The first World Cup of the season is tomorrow. Today's sprint was a bit of a bummer for Team USA and APU with all but Newell getting knocked out in the quarter finals and Andy falling in the semi's. But all signs are positive for tomorrow. My pre-race ...
Whistler, British Columbia – Emil Joensson (SWE) clearly likes to race in Canada. The Swedish sprint specialist won his second ever World Cup event. His other victory came in Canmore last year. Joensson held off a hard-charging Ola Vigen Hattestad (NOR) at the line, in an A-Final that featured one of many crashes on the day. Hattestad had won all three World Cup sprints thus far this season, and skipped Norweigan National Championships to contest...
Whistler, British Columbia – Alena Prochazkova (SLV) won her first ever World Cup, edging Justyna Kowalczyk (POL) at the line in the women’s classic sprint. Prochazkova won the qualifying round and each of her heats en route to victory. Her previos best finsh was a third in the same event in Kuusamo last year. The 24 year old looked strong all day on the challenging 1.3km course. “It is amazing – I took today my...
The US and Canadian men fared well in the Classic Sprint Qualifier this morning in Whistler. Andy Newell led the way, qualifying in third, 2.51 seconds in back of Emil Joensson (SWE). Joennsson, a notoriously fast classic qualifier dominated, outpacing teammate, and second finisher, Bjoern Lind by 2.32 seconds. Favorite, Ola Vigen Hattesta, looked strong and smooth on his way to the 4th spot. Newell was the only North American to crack the top 15...
Led by Kikkan Randall in 16th place, the US qualified two athletes for the sprint heats, and Canada, four. Randall was 7.73 seconds in back of the leader, Alena Prochazkova of Slovakia. Prochazkova’s time of 3:15.10 was 1.28 seconds ahead of the second finisher, Justyna Kowalczyk (POL). Arianna Follis (ITA) was another two seconds back in 3rd. Morgan Smyth was the only other US qualifier, just squeaking through in 30th place. Smyth edged Finland’s Mona-Lisa...
The Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s Nordic Ski Program and The Community School have joined forces to offer college preparatory education and competitive Nordic ski training to high school athletes. Nestled in the mountain town of Sun Valley, Idaho, The Community School offers its students an intellectually challenging and supportive environment in a serene and majestic setting. The Community School’s record of college placement is excellent and the student/teacher ratio is low. Under the leadership...
As always, we would love to hear about your local or regional event. Just send us a a write-up and a results link to info@fasterskier.com. You may not think that your event is nationally news-worthy, but you may be surprised. Skiers are interested in what is going on around the country on a local level. New England Bogburn Dartmouth’s Patrick O’Brien narrowly took home the victory over Eli Enman with a time of 39:05 on...
The Whistler World Cups are set to get under way tomorrow morning with the individual classic sprint. Nine American men and 17 Canadian men will contest the 1.6km event. The course has been lengthened from the original 1.4km course that many skiers raced on at Canadian Nationals last year, and trained on in the spring. The increase is due to an attempt by the FIS to prevent double poling classic sprints. The field, as expected,...
Distance not listed at time of posting, please check with race organizers for more information.
There are 33 days remaining until the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Liberec (CZE) as of today. The team at the Cross-Country competition venue Vesec is busy preparing for the upcoming championship. In addition to snow production, the Liberec 2009 organizing committee is focused on the final preparation of the venue facilities. Thanks to wintry temperatures, snow production in Vesec has continued at full speed throughout the last week, using between 20 and 27...
It's on. The World Cup races here in Whistler start up tomorrow with a classic sprint. It will be an exciting day for all racing, and for teammates watching as well. I am not racing tomorrow, but will be in the 15/30K pursuit on Saturday. Prett...
Junior 'racers' from 3 to 13 years old showed up for ski fun at the Methow Pursuit Saturday and Sunday, January 10 11.embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" width="288" height="192" flashvars...
WHISTLER, BC – With just over a year to go for the 2010 Olympics, the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team will is taking the World Cup action to the 2010 venue this weekend for competition that will offer athletes and coaches a glimpse of what their future in Whistler holds. “Our cross country team will experience a classic sprint, team sprint and pursuit event,” U.S. Nordic Program Director John Farra said. “In addition to testing...
WHISTLER, BC – As the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver draw near, the U.S. Nordic Combined Ski Team has taken to the venue where it will reach for the gold just over a year from now, competing in two World Cup events this weekend. “These Olympic test competitions are going to be a great chance for our nordic combined team to be tested on the ski jumps just 13 months before the first 2010 events...
Ruhpolding, Germany – The US Relay team of Lowell Bailey (Lake Placid, NY), Jay Hakkinen (Kasilof, AK), Tim Burke (Paul Smiths, NY), and Jeremy Teela (Anchorage, AK) posted the best US relay result in 20 years tonight with a 5th place finish in the 4 x 7.5K Relay. With a crowd of 17,800 fans in the stadium, the US quartet had their personal best result, topping their seventh place here in 2007. Coach Per Nilsson...
Quite a bit has happened since my last blog!span style="" /spanTo catch you up to date, I will continue where I left off… p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:p/p p class="MsoNormal"b style=""Monday, January 5/b- Temperatures warmed up to -3 F and we were ab...
