Randall: ‘I hope to win distance race’ (Skiing)
Just because Anchorage’s Kikkan Randall is the country’s sprinting queen doesn’t mean she can’t duplicate that success in the distance events.
After all, she’s only 27 years old.
“My goal has always been to be an all-around skier, it just happened that my sprint results got good first,” Randall told FIS Cross Country News. “Every season my distance racing gets a little better and I hope to one day be able to win a distance World Cup race as well as sprints.
“I haven’t really done anything different with my training. I think it’s just each year of hard work building on itself.”
Randall, of East High fame, is a three-time Olympian and a 15-time U.S. champion who was inducted into the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame with the Class of 2011.
She claimed her first national championship in 2002, winning the 1.5-K sprint. It was the start of something special.
Randall has gone on to make one historic finish after another in the sprints, while her best non-sprint finish in a World Cup race came last November when she placed 18th out of 83 finishers in Finland.
She’s looking to increase her progression this winter.
“I feel satisfied that I’ve put in a solid period of training leading into the season and I feel confident that I have improved ahead of where I have been before,” Randall said. “Yet I have been away from the World Cup level since the end of March and so it will be interesting to kick off the race season and see how my shape matches up against the World Cup field.”
