Recent News                © 1999 - 2010  KJA & Associates Made with Xara Web Designer Looking Back at 2009-2010 ... A Season To Remember! US grabs 4 Olympic medals, Ammann dominates WC, Iraschko wins LCOC For anyone watching closely prior to the Olympics, it was clear that the US Nordic Combined team was as strong as any in the world.  Billy Demong, Johnny Spillane, and Todd Lodwick had been performing in spectacular fashion all season, picking up where they’d left off after last year’s World Championships, where Lodwick took home two gold medals, and Demong grabbed a gold and a bronze.  In fact, they’d come close once to finishing 1-2-3.  But when the dust settled in Vancouver, even the most optimistic of US fans had to be amazed ... Spillane led off with a silver in NH/10K, then in the team relay event they finished second, giving Johnny and his teammates a silver medal (the fourth member of the relay team was Brett Camerota).  But the best was yet to come, as Demong took gold and Spillane grabbed another silver in the LH/10K individual event. Never before had the US won a gold medal in ANY Nordic event at the Olympics ...    that includes cross-country, jumping, and Nordic combined. The young US jumping squad of only three jumpers all managed to qualify for the NH event, with first-time Olympians Peter Frenette and Nick Alexander tying for 41st in the competition.  Anders Johnson, in his second Olympics and recovering from early-season knee surgery finished 49th.  He just missed qualifying for the LH event, but Alexander placed 40th and 17 year old Frenette just missed the final round, finishing 32nd. Simon Ammann of Switzerland was leading the World Cup standings going into the Olympics.  A double-gold winner at Salt Lake City in 2002, he did it again in Vancouver, by large margins ... then blew away everybody in every remaining competition for the rest of the season, winning the overall World Cup.  He put a large punctuation mark on that accomplishment by dominating the Ski Flying World Championships in Planica in the final event of the season. Austria’s Daniela Iraschko was equally dominant in Ladies’ Continental Cup, winning the overall title ahead of Germany’s Ulrike Graessler and Norway’s Anette Sagen.  It was the first year since the inception of the LCOC in 2004 that Sagen didn’t win the series title. Sarah Hendrickson, age 15, had a long string of top-10 finishes in Ladies’ Continental Cup, and even though she missed some competitions because she had to stay in the US to attend school, she finished the season in 6th place overall.  Teammates Alissa Johnson and Jessica Jerome finished 9th and 12th, respectively.  Defending World Champion Lindsey Van sat out this season to recover from some nagging injuries.