NBC's UniversalSports.com is a good place to see World Cup skiing (and all the Olympic disciplines), especially if your cable provider doesn't carry the channel. It is nice to have access to all the action live and to be able to go back and check it out during the week at work when you should be, you know, working.

They just posted a good rundown of the Woman's field disguised as story about the rivalry between top skiers (and best friends!) Lindsey Vonn and Maria Reisch.

You just have to get through the apparently compulsory attempt to dumb it down for the American audience, as in, "Perhaps the most significant difference between the two skiers, other than their hairstyles, is that Vonn has two overall World Cup titles and Riesch none."

Hairstyles? Really? It's not compelling enough that mere hundredths of a second separate two elite athletes? You have to bring hair into it? It's hard to believe there would be any of that in an article comparing, say, Bode Miller and Benjamin Raich.

I'm lucky that I live close enough to the Canadian border that we get the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on cable. They do this really amazing thing when it comes to ski racing in the Olympics -- they cover the race, not just the Americans and anyone who happens to be faster. There's none of this, "Now, while the rest of the athletes race, here's a 10 minute "up close and personal" about the American in 28th place, who overcame adversity to get here."

It's not that there isn't a story there, its just that there is a time and a place for that, and its 4pm on Oprah.

(Photo: US Ski Team)

...they give you a big crystal trophy before the season starts.

From the US Ski Team:

SOELDEN, AUT (Oct. 22) - Two time World Cup overall champion Lindsey Vonn (Vail, CO) stood before a room of over 150 international journalists Thursday night in Soelden to accept the "Skieur d’Or 2009," or "Golden Ski," an award given annually by the International Association of Ski Journalists.

By winning the award, Vonn became the first American since Phil Mahre over 25 years ago and just the 10th women since 1963 to be elected.[more @ usskiteam.com]

Lindsey then went out on Saturday and finished 9th in her first World Cup race this season, a GS at Soelden, Austria. Ninth? As Lindsey pointed out, ""In GS, all that's important is that I get to the finish and I get some points and stay ahead of the right people. It's in the speed disciplines that I go really fast and hopefully get some big points."

Canada is obviously a country that takes its winter sport seriously (I mean, really, what choice do they have?), so with the Olympics on home snow this winter its not a surprise that the Canadian press is already talking Olympics before a single turn has been made in the World Cup season.

Canada's National Post has a story on how the coaches and athletes are dealing with it.

Coach Paul Kristofic sounds like an NFL coach down-playing a playoff game:

"It's just one big race in the middle of the season, like we've had many times before with the world championships and the Olympics in the past."

Um, yeah, sure, Coach...I like Erik Guay's (pictured above) attitude:

"That day, it doesn't really matter what happens," he said. "If you crash, you crash. People remember a great crash as well as a victory so you just have to give it your all and hope you make it down there."

Yup. Just ask Vinko Bogataj, the guy who wiped out in the opening of ABC's Wide World of Sports personifying the "agony of defeat" for like 20 years.

WorldSportTV has a profile of TCH on YouTube.

Fair Warning: Watching this will make you want to ride.

UVEX supplies helmets to Team Columbia-Highroad, who is currently the #1 team on the 2009 US Pro Cycling Tour.