Motivation has never been a problem for George Cartwright.

This year, with the Wyoming state individual titles his to lose, the senior from Lander is finding his motivation internally. He's training hard, focusing on national and international competition with a goal of returning to the top.

Last year, a rivalry with Jackson's Willie Neal pushed Cartwright. Neal won both races at the Wyoming State High School Nordic Skiing Championships and Cartwright finished second in both - including the 10-kilometer skate race, which Cartwright lost by seven-tenths of a second.

Cartwright is still miffed about the seven-tenths. The competitor inside him won't let it go. It stokes the flame to never lose by that much again.

His desire to win is topped only by his desire to improve. He wants to sweep the state titles and win national titles, "but you can't expect that of yourself. You just go do the best you can," he said.

For Cartwright, doing his best means pushing his hardest.

At Saturday's Casper Invitational, Cartwright won the 5-kilometer Classic style race by almost 50 seconds - the by-product of spending his summer at skiing camps across the west, bouncing from coach to coach and from program to program to "try and get as many different coaching elements as possible."

He personifies the new style of Nordic skiing. He's built up of equal parts endurance and determination; a ball of strength that relies on power, not grace.

He's trying to improve his consistency and "working on every little thing I can to cut off time. There's always things you can do to become more efficient," he said.

If not for a pair of victories he had as a sophomore, he may not be brimming with the confidence he has a senior.

Cartwright came out of nowhere to win two races at the J2 (14- and 15-year-olds) level at the 2007 Junior Olympics.

"Going into it, I was definitely the underdog," Cartwright said. "I was (placing) in the 20s, the 30s the year before."

But an added emphasis on his training, plus a little bit of ignorance about his competition, allowed Cartwright not only to win, but win convincingly.

"That was my breakthrough," he said.

In his first season at the J1 (16-17) level last year, he finished in the top 10 in all three of his races at nationals. He qualified for the Scandinavian Cup last January in Otepaa, Estonia, where he raced against competition from across Europe.

In January, he's headed back to Junior Nationals in Anchorage, Alaska, with an eye on finishing near the top again. Then, next fall, he's off to Northern Michigan, where he'll ski under the tutelage of renowned coach Sten Fjeldheim.

But he's still motivated - to win again at the national level, to sweep the Wyoming state titles and lead Lander to a team title, to improve his times and to become more competitive at an international level.

"You don't want to be a splash in the pond," he said.

Contact high school sports coordinator Patrick Schmiedt at (307) 266-0615 or patrick.schmiedt@trib.com.