Kickland - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965490300 ISBN 13: 9780965490306

Inhaltsangabe

Kickland is believed to be the first cross-country skiing novel written in English. An inspirational yarn about an Olympic nordic skiing team and their friends and foes who struggle with truth, justice and ethics--not to mention some wickedly gnarly winter conditions. WARNING: KICKLAND CONTAINS CHRISTIAN CONTENT

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

An attorney. A resident of St. Johns, Michigan--still the most sane place on earth. A sports aficonado, whose high school sports were baseball, wrestling and football--now relegated at age 50 to tennis, skiing, cycling, hiking and some game old folks play which faintly resembles golf. Married, four kids, Catholic.

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Nineteen years ago Tim Keagan had an Olympic dream. At age forty-three did he wake up in time only to suffer another nightmare? More than just a long-overdue tribute to the world's best conditioned athletes, Kickland brings in winter unlike any other North American novel. From the Land of the Sleeping Bear to the Land of the Sleeping Giant, four Americans race toward resolution in the men's 4 x 10 kilometer relay where they find something more precious than Olympic glory.

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In the distance Tim Keagan knew one more arduous climb stood in the way of consolation. Contrary to habit, he paused and looked behind himself. Exhaling heavily, he grinned, self-consciously stifling a good laugh. Had he ever just stopped to see, to hear, to touch all this beauty? He remembered a time when so many others did, or at least seemed to, drinking wine from their flasks, moving so slowly in raucous bands celebrating this new craze, taking forever to cover the same distance he did in less than an hour.

He was never like them, he supposed. Not that he condemned them whatsoever. To ski alone was one thing; to be alone was quite another. As long as they obeyed the greater code, their presence was not only tolerable, it was welcomed. That was the way it was meant to be. It was the way of cross-country. It was the law of winter.

It was a positive sign that he could smile about it now. Things had changed a lot, but people hadn't. Not really. Oh, they didn't drink as much. And they didn't seem so hell-bent to save the world and destroy themselves in the process. At least not for now. A good ground war would change all that.

He remembered the American who started it all in that bicentennial year. The twenty year old with that look of determination, with all that snow secreting a young, bearded face. Only twenty! It happened at the 1976 Winter Olympic Games at Innsbruck, Austria, when Bill Koch--"Cokie"--stunned the nordic world by winning the silver in the men's thirty kilometer cross-country ski race, introducing an entire nation to the sport.

Koch had actually led the 30K at one point, yet as he crossed the finish line not one American film crew was on hand to record the historic event. But who could blame them? Koch's feat was unthinkable. As ABC scrambled to atone for its sin of omission young Koch endeared himself to the nation with his unassuming New England wit. When asked by a reporter to comment on their absence, he replied, "They'll be there next time." Another wondered if had lived in Vermont all of his life. His answer? "Not yet." When the media wanted to know how he felt about the whole thing, he informed them, "To finish in the top ten was my goal. Of course, I'm even happier to medal." And remember, this was all before Mark Fidrych.

Unfortunately, it ended with Koch as well. He remained the only North American ever to stand upon an Olympic podium to receive a medal in cross-country skiing. Though Koch won the overall World Cup title in 1982, and led until the final day in 1983, he never came home with another Olympic medal. As the years since continued to grow into a new century, more and more of the few who cared wondered if there would ever be another.

Yet all of Koch's accomplishments paled to the one enduring legacy he left to the sport the day he stepped out of the centuries-old dual tracks used in the classical diagonal stride technique and touched off the skating revolution. By 1985, it was clear the skating technique was undeniably the wave of the future. The diagonal stride technique was on the verge of extinction as a racing style. In the following year, the International Federation of Skiing--the FIS--moved decisively to preserve the time honored technique by segregating nordic races according to the two styles, calling skating "freestyle" and the traditional diagonal stride "classical." Ironically, years later that decision breathed life into another American dream, that of Tim Keagan's. But Keagan knew it could not be his alone. Not this time.

Tim got high on speed. There was no bigger rush than charging up to a group of stragglers at about twenty-five kilometers an hour and seeing their amazed reactions. That hadn't changed either. Nineteen years had passed, and Tim, at age forty-three, had reclaimed the magic, if not the past.

He pushed away from his brief respite, into the present. The precipitous descent gave him the verve he relished. The feeling was medicinal, therapeutic.

He hunched over, forearms resting across his thighs, his long poles awkwardly angled out to his sides. He wasn't racing today. He was thinking. Not about the hill up ahead, but about the mountain he had to scale. His life had been full of them it seemed, and he was ready to come home. If only everyone could be there to welcome him when he did.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0965490300
• ISBN 13: 9780965490306
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar