When she became the first American woman in history to win a World Cup ski race last season, Kikkan Randall compared the milestone moment to Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute barrier in the mile.
If you know the history of Americans in cross-country skiing, it was a legitimate comparison -- but it left the Anchorage woman searching for a new way to describe the significance of her performance Tuesday at the world championships.
Randall claimed the silver medal in the sprint race to become the first American woman to medal at either the world championships or the Olympics and the second American of any gender to leave the world championships with a medal.
Randall's second-place showing makes her the Bill Koch for today's cross-country skiers. For the first time since Koch won a bronze medal in 1982, the Europeans and Russians -- who have long dominated the sport -- had to make room at the world championships victory podium for an American.
"It's another step further," Randall said in a teleconference call after her historic effort in Liberec, Czech Republic.
"Americans like to see Americans win. I hope my medal today will get people to support the team going into the Olympics. I hope that the young skiers who are just noticing the sport today can see that being a cross-country skier is a cool thing to do."
Randall, 26, was a cool customer Tuesday, skiing her way from the preliminaries, to the quarterfinals, to the semifinals, to the six-woman finals.
There, she quickly worked her way into the lead of the 1.3-kilometer skate race and held it until the final turn before the straightaway.
Italy's Arianna Follis caught Randall before the turn to win by .6 of a second in 2 minutes, 39.3 seconds, with Randall holding off Finland's Pirjo Muranen in a photo finish for second place. Randall clinched silver with a finish-line lunge that pushed her left ski across the line ahead of Muranen's lead ski.
"This is big-time for us," U.S. Ski Team coach John Farra told reporters in Liberec. "To get a cross-country medal, I'm not sure people fully realize what that means."
Alaskans should realize it, even if the average American doesn't.
Randall is the latest in a long line of great Alaskan skiers -- from Judy Rabinowitz to Bill Spencer to Nina Kemppel, and that's just part of the list -- to become leaders of U.S. skiing. But for decades, success at the international level for them and other Americans meant a top-30 result. Top 15 was rarefied air.
Now Randall has gone where no American except Koch has gone, which is to say the victory stand at an Olympic or world championship race.
She won a World Cup sprint a little more than a year ago in Russia, but the world championship medal -- even though it is silver, not gold -- beats that effort.
"Americans put so much emphasis on whoever wins the big one," said Tom Kelly, a vice president for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. "Americans love Americans winning medals, and you win medals at the Olympics and world championships. You win first place at a World Cup."
To put it in terms Americans can understand, the World Cup is the regular season, and the Olympics and world championships are the Super Bowl.
And that's why the focus of Randall's season has been the world championships.
"Last spring I wrote in my logbook that one of my goals was to win a medal at the world championships," she said during her teleconference.
Given where she was at the time, it was an audacious goal.
It was just 10 months ago that Randall was released from Providence Alaska Medical Center after being hospitalized for the second time in a couple of weeks for a blood clot in her leg that threatened her career and made her fear for her life.
"I didn't know what the future would hold. It was a really scary time," she said. "It was a lot of uncertainty but my motivation was really strong. I had a chance to look at my life and what was important to me, and skiing was important.
"I was on blood thinners for six months but it didn't have much impact on training. (But) I think that effected my racing season at the start. My coach Erik Flora encouraged me to be patient and focus on the world championships."
Randall, an East High graduate who trains with Flora at APU's Nordic Ski Center, placed ninth in the sprint at the 2006 Olympics in Italy, but had never before cracked the top 10 in four previous appearances in the world championships.
There were signs she was poised to pull off a big race, though. She placed sixth at a World Cup sprint earlier this month in Italy, and she placed 26th in the 10-kilometer classic race when the world championships began last week -- her best finish in a distance race at the worlds.
Then there was the unprecedented success Americans are enjoying at the world championships, which also includes competition in ski jumping and nordic combined.
Going into Tuesday, the U.S. had won four medals in Liberec (two golds for Todd Lodwick in nordic combined; gold in women's ski jumping for Lindsey Van; bronze in nordic combined for Bill Demong) -- the same number Americans had won in more than 80 years' worth of previous world championships (Anders Haugen, 1924, ski jumping bronze; Koch, 1982, cross country bronze; Johnny Spillane, 2003, nordic combined gold; Demong, 2007, nordic combined silver).
"I went to the awards ceremony that first night when our national anthem was played twice, and definitely felt like I wanted to take my shot at that," Randall said.
She didn't get to hear the Star Spangled Banner at Tuesday's awards ceremony, but she watched as the American flag was raised along with those from Italy and Finland, and she bowed her head to accept the medal America's cross-country skiers have waited so long to celebrate at a world championship.
"Everything came together today. It was just kind of a magical day," Randall said. "A good one for me personally, but really a good one for our sport in the United States."
Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.
By BETH BRAGG
bbragg@adn.com