FORT KENT – It’s 6 a.m., and all is quiet at the Maine Winter Sports Center. Step outside the 10th Mountain Lodge, and the echoes of yesterday’s thunderous roars have finally subsided. There are no cowbells. No horns. No music blares. No children shout to their favorite “adopted” athlete.

The only sound is the steady, monotonous click-click-clicking of a giant (and distant) digital clock that keeps athletes and observers apprised of the “official” time here at the venue.

The sun is trying to peak above the tree line, but most of the 4,500 fans who will stream into the facility in a few hours are still at home, sound asleep. All of the athletes are elsewhere, preparing for their races on the third day of the Ruhrgas IBU World Cup Biathlon.

But poke around this sprawling biathlon center, and you see signs of life. Somewhere, people are at work.

Sneak down a temporary alley between a TV satellite truck and the competition center, and you smell their work before you hear their voices.

The odor is a sweetly noxious one, a combination that evokes thoughts of an unscented candle, a hot iron, and chemicals with names you don’t even know how to spell … or pronounce.

It’s hours until race time, but this group is already hard at work.

They won’t shoot a rifle today. How fast they ski won’t matter. And when the day is done, what they accomplish here this morning may well determine which world-class biathlete receives adulation … and which one goes home frustrated.

Welcome to the wax room. You’re welcome to step inside for a moment, if you like. There’s only one rule: When the people inside tell you to leave … you leave. Immediately, and non-negotiably.

“When we put the last layer on, you must go,” U.S. wax technician Bernd Eisenbichler said the day before, while (more or less) agreeing to show a journalist the ropes. “It is top secret.”

You begin to laugh at the notion of biathlon spycraft. Then you look into the intense German’s eyes and bite off that chuckle. Eisenbichler is not laughing with you. He’s serious.

And so is his work. Wonder why? Step right this way.

Inside the wax room

In the world of biathlon, supremely trained athletes ski as fast as they can for several minutes, then stop, aim a rifle, and (they hope) knock down all the targets. Each shooting session lasts about 30 seconds for top-notch competitors.

The rest of the time, they’re skiing. More correctly, they’re skate-skiing. And a small army of technicians – “wax techs” – are charged with a seemingly simple, yet frighteningly complex task: Make the skis go fast.

“Each ski has a little different structure in the base, meaning a pattern,” said James Upham, a Farmington native who, among other things, serves as a wax tech for the U.S. team.

Each ski has a different “grind” that allows wax to adhere differently. And each wax interacts with the snow differently. Oh. One more thing. Each ski also interacts with different snow differently, no matter what wax you put on it, because of its relative stiffness.

Hard, icy conditions demand a hard, stiff ski. Softer, slushy conditions call for a different model. And the wax techs? They understand all of this … and more.

The goal: Make the skis glide. Skate-skiers don’t need “kick” wax, the adhesive wax that traditional cross country skiers rely on in order to “grip” the snow. Instead, wax techs search for the mythical: a frictionless connection between the bottom of the ski and the snow.

All morning long on race day, they wax skis and test both raw skis (for flex) and waxes in order to match the existing conditions perfectly.

“Some days you have it perfect and the [other teams do not], and you have the best skis,” Eisenbichler said. “And sometimes you have it perfect and the others [do] also. Then it’s about the athlete and the shooter.”

And some days, you don’t have it quite right, Eisenbichler said, waving his hands to illustrate the difference between a perfect day and a nearly perfect – but not good enough – day.

“One time you’re there, and one time you’re there,” he said, one hand a few inches lower than the other.

Then he drops the lower hand a few more inches. This, he said, illustrates a bad day.

“But not there,” he said. “That’s not allowed.”

According to some in the U.S. Biathlon program, those days aren’t likely any more.

And one big reason is Eisenbichler.

Eisenbichler to the rescue

Jerry Kokesh, the U.S. Biathlon development director and press officer at this week’s events, said that after the 1998 Olympic Games, the U.S. team decided to revamp its waxing program.

The big changes: Wax techs formerly held other positions in the U.S. Biathlon hierarchy and had plenty of responsibilities other than figuring out which wax to use on race day.

“We had a big group of American guys [serving as wax techs],” Kokesh said. “They were professional, but they were a different level of professional than the European wax techs, who just live and die this.”

In order to compete on the world level, the U.S. team lured Eisenbichler, a German, to their side, and later added another German, Andreas Emslander, to the team.

The U.S. wax program’s progress, Kokesh said, has been staggering. In the old system, decisions were made by committee. Now, they have a leader, and a skilled No. 2 man. And with consistently fast skis, the American results have improved. Athletes don’t have to worry about skis, or wax. They can just ski and shoot.

“Bernd and Andreas are so good, nobody questions what they say, because it’s gonna be right,” Kokesh said. “[They’re like] that teacher who was never wrong in school. These guys are never wrong.”

If you want some more evidence, look no further than this: The world’s third-ranked biathlete, Ricco Gross, brings his skis to the U.S. wax room so that Eisenbichler can work on them. Gross pays for that service himself, and that infusion of cash also aids the U.S. Biathlon program, by defraying some of the cost of having a top wax tech in its stable.

Eisenbichler’s colleague, Upham, can tell you exactly how good his co-workers are. When asked how difficult it is to determine the flex of skis that may not be rated for the tester’s weight – Upham weighs 200 – but may work perfectly for the athlete – biathlete Lanny Barnes is much closer to 100 – he said it wasn’t too difficult at all.

“You can spend $30,000 for a machine [to determine the flex], or you can just hire one of these guys,” he said, gesturing to Eisenbichler and Emslander’s wax room.

U.S. biathlete Jeremy Teela is convinced.

“They know so much, they have so many notes, and they store so much knowledge in their head that they can go out, look at the snow, and, from past experience, thousands of days of testing, they can pick maybe a couple waxes, test them, and then one of those is the best,” Teela said.

“Where if I tried to do that, I’d have to test a hundred, and I wouldn’t get it. It’s a science, and I think the U.S. team has some of the best,” he said.

Understanding snow business

You will not find out what waxes the U.S. team uses here. (Remember, that stuff is so top secret that each company’s wax room is operated on a strict, knock-first basis.)

You won’t find out which $130-an-ounce fluorocarbon Eisenbichler prefers, or whether he opted for a “nonfluoro” coating on Friday.

What you will find out is this: Snow is not just snow. Not to these guys. Not even close.

To the layman, snow is cold. It is white. And that’s about it.

To wax techs, snow is a bit more complicated.

“Those guys use [terms] relative to the conditions of the skis and the condition of the track,” Kokesh said. “There are thousands of different delineations of types of snow.”

Here’s a partial list, courtesy of your friendly wax techs, Eisenbichler, Emslander and Upham.

There’s sugary (if you’re American) or salty (if you’re European). There’s crunchy. Groomed. And on Friday, there was (according to Upham) “old transformed snow, [which] has no crystals in it. It’s not a snowflake. It’s a rounded-off water molecule, and essentially it’s ice that’s bulletproof.”

Those are the easy ones.

In one off-the-cuff description, Eisenbichler can tell you exactly how much he thinks about snow … and how complicated it can get.

“[At one venue] it was raining two days before, then it got frozen, then the sun comes and hits it so it’s also wet, but it’s a different wet,” he said after Friday’s races were done, and he enjoyed a (brief) bit of downtime. “Not so crunchy-wet. It’s slow. It’s dead.”

With that, Eisenbichler answered a few more questions, then said goodbye and retreated to the wax room.

He had skis to prepare (and, perhaps, secrets to protect).

Most important: The forecast called for flurries. He also had some new snow to consider before Saturday’s races.