Cross-country skier Kikkan Randall reaps the rewards of fame

Reporting from Chicago -- Cross-country skiing is enormously popular in Europe but has a much lower profile here. Alaskan Kikkan Randall, who last year became the first American woman to win a World Cup race when she triumphed in a sprint at Rybinsk, Russia, is doing her best to bring attention to her sport.

It goes beyond the bright, magenta streaks in her blond hair. With major corporations more likely to back athletes in glamor sports like figure skating and alpine skiing, she and her peers have had to be creative in finding sponsors to support them and their sport.

"We can't go after the big corporate dollars that other sports do, so we try to find ways to partner with what our sport represents, and that's a healthy, active lifestyle," the Anchorage resident said today at the U.S. Olympic media summit. "We can represent a lot of positive things that way. So we're partnering with people who want to get involved in that.

U.S. Kikkan in Nordic worlds

As a high schooler in Alaska, she earned the nickname "Kikkanimal'' from teammates who found her energy and drive in practice to be almost feral.

Kikkan Randall has channeled that wildness to become the most successful U.S. woman ever in cross-country skiing: first to reach a World Cup podium in early 2007, then first to win a World Cup race 11 months later (video), at the start of the 2007-2008 season.

Tuesday morning, she added another distinction to that resume: first U.S. woman to win a world championship medal in cross-country, a silver in the freestyle sprint at Liberec, Czech Republic.  She finished just six-tenths of a second behind Arianna Follis of Italy in the .8-mile race.

What makes that even more remarkable is that a year ago Randall, 26, was hospitalized with a massive blood clot that easily could have killed her.

"At the end of the season, I was riding high after my World Cup win, feeling invincible, and all of a sudden it was a complete 180,'' Randall said by telephone from Liberec.

"I went from being on top of the world, on track for my goals, to all of a sudden being in a situation where my life could be threatened at any moment.  Fifty percent of the people with blood clots the size of mine, it can go to the lungs and be fatal.  It was definitely a very scary moment.''

The clot ran from her left hip past the knee and sent her to the hospital three times in a month:  once complaining of pack pain, then to clear out the clot that turned out to be the cause of the pain, finally to clear it out a second time because it had re-formed.  (Full details are on her website: "Scary Encounter With a Blood Clot' and "Back to the Hospital With Another Clot.'')

Doctors told Randall the causes could have included long airplane trips, compression of a vein or the chemical properties in birth control pills she was taking.

"It was a perfect storm,'' she said.  "Any one of those factors on its own may have been a cause, but all of them combined certainly added up to the severity of it.''

She took steps to eliminate all the potential causes.  Then, after getting married May 16, missing about six weeks of serious training and taking blood thinners for six months, Randall slowly worked herself back into medal-contending shape as her coach, Erik Flora, reminded her to be patient and concentrate on being ready for worlds.

"I wrote in my log book at the beginning of [last] summer that one of my goals was to win a world championship medal, and it took my breath away every time I looked at it, knowing it was going to be a big challenge,'' Randall said.

Randall is a two-time Olympian whose ninth place at the 2006 Games was best ever for a U.S. woman.  All her best results have come in freestyle, also known as skating style.  The sprint event at the 2010 Olympics is classic style, in which she has just one top 10 finish on the World Cup -- a seventh two years ago.

"I have been working really hard on my classic skiing, especially knowing the Olympics would be a classic sprint,'' she said.  "I have been making small steps forward.  I've got a year to really make it happen, even if it isn't as good a shot as in skate.''

Her medal Tuesday was the first by a U.S. cross-country skier in the world meet since Bill Koch's bronze in 1982.  It gave Team USA five medals in these Nordic worlds -- one more than in all previous world meets combined.  With the championships at the halfway point, the U.S.  still  leads the  gold medal table with three and trails traditional Nordic power Norway just 6-5 in overall medals.

"When I first got into the sport, someone told me it was going to take 10 years to become a world-class athlete, and about 10 years ago, I started year-round training and started formulating my goals,'' she said.   "I think a lot of athletes who have had success here did the same.''

Photo: Kikkan Randall on her way to a world silver medal. Credit: Jens Meyer/ Associated Press

Now it's on to Vancouver

Welcome back to the LAT Olympics blog as it shifts from the Beijing Summer Games of last August to the Vancouver Winter Games, set for Feb. 12-28 of next year. Instead of Ticket to Beijing, it now is Ticket to Vancouver.

We will be posting throughout the year on Olympic news, but particularly as it relates to the Vancouver Games.  All of the Beijing posts can be accessed through the "Beijing Games" category link in the right rail of the blog.

Many of our Summer Games bloggers will be back for the Winter Games, including LAT columnist Helene Elliott and Philip Hersh, a veteran of Olympics coverage who writes for the LAT and the Chicago Tribune.

Many of the features created for Beijing will still be accessible, including photo galleries and videos.

Though we will be updating the look of this blog as we go, you can catch Olympic news right here. That will include blogging from the World Figure Skating Championships next month by LAT staff from Staples Center.

-- Debbie Goffa

Photo: Last week the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympic Games cauldron burned brightly at Canada Olympic Park,  marking the one-year countdown to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Credit: Jeff McIntosh / Associated Press