PRAGELATO PLAN, Italy – They didn’t have great results at these 2006 Olympics, but U.S. cross-country racers got a big pick-me-up when it was announced the U.S. Ski Team would be pumping more money into the cross-country program, starting 20 minutes ago.

“It’s good — you can quote me on that,” said a smiling Luke Bodensteiner as he left the cross-country stadium Friday after the women’s 30-kilometer freestyle race at Mile High Stadium.

A smiling Kikkan Randall agreed wholeheartedly when she heard about the upcoming infusion for the cross-country program, which had only five men on the national team this season. Randall, the Alaskan who said last month she was ready to assume the garb as women’s team leader, repeated the claim Thursday after her gritty ninth-place result – the best all-time for a U.S. woman in Olympic cross-country skiing – in the 1.1K free sprint.

Bodensteiner said the infusion – with no financial amounts discussed – will start taking major effect immediately, including adding a couple of skiers to the World Cup tour for the rest of the season. Randall, who also is getting financial help from the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center, will join sprinters Torin Koos, Andy Newell and Chris Cook and Lindsay Williams, the 2005 U.S. sprint champ who took off this winter from Northern Michigan so she could train for the Olympic Team – and made it, in World Cup races for the next few weeks; Koos will even race in China, the first World Cup x-c race in the world’s most populous nation.

“We’ve got kids who’ve performed at a better level than we might have expected,” Bodensteiner said. “They’ve shown they can be World Cup skiers.”

It’s not that the ski Team suddenly has decided to start passing out airline tickets to Europe, but with skiers showing potential, the team doesn’t want to lose any athletes because they can’t swing things financially. Case in point: Park City’s two-time Olympian, Wendy Wagner, who flew home this week from Italy with her parents, but who was able to continue this year only with the financial support of the Park City and Utah Nordic community.

“We’ve shown we can take a small group [i.e., sprinters Newell and Koos] and put ’em close to the top,” Bodensteiner said. “We need to replicate what we’ve done and cultivate that young crop of skiers who’ve shown they have some serious potential.”

Chris Cook, for instance, was on the (r.i.p.) development team for a couple of seasons. He muddled through ’05 “I thought we’d done a good job of preparation,” he said at Soldier Hollow last month, “but for some reason it didn’t work out.” But this season he’s blossomed nicely.

In December, at Sovereign Lake outside Vernon, B.C., Newell was 11th in a World Cup sprint, Cook was 12th and Koos 14th. Last month, Newell was fourth in a sprint in Oberstdorf, Germany.

“We’ll expand the sprinters [for the next month] and we’ll probably get them to the season opener in Dusseldorf [Germany] next October, and other races. They don’t have a lot of races, so we can’t afford to miss any if they’re going to challenge as they’ve shown they can.”

“The extra dough is a strategic move for the company,” Bodensteiner said, with USSA CEO Bill Marolt and Alan Ashley enthusiastically giving the green light after Head Coach Trond Nystad and his staff listened to the arguments and studied the results.

“It’s taken about six months to put together,” Ashley said Friday night, “but it was a slam dunk decision. It’s a good opportunity for some potentially great athletes and it was the next logical place to invest some resources.

“We don’t have enough resources to do everything for everyone, of course, and this will challenge the company and challenge the organization. But it’s a worthwhile investment, no question,” Ashley said, adding the results for up-and-comers in these Torino Games just made it easier to close the deal.