HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE – When Laura Spector left the East and drove to Bozeman, Montana, this spring, she knew she was headed for school, but she wasn’t sure what was going to happen after that. The 2010 Olympian and national team biathlete had finished up her first full year of training and racing since graduating from Dartmouth College, and it wasn’t what she had been hoping for. After starting the early-season World Cups she struggled,...
As the world turned its attention to London this weekend for the opening days of the Summer Olympics, another set of elite American athletes were quietly logging training hours in Ramsau, Austria, in preparation for the coming winter season and, ultimately, the 2014 Winter Games. The U.S. Ski Team men began a 12-day European camp on Dachstein glacier on Saturday, where they will stay for a week before heading to Oberhof, Germany, to train in...
At the far end of a fjord in southwest Norway, a handful of the world’s best cross country skiers gathered on Thursday to race each other up 7.5 k of winding road on rollerskis. Hundreds of spectators lined the last few meters of the Lysebotn Opp with to cheer on their favorite athletes in the first race of the 2012 Blink Festival. In the women’s race the Norwegian fans were not disappointed. Therese Johaug (NOR)...
The U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) has released a tentative SuperTour calendar for the coming season. There are a few pieces that need to fall into place for the schedule to be finalized, but at first glance the season highlights for the domestic race circuit are: The Canadian World Cups. Though not a part of the SuperTour, there is a hole in the calendar for those two weekends in December. North American World Cup races...
BEND, Oregon – It’s hard to imagine Kris Freeman as an underdog in a race that involves cross country skiing and running. But to this city’s residents, that’s exactly what he was on Saturday morning before the start of the 36th annual Pole Pedal Paddle: some Olympian who was trying to unseat the hometown favorite, Andrew Boone. Boone had won the race – which combines downhill skiing through gates, roughly eight k of nordic skiing,...
With SuperTour Finals and U.S. Distance Nationals wrapping up in Craftsbury, Vermont, the North American ski community can call it a wrap on another season. Despite a general lack of snow, the finale in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom was a success – particularly for the U.S. Ski Team’s Kris Freeman, who after a disappointing World Cup season returned to the States to claim the overall win at SuperTour Finals and then the national title in the...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec – Four days after flying home from Europe, Ivan Babikov was back in action at Canadian Ski Nationals on Monday. The 31-year-old national team member was also back to his winning ways, hitting his stride as usual at the domestic championships and claiming his seventh Canadian title. Out of nearly 160 men in the 10-kilometer classic individual start, Babikov was the fastest, completing the two loops in 28:38.6. Runner-up Erik Carleton (Rocky...
“It was absolutely nuts. A couple times coming through the field, one guy would turn to another and go, “Where are we?” and then we’d laugh and keep skiing, not sure we were still on the trail. Everybody knew it was going to be a slog, so the pacing was reasonable for a 1:20 race… in other words, comically slow for a 20K. I got really bored at about 7 or 8 K because we...
ERZURUM, Turkey — In her first race at these U23 World Championships, Mariya Guschina (RUS) had no trouble sticking with the standard set by her Russian teammates this week, claiming the gold medal by 26.7 seconds over Polina Medvedeva (RUS). Second through fifth place were tightly packed—Martine Ek Hagen (NOR) took third, only 1.3 seconds out of silver, Emma Wiken (SWE) was 0.4 behind Hagen in fourth, and APU’s Sadie Bjornsen (USA) crossed the line...
The U.S. team at biathlon World Youth and Junior Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland, is hoping that things will heat up in the next few days – both literally and figuratively. “It has been pretty cold all week but it warmed up today,” American racer Anna Kubek told FasterSkier. At World Cup races one last weekend, the Finnish venue flirted with legal temperatures and athletes swaddled themselves in layer upon layer of clothes, as well as...
There’s never a dull weekend during the ski season, and this second week of February was no exception. On the World Cup circuit, the biggest news was probably a pair of strong U.S. relay results: the cross country women finished a remarkable fifth place in a 4 x 5 k relay in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, anchored by a lightning-fast Jessie Diggins, while a team of biathletes cobbled together based on who was healthy raced...
SEEFELD IN TIROL, Austria— It’s been a week of memorable firsts here in Seefeld Stadium during these Winter Youth Olympic Games. The very Youth Games themselves, hosted by the Austrian city of Innsbruck, served as the winter debut for the International Olympic Committee’s latest concoction, thereby making Innsbruck— the two time host of the Olympic Games, in 1964 and 1976— the first city to host three Olympic Games. The Youth Games is a shiny new...
Vermont Company’s Customers Work Out to Support Disaster Relief Organizations Participants in Concept2’s 12th Annual Holiday Challenge not only rowed or skied millions of meters between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, they also helped raise over $31,000 for disaster relief organizations, including one that supports the company’s home state of Vermont in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. Every year, Concept2, the leading manufacturer of rowing machines, hosts a Holiday Challenge, asking its customers worldwide to...
TOBLACH, Italy -It was a very exciting day of racing at stage 6 of the Tour de Ski – a sprint skate – and FasterSkier took hundreds of photographs, throughout both the qualification and the heats. Here are our favorites from the finals.
December 31, 2011 A – AutoBahn: Driving fast, in the dark, en route to Oberstdorf. If you get the red ‘flash,’ you just earned yourself a speeding ticket (you’ll get it in the mail). We are unsure how many teams got tickets yesterday…. the numbers are still coming in… B – Birthday: Happy 29th Birthday Kikkan! C – Corny: Corny Big. The best German gas station candy bar eaten thus far while in Germany. D...
There was a lot going on this weekend on the ski racing scene and many of our readers have better things to do then sitting in front of their computer (if you don’t that is cool too – we don’t either). Here is a recap of the weekend’s action with links to the main stories. World Cup Cross-Country The big story of course was Kikkan Randall winning the individual sprint and coming back the next...
Jessie Diggins (CXC/USST) continued her early season dominance in the 10 k classic in Bozeman, MT on Sunday. Her 35.7-second victory over Maria Graefnings (University of Utah) was her third-straight win of the weekend. Kate Fitzgerald of APU finished third (+1:06.7). “I really had a lot of fun today,” said Diggins. “Sometimes when people say ‘have fun out there’ I think it’s more likely that the race is going to hurt like crazy. But today’s race...
Marit Bjørgen thought today’s win was “possible”, but her 17 second head start in today’s classic pursuit over teammate Vibeke Skofterud was not enough to give her complete confidence in a win. Bjørgen blasted out of the start with a speed fitting of a 1km sprint, trying to gain even greater cushion from the very first of 10 kilometers. Racing against only the clock, with the thought of her strong competitors and teammates chasing...
left Marcus Hellner and Dario Cologna standing still. And Legkov wasn’t alone in impressing the crowd with his finishing skills – Vylegzhanin did what most possible consider to be impossible, did a fantastic job of reeling in and then dispatching Frenchman Jean-Marc Gaillaird in the 20 k pursuit in Rybinsk, Russia. But despite having possibly the strongest team on paper, the Russians had the most devastating relay experience at World Championships in Oslo. After taking...