By Peggy Shinn
Nordic skier Andy Newell has won
two World Cup medals.
Is Olympic gold in his future?
It happened in China, of all places. An American cross-country skier stepped onto the World Cup podium, property that the Scandinavians consider theirs. He was a young American too, only 22 years old, and his name was Andy Newell.
Just three weeks after he finished 16th in the sprint race at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Newell, a Stratton Mountain School graduate from Shaftsbury, Vermont, finished an astonishing third in a World Cup sprint in Changchun, China.
"It was crazy," he said. "The race was in a packed soccer stadium, and they brought in snow. It's this huge city, like 7 million people."
In winning the bronze in this World Cup race, Newell beat 2006 Olympic sprint gold medalist Bjoern Lind from Sweden and became the first American to step onto the World Cup podium since March 1983, when two Vermonters, Tim Caldwell and Bill Koch, went 2-3 in a 30-kilometer World Cup cross-country ski race in Anchorage, Alaska.
"[Newell] was another kid from Vermont who got on the podium," said Vidar Loefshus, then the U.S. sprint coach, immediately after the race. "The sky's the limit for Andy."
Two years later, Newell is still moving upward on this skyward trajectory. In March 2008, he won more World Cup hardware-this time a silver medal in a sprint in Lahti, Finland. Now with the Olympics just over a year away, he wants to stand on the top step of the Olympic podium.
"His potential is for sure to get a medal (at the Olympics)," says his coach Chris Grover. "He's coming into his peak years in terms of the sport. The typical age for a gold medalist (in cross-country skiing) is closer to 30, but the average for sprinters might be a little younger. He's now old enough to assimilate the volume of training necessary to compete with the best in the world."
