finland and Germany have dominated the event. But to borrow a phrase from the host country of the Vancouver Olympics, the Americans now own the podium. Thanks in part to an infusion of coaches, technicians, physiologists and other ski specialists devoted to the team in recent years, Johnny Spillane on Feb. 14 clinched the first American Olympic medal in Nordic combined when he won a silver medal in the individual "normal hill" event (the designation refers to the competition that's held on the smaller of the two ski-jumping...
...Nordic combined, the sport with the terribly unsexy name, started in mid-19th century Norway. It is an anomaly in the Winter Olympics because it mixes two wildly different disciplines. Yes, both ski jumpers and cross-country racers wear skis. But other than that, you might as well mix ice dancing with speedskating and call it a day. Cross-country racing requires extreme endurance, while ski jumping requires insanity. "It is kind of stupid," says Finland's Janne Ryynaenen of the odd combination. Ryynaenen nailed the longest leap of the day, 138.5 m from the takeoff, during the ski-jumping...
...just change your clothes. "You change your mind-set completely," says Demong. "[Ski jumping] is very technical, and you've got to be really relaxed and just focused on swinging through it, essentially. In [the relay], you've got to get your game face on and get angry, get going ... You've got to be ready to hurt...