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Home >> Icicle Village Resort Leavenworth News Room >> Olympian Travels
Travels with the Leavenworth Olympian - "World Cup Rybinsk - The Tour Makes Way to Mother Russia" - Torin Koos Photo Story December 2007
WORLD CUP RYBINSK
Traveling to Russia’s takes planning. It’s more than involved hopping a flight to Munich or Stockholm. With visa applications and embassies to satisfy, military bases to land at, and a language with its own brand of alphabet, make a trip to Russia what it is – an experience.
From the Yaroslav Military Air Base we loaded into buses for the ride into Rybinsk. Compared to last year’s eight-hour marathon from Moscow to race venue, this 2 ˝ hour ride was a welcome respite. A lead police car escorted us through Russia’s rutted country roadways. At every city intersection military roadblocks kept us out of traffic delays. Some serious planning went into getting the all athletes from Central Europe to Rybinsk. Nice.
Rybinsk rests along the Volga, Russia’s National River. Today aircraft engine manufacturing and ship building drive employment of the city’s 250,000 residents. Every morning I’d wake up to the slow rambling waters of the Volga. To be so close to a waterway with so much history and importance, one crossing through Russia, linking the Caspian with the Baltic in more ways than just physically, felt good.
With nightfall
came the workday rush. Electric trolleys jam packed to standing room
only crowds shuttled people to the city’s residential outskirts in
an otherwise quiet city center.
I have little idea what this illuminated billboard depicted, though it added to the certain mood you felt in Rybinsk. Every few blocks you’d walk by a bronzed bust of some military commander or political leader. I bought t-shirts emblazoned with World War II propaganda images, brushed up next to a monumental sculpture of Lenin and uneasily breathed in the city’s symbolism.
Media row, Russian style. Skiing lives off television exposure. Forty thousand paying spectators lined the course and filled the stands for the weekend races. While that might sound all right, EuroSport broadcasts English-commentated World Cup ski races to fifty-four countries. Media exposure drives our sport, just as it does the English Premier League or the N.F.L.
World Cup racing. So. Much. Power. So. Much. Fitness. So. Much. Finesse.
What it’s all about – laying it on the line, seeing where one’s potential and resolve and dedication can take them. In Russia, these streams took the Kikkan Randall to skiing top echelon – World Cup champion. It was the first time since 1983 an American has won at skiing’s top level. 24 years between victories was far too long.
Never have I felt a crowd so invested in a performance as the Russians are with cross-country skiing. As Kikkan charged up the course’s high point the crowd urged Natalia Korosteleva to hold on with chants of Russ-EE-Ahh! Russ-EE-Ahh! After Kikkan took down Natalia, World Sprint Champion Astrid Jacobsen and all the others, they broke out in U.S.A! U.S.A! No joke. It was beautiful - simply beautiful to soak in the scene.
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Torin Koos
is a member of the National A Team for the United States and a World
Cup, World Championship and Olympic competitor. If you are interested in supporting Torrin Koos we will be happy to pass your information along to him. Your partnership will help support the lifestyle needed to keep the dream alive. As an athlete, Torin hopes his Olympic journey inspires the community to participate in the free air lifestyle, the same customers that come to visit the Leavenworth area.
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