On Friday twenty coaches from seven teams, including Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Norway, and the United States, held a meeting about their concerns over Russian doping. Tension has been building steadily and surely since last season, when four Russian cross country skiers and three Russian biathletes tested positive for EPO – only the latest in a rash of charges against Russian athletes since 2001. Last spring when high-profile racers Yevgeny Dementiev (one Olympic gold)...
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West Yellowstone, Montana – The cross-country SuperTour was not the only event yesterday in West Yellowstone. US biathletes, battling for Olympic spots, took to the trails for 7.5/10km sprint event. While the World Cup Biathlon Team is currently in Sweden preparing for the World Cup opener, the field still featured elite skiers. 2002 Olympian, Dan Campbell, kicked off his comeback season in strong fashion, winning the men’s race by 26 seconds over US Biathlon National...
West Yellowstone, Montana – 130 men and 99 women are scheduled to start tomorrow’s 10/15km freestyle in West Yellowstone. The weather should be good with partly cloudy skies and temperatures starting in the 20’s early, and rising into the mid 30’s by the end of the women’s event. The complete start list can be viewed
Kuusamo, Finland – Inge Braten, the Canadian World Cup coach, fell and broke his hip today in Finland. Braten, a native of Norway, slipped outside his apartment near the ski stadium. “I was busy on the phone, and suddenly my legs were gone and I could not catch myself . The first thing that I thought was that this I don’t have time for this,” said Braten. He required surgery and was operated on in...
a href="http://web.me.com/brorabaugh/iWeb/Becca%27s%20site/Blog/539D494E-D6DF-46E7-88B7-9376BABA7B7D_files/DSC0153.jpg"img src="http://web.me.com/brorabaugh/iWeb/Becca%27s%20site/Blog/Images/DSC0153.jpg" style="float:left; padding-right:10px; padding-bottom:10px; width:130px; height:130px;"//aThe first race of the season is over and done with, and it went really well! I had a good race (although I didn’t necessarily feel like it while I was racing) and finished 7th over all. However, I w
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FasterSkier photographer Win Goodbody captured the action at yesterday’s SuperTour Sprint in West Yellowstone. Click thumbnails for large versions.
The Cross-Country season had an outstanding opening in Beitostoelen (NOR) where excellent snow conditions created a beautiful backdrop for the first competitions in the Viessmann FIS Cross-Country World Cup. Norway took full advantage of the home snow benefit by taking three of the four victories with Marit Bjoergen, Ronny Andre Hafsaas and the men’s relay team. Only in the ladies’ relay did the Swedish ladies team prevail ahead of Team Norway. 20,000 spectators, 8 competitions,...
“Average World Cup Sprint, 2009: men = 3:08, women = 2:52. West Yellowstone, 2010: men = 4:04, women = 4:50. It just screams SUCCESS”br/br/ - em Random Anonymous Coach Musings, West Yellowstone Edition./em
Editor’s Note: There has been some controversy of late regarding FIS testing at World Cup races. The following update from FIS is likely a response. FasterSkier is currently exploring the issue and will have more complete coverage soon. The FIS has published an update on its FIS Anti-Doping Activities during the 2009/10 Olympic season. The fight against doping remains an important focus for FIS, through a zero-tolerance policy on doping and cheating in sport. To view...
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Kristin Halvorsen is a featured athlete on the new a href="http://www.nccsef.org/athletes.shtml"NCCSEF/a (National Cross Country Ski Education Foundation) website.br /br /There are also a bunch of pictures from our camp in Silver Star posted on a href=...
Today was the official start of my racing season! This morning I woke up early, ate my oatmeal, and then pulled on the bright red racing suit… I was super excited to be racing again and I wanted to start off the season with an awesome race! My training has been going great, and [...]
Today was a solid start to the season. It was a long sprint-only qualifier on an icy, fast course. Thanks to Fish for some of the best classic skis I’ve ever skied on–fast glide and easy kick. Woke up early this morning to a starry sky, which can only mean one thing in West: cold. [...]
img src="http://4.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ktox5uuPjr1qzt3xbo1_500.jpg"/br/br/pWest Yellowstone is exhausting./p
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Today’s sprint in West Yellowstone was a bit of an easy season-warmup. Reminiscent of a mid-season high school race, it was a relatively long course with 15-second individual starts and no heats. Removed from their typical stadium setting, the start and finish areas were posted in the middle of the Volunteer Loop, a very typical heavily treed Rendezvous trail corridor. There was no staging area, no finish area, and relatively little spectator access. Ahhh, just...