This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Where do High School and USCSA programs fit into our development. In a recent article, I laid out the disconnect between what we say about long-term development in Nordic skiing and what we do and the rewards. “Long-Term Development in Nordic Skiing: What We Say vs. What We Actually Do”....
When the first real snow falls in West Yellowstone, everything changes. The sound of car tires gives way to the swish of skis; coffee shops fill with cold hands and red cheeks; and this small Montana town of 1,100 becomes the epicenter of cross-country skiing in North America. A Small Town With a Big Nordic Heart Each Thanksgiving week, thousands of skiers descend on West Yellowstone for the Yellowstone Fall Ski Festival—an event that blends...
Garrott Kuzzy’s journey from the trails of Minneapolis to the alpine valleys of Austria reads like a skier’s odyssey—equal parts serendipity, endurance, and vision. Before becoming an Olympian or founding Lumi Experiences, a travel company built around the joy of cross-country skiing, Kuzzy was simply a kid who loved movement. “There were no cell phones then,” he recalls with a laugh. “I think I was just playing soccer, doing the stuff kids did in Minneapolis.”...
When Trond Nystad talks about Norway’s athletic success, he doesn’t start with medals or podiums. He begins with children — specifically, children who love to play. “The model of Norwegian sport,” he says, “is to have as many kids as possible, for as long as possible, and try to make them as good as possible.” That simple mantra, lived out in ski clubs from Tromsø to Trondheim, is what he believes keeps Norway at the...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more collegiate coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. I’m losing my edge The kids are coming up from behind I’m losing my edge LCD Soundsystem I knew it was coming. I have the conversation all the time with patients in the physical therapy clinic: “The older we get, the less our bodies...
Skiing with kids can feel like, well, a daunting junk show. The gear explosion, the logistics puzzle, and the constant battle to keep everyone warm and happy can make you wonder if it’s worth stepping foot out of the door. As a mom of two, I live this reality, staring down the barrel of a long winter filled with wrestling squirmy little bodies into layers upon layers of wool, fleece, and down. Can kid-pulling ever...
Warning: This review contains lengthy passages of unrestrained gushing. Is it possible that the best movie ever made about cross-country skiing doesn’t have a single scene which was filmed on snow? The answer is a decided yes. Because that movie is “A to B Roller Ski,” and it shatters the ceiling for what a movie about cross-country skiing can be. Moving, inspiring, authentic, pure, poetic, and beautiful, ‘A to B Roller Ski’ tells the story...
FasterSkier has been fortunate to have the support of Snow Mountain Ranch for many years now. If you are looking to extend your ski season we hope you will consider visiting our friends at Snow Mountain Ranch. If you’re a kid in Granby or Winter Park, Colo., snow days aren’t a thing—until last Thursday, March 13. According to Mary Ann Degginger, the program director at Snow Mountain Ranch, students in the East Grand School District...
I grew up playing soccer. Every practice was hard. “No pain, no gain,” and all of that. By tenth grade, I was burned out and quit. I started rock climbing. Every day at the crag was about pushing your limits. This was before indoor gyms or any concept of training other than doing as many pull ups as possible. I plateaued, got frustrated, and quit. Then I had a go at running. I read some...
If you look at the lines that graph long-term athletic performance – VO2 max, anaerobic threshold, maximum heart rate, 10k running speed – it can be pretty demoralizing. Even before age 30, there’s a slow and steady cant downward, and then by the mid-40s, a descent into a valley that plunges toward the abyss’s void of emptiness. Some of us choose to oppose these trendlines, wrestling with them like tentacles in a roiling sea of...
Part 1 of this story details Eliška’s experience coaching through pregnancy and the birth of her son. Keep reading to learn about the challenges she, like many women, experienced during the postpartum recovery process, and what it took to navigate year one of life on the road with baby Viggo. Expectation versus reality. When preparing to interview Eliška Albrigtsen about her experience pairing NCAA coaching with new motherhood, I expected the challenges she faced during...
At 24-years-old, Hannah Halvorsen recently announced that she is ending the pro-skier chapter of her life, but it’s not the only transition she has on deck. This past weekend, Halvorsen also graduated from Alaska Pacific University (APU) with degrees in cognitive psychology and business administration. As a senior capstone project, focused on the psychology side of her studies, Halvorsen chose to research a topic she has been invested in throughout her time as a student-athlete:...
This article was submitted by a reader. To pitch a story or article to FasterSkier, reach out to info@fasterskier.com. In 2010, FasterSkier published an article titled “Analysis: Performance and Age”, written by Joran Elias, or as he is otherwise known, “The Statistical Skier.” The piece attempted to parse the relationship between age and performance by comparing the ages of some of the world’s top skiers to their FIS points in a given year. Elias was...
If there’s a generalization that can be made about cross country skiers, it might be that we like to “know before [we] go.” As the ski season waxes and wanes, or mid-season storms roll through, we relentlessly check the weather forecast and our local grooming report as we fantasize hungrily about the fresh corduroy or classic tracks we hope to enjoy that day. But we can’t always know before we go. Timely grooming reporting asks...
When reaching out to Sun Valley’s Annie Pokorny to learn more about her decision to become a technical delegate and her experience so far, it was also on the radar that Pokorny’s friend and former teammate Kelsey Phinney was also engaged in the process. As it turned out, Pokorny had been a leading influence in Phinney’s decision to become a TD herself. Like Pokorny, Phinney is a 2016 graduate of Middlebury College, before continuing with...
Today, March 8th, is International Women’s Day, which celebrates “the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.” Simultaneously, International Women’s Day is a call to action, recognizing the disparity and challenges women face for a variety of reasons in different realms of society, and seeking change. While the American women’s team has put together an ever-growing highlight reel on the race course, cross country skiing, like most sports, remains male dominated when it comes...
We’re excited to share our first edition of the “Ask the PT” series, where Ned Dowling does his best to support our readers in staying healthy and strong to get the most out of the ski season, and beyond. To submit a question, email: askthept@fasterskier.com. *** Hi Ned, I have been dealing with bilateral Achilles tendon soreness (midsubstance, several cm proximal to insertion) since an over-zealous hill bounding session in October. When ski season arrived...
The following was submitted by reader Ivy Spiegel Ostrom in response to the New York Times coverage of Jessie Diggins earning an Olympic bronze medal in the individual freestyle sprint. FasterSkier published a story expressing some of the early reactions to the NY Times piece here, along with an opinion piece by our contributor Ben Theyerl here. The viewpoints expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect that of FasterSkier’s staff or sponsors. We fully...
ZHANGJIAKOU, CHINA — Rosie Brennan brought two left boots to her cross-country ski race at the Olympics on Tuesday. Then, she crashed. Just speed bumps on her way to history. Brennan’s fourth place in Tuesday’s sprint, in the skating technique, was overshadowed by her teammate Jessie Diggins’ bronze — only the third Olympic cross-country skiing medal in U.S. history, and the first individual medal for women. But Brennan’s result is arguably just as big of an...
In the fall of 2018, on the heels of a season that included representing Australia at the PyeongChang Olympics, Jessica Yeaton applied to physical therapy programs. What she did not expect as she focused her lens on a new goal is that the 2018-2019 season would include some of the top results of her career, which reinforced the vision that she was not quite ready to fully hang up her skis. During that season, Yeaton...