Ski Tales: Johnson has World Cup ambitions

At this fall’s Flaming Leaves Festival at Lake Placid, 19-year-old Anders Johnson demonstrated that he is one of the best ski jumpers in the United States — maybe THE best.

On the first day of the two-day event, Oct. 11, Johnson won his second consecutive United States Ski Jumping title on the K90 Olympic hill. The next day, he again placed first in a Super Tour jumping competition.

Surprisingly, the two-time national champ isn’t even on the United States ski team.

No, the Park City, Utah, athlete is not a loner like Alpine ace Bode Miller.

The U.S. ski team doesn’t have a men’s jumping squad.

Or, as USSA Nordic director John Farra put it in a recent telephone conversation, “We have a jumping team, but at present, we only have seven women on it.”

The women compete very successfully on the Continental Cup, which for them is the equivalent of the World Cup. Johnson’s sister,

21-year-old Alissa Johnson, is a leading member of the USSA-funded women’s squad.

But for her brother, no team means no funding, national title or not.

“I think the team functions on the basis of results,” Johnson said.

For the past few years, he has been competing on the Continental Cup which, for men, is one level below the World Cup. His performance has been respectable (he’s been ranked as high as 15th), but he needs some wins, or at least some top threes, in order to climb higher.

“Internationally, if I’m in the Continental Cup, I can have the best two jumps of my career and get third or fifth place or something, but that still isn’t a victory, and that’s what the U.S. ski team looks for,” Johnson said.

Farra explained that the ski team was funding two men’s jumpers, Alan Alborn and Clint Jones, until two years ago.

“When they retired, it left a sizeable gap between where they were and where our next group of jumpers were at,” Farra said. “ It wasn’t deemed the right use of our funds to support development level jumping,”

In other words, it’s pretty much up to clubs to develop ski jumping talent in the United States.

But Johnson said the lack of support for developmental level jumping discourages young, aspiring athletes from continuing in the sport because of the expense of training and traveling abroad for competition against teams like Norway and Finland that have strong development programs.

Johnson and three other American jumpers — Nick Alexander, Nick Fairall and Chris Lamb — are members of a privately funded

development team called “Project X,” which has no ties to the U.S. ski team.

“We’re all the same age, and we train well together,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s father, Schenectady-born Alan Johnson, said Project X has raised enough money to provide a coach, a former German ski jumper named Jochen Danneberg, but that the boys must foot the rest of the bill for their training and competition.

“For airfare, other travel and room and board, that can cost between $25,000 and $30,000,” Alan Johnson said.

His son and Fairall competed in their first World Cup event in Germany this summer, and they came home happy with their results.

Fairall was 20th in his qualifying jump and 38th in the actual competition. Johnson was 38th in qualifying and 48th in the competition.

“For us to both qualify in our first World Cup competition was a big step for us going into the winter,” Johnson said. This season, he and his pals are living in Austria, making it easier to get to ski jumping competitions. They plan to mix it up between World Cup and Continental Cup meets.

“Our goal is to get into the top 30 in World Cups and pick up some World Cup points,” he said.

And the U.S. ski team will be watching to see how they do against the other nations.

“We are prepared to have men in our program again, once they reach that level and are ready,” Farra said.

“We’re hoping that in the next couple of years — maybe even sooner — we’re going to have one or two or maybe even three guys that are going to start forcing us to take notice.”

Johnson finds Farra’s interest encouraging.

“He cares a lot about what we’re doing, even though he’s not officially associated with us, and he’s constantly asking us how we’re

doing,” Johnson said.

Even so, Johnson said he and his teammates don’t let their hopes put too much pressure on them.

“We know the ball is in our court,” he said, “but if we just work hard, go out there and have fun, the results will happen.”

Johnson’s season got off to a disappointing start Dec. 9-10 in Continental Cup events in Rovaniemi, Finland. He just missed the cut to the final round of 30 on both days. He competed in COC jumps in Vikersund, Norway, Dec. 13-14, missing the cut there, too. He plans to enter his first World Cup events of the season this weekend in Engleberg, Switzerland.

“After that, it depends on how well he does,” his father said.

Alan Johnson was a Nordic skier at New England College in New Hampshire. He tried out for the 1980 Olympic team and missed by one spot. He coached at Winter Park, Colo., for four years before taking over the Nordic program for NYSSEF in Lake Placid in 1984. In 1988, he became the head Nordic combined coach for the U.S. ski team, and from 1997 to 2002, he was the ski jumping and Nordic combined project manager for the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee.

ROYAL HOLIDAY

Royal Mountain, Caroga Lake, is offering a Christmas holiday special again this season. For $120, patrons can ski or snowboard any five days between Saturday and

Jan. 4. Royal will be closed Christmas day. The area has a two-foot base of natural and machine-made snow covering the Royal, Queen, Prince, Knight and terrain park, with the beginner’s slope also open. Regular full-day rates at Royal are $34 for adults and $27 for juniors. Tickets for the beginner slope are $20.

TOP 10S FOR BECKMANN

U.S. ski team member Chris Beckmann of Altamont had a string of strong finishes in recent Nor-Am Cup speed races in Canada. Nor-Am events are stepping stones to World Cup competitions. At Lake Louise Dec. 10-11, Beckmann had a fourth and a fifth in downhills, adding another fifth in super-G on Dec. 12. On Monday, he was seventh in a super-G at Panorama, and he was fourth in the downhill portion of a Panorama super combined on Tuesday.

GROOMED TO GO

Except for a small expert loop on the Karhu trail, the entire trail system at Lapland Lake, Benson, is open.

Thirty-eight kilometers of trails are groomed with trackset and skating lanes, and another 12 kilometers are open for snowshoeing. Compacted base depth averages 13 to 15 inches, with more than 18 inches in the woods.

Trails are open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and on weekends and holidays from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.