Career Retrospective: Tore Ruud Hofstad
Another helpful commenter reminded me that Norwegian Tore Ruud Hofstad also retired this past July. My results for Hofstad stretch back to World Junior races in 1998 up to his retirement in 2010. I think one of the reasons I may have overlooked him is that he didn’t really race much last season. In fact, I can’t seem to find any individual races for him from the 2009-2010 season.
He won two individual medals at World Championships in 2003 (Silver) and 2005 (Bronze) and was frequently a member of the Norwegian men’s relay team, so he racked up some more medals there, mostly gold.
He also had a handful of World Cup podiums: four, by my count. He raced almost exclusively distance events, so we won’t bother looking at sprint results: Read more
Career Retrospective: Kristina Smigun-Vaehi
I can’t believe I forgot about the dominant Estonian skier Kristina Smigun-Vaehi. For individual events (distance and sprint), her stats are amazing: three Olympic medals (2 Gold), four World Championship medals and forty-nine World Cup podiums. 106 of her 161 World Cup results were top ten finishes. She might not have as much Olympic hardware as a few of her contemporaries, but she always seemed to be in the hunt for a medal.
Of course, Smigun ran into a spot of trouble back in 2002 I believe, testing positive for steroids but was officially “cleared” by FIS when her B sample came up clean. Needless to say, a lot of people remained suspicious, which is par for the course when doping is involved. In any case, let’s take a look back at her career, distance races first:
Career Retrospective Retrospective
I thought it would be nice to collect all the cross-country skier retirement posts in one place, in case you missed some along the way. So here they are…
- Rene Sommerfeldt (GER)
- Sabina Valbusa (ITA)
- Anna Olson (SWE)
- Sara Renner (CAN)
- Virpi Kuitunen (FIN)
- Claudia Nystad (GER)
- Reto Burgermeister (SUI)
- Milan Sperl (CZE)
- Laurence Rochat (SUI)
Anyone famous that I’m forgetting? Or even not so famous?
Update: Surprised no one’s mentioned Kristina Smigun-Vaehi. I’ve left her out, haven’t I? Easily fixed…
Career Retrospective: Martina Beck
Biathletes retire too! I will be the first to admit that I know a lot less about biathlon than cross country, though, so these athlete profile posts for biathletes will be as much for my benefit as yours.
Martina Beck is (was) a very fast German biathlete. The International Biathlon Union has a nice article about her career and her decision to retire. Rumor has it she was an excellent shot, as well.
Since I’m much less of a biathlon expert, rather than pontificate on specific race results let’s just look at some data for her career… Read more
Career Retrospective: Laurence Rochat
Who? Yeah, I’d never heard of her either. One of the coolest parts of working on this website is learning how much I didn’t know about international ski racing.
The fact that I don’t know about this Swiss skier doesn’t really say anything about her (she’s done 115 World Cup races, 7 World Championship races and 4 Olympic races!), rather it says something about hard it can be to follow international ski racing from the US. So, working on this website has made me a much more informed fan of the sport…
Still, Rochat isn’t exactly a household name, so it isn’t surprising that she hasn’t racked up a ton of top results. Still, she won a Bronze medal in Salt Lake in the relay; she’s finished in the top-20 in World Cup (or Tour de Ski) races 19 times. Her best was an 8th in a freestyle sprint. She also finished 15th at the Turin Olympics sprint event. And just for variety, she has a 12th in a 30km classic mass start at the 2005 World Champs. Finally, Rochat won the Engadin marathon in 2007. From the perspective of a fan of US skiing, that career is nothing to shake a stick at.
Let’s take a look at her distance results: Read more
Career Retrospective: Milan Sperl
The career retrospectives took an unintentional week off last Friday due my being distracted by the Tour.
Milan who? Again, a skier who’s name I should probably know, but did not. He’s a Czech skier who’d been competing internationally since around 2000.
Particularly since he looks like a fun guy.
Sperl won a Bronze medal in the team sprint event at the 2007 World Championships. He’s been an important part of some solid Czech distance relay teams over the years as well. His best individual result was a 6th place in the 50km classic at the 2005 World Championships. Read more
Career Retrospective: Reto Burgermeister
Thanks to NordicXplained I’ve been alerted to several more athletes retiring after the 2009-2010 season. These next three may be somewhat less famous than the other skiers I profiled, but that doesn’t make them less important or less interesting! For instance… Read more
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