MINTURN — The Vail Valley is known internationally for great
alpine skiing and a tradition of downhill racing going back to
the days of Jean-Claude Killy and Billy Kidd, but it has never
been known for producing cross country skiers. That may be
changing.    "We have 7 kilometers of trail out our back door.
We have a state-of-the-art tuning facility that we use every
single day. We have our own snowcat," Weiland said. "Who would
have thought 10 years ago, to start with 20 athletes, now we do
75?"  One of them is Sylvan Ellefson, 26, who grew up in Vail as
an alpine skier but switched to cross country when he was 16.
Now Ellefson hopes to make next year's Olympic team. He won the
domestic Super Tour last year and has made 16 World Cup starts.
One of them was at the 2012 Holmenkollen in Norway, the cradle
of the sport.  "There wasn't a part of the course where there
wasn't someone yelling," Ellefson said. "It is the one race I
will always remember. I gave a lot of my World Cup bibs away, to
people who have help