With Alana Thomas, Zoë Roy, Chandra Crawford and team founder Amanda Ammar all bowing out of competitive-nordic racing this year, Team Ninja only existed for a season, but what a season it was. We spoke with Thomas, Ammar and Roy about their experience training and racing independently and what each of them intend to do as they turn the page.
Canadian Nationals came to a close last Saturday, with Ivan Babikov rolling to a 41-second victory over Kevin Sandau in the 50 k classic and Amanda Ammar notching a coveted senior title with a 54-second win over Emily Nishikawa in the 30 k at Blow Me Down Trails.
For Canada, the 30-kilometer freestyle mass start was less about results and more about the emergence of a unified women's team, which finished within places of one another and stuck together even after the race. While one is continuing on the World Cup, national-team veterans Dasha Gaiazova and Chandra Crawford will not be racing this weekend in Lahti, Finland.
As if individual starts aren't mentally hard enough, add summer-like conditions to the Winter Olympics and it gets just plain sloppy out there. Brittany Webster was the top Canadian in 42nd in Thursday's 10 k classic race, and Dasha Gaiazova followed in 44th.
For most, the Olympic experience goes much deeper than results, and that couldn't have been more true for several North Americans competing at the highest stage of their sport for the first time on Saturday. U.S. cross-country skier Jessie Diggins emerged in eighth and Canadian biathlete Nathan Smith tallied 13th to highlight the day.
With the Winter Olympics set to kick off in earnest with the Opening Ceremony on Friday night, the Canadian National Cross-Country Team is ready to go in the mountain village of Krasnaya Polyana, where it's been training for the last few days. This is the story of how their team grew by two just a few weeks before the Olympics, shortly after the official nomination.
Cross Country Canada announced late Friday night that it added two women, Brittany Webster and Amanda Ammar, to its 2014 Olympic cross-country team. That brings the team total to 13 athletes, seven women and six men.
Four racers proved they deserve a spot on Canada’s Olympic team this weekend in the freestyle sprints and 15/30 k skiathlons. Heidi Widmer (AWCA/NST) and Jesse Cockney (AWCANST) took home top honors in the freestyle sprint, while Graeme Killick (AWCA/NST) and Amanda Ammar (Team Ninja) won the skiathlon.
In the last big North American race before the holiday break, Kevin Sandau (AWCA/NST) and American Kate Fitzgerald (APU) took home top honors on Sunday in the Black Jack NorAm 10/15 k classic individual starts in Rossland, B.C.
Photos from the season-opening NorAm at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre, with 10/15 k freestyle and classic-sprint races in temperatures near -18 degrees Celsius on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
Another cold one at Sovereign Lake kept the organizers and athletes scrambling in temperatures around -20 degrees Celsius, but the end result was an exciting first NorAm of the season, with two Americans taking the top spots in the men's 15 k and Heidi Widmer winning the 10 k skate.
Because the Olympics only come around every four years, domestic races hold even more value in the months leading up to the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. In Canada, they’ll determine who will fill approximately four remaining spots on the Olympic nordic team. The fun starts this weekend at Sovereign Lake, British Columbia.
A week after relentless amounts of rainfall and resulting floods devastated southern Alberta, residents of Canmore are drying out, keeping their heads up and training on par.
It all started as a running joke. Amanda Ammar wasn’t actually a ninja, people just thought she was. In her third season of racing independently, Ammar invited a few friends to join her fun-loving and flexible training method: Alana Thomas, Zoe Roy and Chandra Crawford.
Canada's domestic series, the NorAms, wrapped up in Grand Prairie, Alberta, this weekend, where Graeme Killick of the Alberta World Cup Academy and Nakkertokk racer Alana Thomas won grueling but exciting three-day minitours. We caught up with podium finishers for their comments on the race.
Jess Cockney and Emily Nishikawa, both of the Alberta World Cup Academy and Senior Development Team, wrapped up Eastern Canadian Championships with the overall titles Sunday, winning their respective 30- and 15-kilometer pursuits in Cantley, Quebec.
Two Alberta World Cup Academy athletes topped the podium on the second day of Eastern Canadian Championships, with Michael Somppi winning another 15 k freestyle and Kate Brennan tallying her second-career NorAm win in the 10 k at Nakkertok Ski Club.
A staple on the Australian national team for the last 10 years, Esther Bottomley wants to crack the top 30 in a World Cup this season, and she'll go for it in her first World Cup of the year in Québec this weekend.
Nearing the halfway point of the 10 k freestyle interval start at the Eastern Canadian Championships on Saturday, Emily Nishikawa heard a motivating split time: she was 10 seconds out of first. For different skiers under various circumstances, that might come as a surprise or a letdown. For Nishikawa, it told her exactly how to ski the second lap in order to beat Alberta World Cup Academy teammate Alysson Marshall. Hard. Fortunately, the 22-year-old Yukon...
When Amanda Ammar first saw the start list at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre in Vernon, British Columbia, she couldn’t help but think it was comical. Next to her name where her points total should have been was nothing – zero, zilch, nada – as if she had never raced before. Six years earlier, the Alberta native was one of the best cross-country skiers in Canada, making the 2006 Torino Olympics at age 19 and...