Cross country traces its humble beginnings to northern Europe, where getting from one place to another in the midwinter snow meant strapping on skis. It's where nordic skiing got its name. Alpine skiing, the widely popular downhill method, draws its name from the Alps.
Cross country skiing is one of the oldest forms of travel in northern Europe — 7,000 years old by some estimates. The Swedes and the Norwegians were very big on it, using similar methods to hunt. They would strap leather around one shoe to a piece of wood, pushing one foot forward to slide.
In the 19th century, Sondre Norheim revolutionized skiing by developing a binding to enable the skier with a free-heel movement. Using what would be the predecessor to the ski pole, skiers would put a single staff — say, a 7-foot stick — between their legs to push or stop themselves.
OLYMPIC OVERVIEW
Olympic cross country competition is as old as the Winter Games themselves. The inaugural 1924 Chamonix Games featured the 15- and 50-kilometer events, which have weathered the tests of time and will be contested by male Olympians at the 2002 Salt Lake Games. (The 15K event was shorted to 10 kilometers during the three Winter Olympics of the 1990s but will return to 15 kilometers for the 2002 Salt Lake Games.)
A relay was added for the 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Games, with women making their nordic debut, appropriately enough, in Norway with a 10K competition at the 1952 Olso Games. The women's relay was added for the 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Games, with other individual events were added in the 1950s and 1960s.
The 1992 Albertville Games featured the addition of a slew of cross country events — the men's 10K, the women's 15K and 30K and the combined pursuit for the men and women. The 2002 Salt Lake Games will spotlight a pair of new competitions — the men's and women's 1.5-kilometer sprints.
Event types and distances weren't the only evolution in cross country. Skiing techniques have challenged and changed the Olympic competitions through the decades.
For years, cross country skiing meant only one technique — the diagonal stride — where both skis stay in prepared tracks. During the 1982 World Cup season, the United States' Bill Koch — the only American to ever win an Olympic medal with a silver in the men's 30K at the 1976 Innsbruck Games — popularized the skating or freestyle technique.
Skating, which is keeping one ski in the tracks but pushing off to the side with the other ski, proved to be faster than the classical method, but it was fought by international purists who claimed it wasn't "traditional."
By the late 1980s, skating was approved as a technique, with specific races designated as "classical" or "freestyle" events. In the Winter Olympics since then, most of the individual events have alternated from one technique to another.
For example, the men's 50-kilometer race at the 1998 Nagano Games was a freestyle event; at the 2002 Salt Lake Games, the men's 50K will be a classical race.
Also, Olympic organizers have toyed with different race aspects in the past decade, trying to generate increased interest in the sport — changing some distances in individual events, trying mass starts and adding events such as combined pursuit and sprints.
Cross country has fostered a number of decorated Olympians, including Norwegien standout Bjorn Dahlie, who at the 1998 Nagano Games boosted his career medal count to 12 — the most in Winter Olympic history. Russia's Raisa Smetanina became the first winter athlete to win 10 medals and the only person to win medals in five different Winter Olympics (1976-92).
Russia's Lyubov Yegorova claimed six golds during the 1992 and 1994 Games, while Sweden's Sixten Jernberg ended his eight-year Olympic career in 1964 with a total of nine medals — four gold, three silver and two bronze.
EVENT DESCRIPTIONS
MEN'S 15 KILOMETERS: While recent Winter Olympics have featured men's 10-kilometer events, the men's 15K will be the 2002 Salt Lake Games' shortest "traditional" men's race — excluding the new sprint event. The classical technique will be used in the 15K, with competitors racing the old-fashion with a diagonal stride. Races are run against the clock, with skiers leaving the starting line in 30-second intervals.
WOMEN'S 10 KILOMETERS: Similar to the men's 15K. The women will also use the classical technique in the 10K, which is twice as long as the shorter 5K from previous Winter Games.
MEN'S 30 KILOMETERS: The freestyle or skating technique will be allowed in the men's middle-distance event. Rather than a typical timed-interval start, a mass start of all competitors is planned for this event.
WOMEN'S 15 KILOMETERS: Similar to the men's 30K, the 15K is the middle-distance event and the sole individual freestyle race for the women. The women's 15K will feature a mass start as well.
MEN'S 50 KILOMETERS: The marathon-like endurance race for the men will be competed in the classical technique for the 2002 Salt Lake Games. The 50 kilometers was the first Olympic nordic skiing event, dating back to the inaugural 1924 Chamonix Games. It enjoys a special spotlight of one of only two events contested on the final day of the Winter Olympics, along with the men's gold-medal ice hockey game.
WOMEN'S 30 KILOMETERS: Similar to the men's 50K in type of event and technique used.
MEN'S 4x10-KILOMETER RELAY: Four men comprise a squad, with each skiing 10-kilometer legs. Rather than the staggered, time-interval starts for most individual races, the first skiers in relay competition begin in a mass start. Through 1988, the relay was a freestyle event; since the 1992 Albertville Games, two skiers must use the classical technique while the other two employ the skating method.
WOMEN'S 4x5-KILOMETER RELAY: Similar to the men's relay in start, technique and number of team members. The four women, however, each ski five-kilometer segments.
MEN'S 20-KILOMETER COMBINED PURSUIT: The pursuit differs from other traditional individual events in several ways. First, it's actually a two-race event; second, competitors place in the order they finish the event in head-to-head competition, rather than according to their time in interval-started races.
Starting off in timed intervals, skiers will use the classical technique in a 10-kilometer morning segment. In the afternoon-ending 10-kilometer race, the skiers start off in order and relative time of the morning race's finish — the leader starts, followed the second-place finisher as many seconds after as the time margin that he behind the leader in the earlier race.
Able to use the freestyle technique in the second segment, all competitors depart in order and according to their relative team behind the first-race leader — hence, the "pursuit" name. The combined pursuit ends up being head-to-head competition, with the overall winner being the first to finish the afternoon race, the runner-up second and so forth.
In past Olympics, the men's 10K medal event — the finish order and individual times — served as the first segment of the combined pursuit, which was held on a subsequent day. For the 2002 Salt Lake Games, the first segment of the pursuit will be a separate, nonmedal race scheduled in the morning prior to the final "pursuit" race in the afternoon of the same day.
WOMEN'S 10-KILOMETER PURSUIT: Similar to the men's race in procedure and technique. Women will ski two five-kilometer segments in the same day for the combined pursuit event
MEN'S AND WOMEN'S 1.5-KILOMETER SPRINTS: A new event for the 2002 Salt Lake Games, the "sprint" is all that its name implies — a mad dash across a very short course. Skiers compete first in qualifying heats, with the top finishers advancing through subsequent quarterfinals, semifinals and finals competitions.
