Editors note: FasterSkier’s coverage of FIS Cross Country World Cup Period I has been a cooperative effort among three dedicated staff writers: Ben Theyerl, Ken Roth, and John Teaford. Many early mornings, many calls and texts, many quotes and comments, many unforgiving deadlines bring this reporting to FasterSkier’s readers. We hope their insights have served to improve everyone’s enjoyment of the excellent racing witnessed in Period I, and that they can serve to prepare viewers...
It’s hard not to root for David Norris. Often affectionately described by Devon Kershaw as a “grinder”, the humble 31-year-old Fairbanks, AK native has been an eternal underdog, despite consistently performing among the best American distance racers of his generation on the World Cup. Highlighting his career, Norris has finished in the top-20 three times during his appearances in the 2019 and 2021 World Championships. His best result arrived in last year’s Championships in Oberstdorf,...
After officially canceling the World Cup Finals scheduled for Tyumen, Russia on February 25th the International Ski Federation (FIS) announced in a brief press release today (see below) that no replacement venue has been found, and thus the upcoming three-day race weekend in Falun, Sweden will instead absorb the event, ending the season one week prematurely. No schedule changes have been made to the event in Falun, leaving a classic sprint, a 10/15-kilometer skate, and...
This article has been updated to clarify the relationship between the junior races now known as FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships and its precursor, the World Junior Nordic Championships and the European Junior Nordic Championships. There are, to briefly traffic in the obvious, 60 seconds in a minute. Sixty seconds in a minute; 60 minutes in an hour; 3,600 seconds in an hour. Skiers measure their lives in these increments; we track total yearly training hours,...
First in a two-part series. Coming next week: The meaning of a single FIS point for national team selection. The recent news that David Norris was not named to the national team by the narrowest of margins, following the application of objective selection criteria tied to an athlete’s position on an overall FIS points world ranking list, has inspired FasterSkier to take a closer look at where these numbers come from. The goal of this...
Note: This is the first of a multiple-part series on the 2018 Winter Olympic selection criteria for the U.S. cross-country ski team. A selection criteria and procedures for nomination to the U.S. Olympic team. Briefly put, what does it take to get to PyeongChang? And what factors will U.S. Ski Team (USST) coaches and (Lahti in 2017. First comes objective qualification via performance on the World Cup. Second comes the potential use of discretionary picks....
Who’s racing what when U.S. Nationals begin at SoHo on Saturday morning? And what are they racing for (besides bragging rights)? FasterSkier explains why, when it comes to domestic racers hoping to make it to World Champs in Lahti, second place this month is worth more than first place last month.
A closer look at the U.S. Ski Team's new selection criteria for 2017 World Championships, designed to reward the top performers in a given season and discourage points chasing. “Athletes who skied fast in the spring of the previous season no longer have a potential advantage over those athletes skiing fast in the current season," U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover wrote. "...The athlete that is winning races is most likely going to make the Team.”
Thousands of miles from the U.S. mainland on the northern island of Hawaii, Sylvan Ellefson tweeted photos from his honeymoon in Kauai. He University of New Hampshire skier – is from. Then they went to Boulder, where Sarah lives while studying physical therapy, to watch the USA Pro Am Cycling Challenge last weekend. “I’m jazzed to be moving around again,” Ellefson said. “The wedding week was pretty crazy and then the honeymoon was nice and...
Travel is a big issue for cross country skiers, particularly those of us living in North America. Flying back and forth to Europe can be both time consuming and exhausting for athletes. Obviously, this can have some serious effects on performance. Of course, this works both ways. Presumably it’s difficult for Europeans to travel to [...] Related posts:
In a post last week I talked about how I felt that a single early season result wasn’t necessarily a great predictor of how someone will tend to ski (on average) during the rest of the season. I feel like most people would accept that this is, in principle, generally true. Just because you pop [...] Related posts:
As often happens, FasterSkier gifted me with a handy topic for a few posts to kill time with over the summer by publishing a summary of USSA’s new criteria for automatic qualification for WJCs/U23s. For WJCs, the FIS point cutoff has been lowered to 50 for both men and women (it used to be higher [...] Related posts:Post-WJC/U23 Development: Canada North American Race Penalties Over Time Predicting FIS Points For World Cup Races
If you hang around skiing in North America long enough you will eventually hear people talking about point differences between races in Europe and North America (or the US in particular). One of the most common forms of this is the complaint that penalties (and hence points) are artificially high in the US, compared to [...] Related posts:
If you hang around skiing in North America long enough you will eventually hear people talking about point differences between races in Europe and North America (or the US in particular). One of the most common forms of this is the complaint that penalties (and hence points) are artificially high in the US, compared to [...] Related posts:
I started writing an answer to a comment to Monday’s post, but it started getting long, so I thought I’d make it a short post, instead. Basically, the question was how can the points be so different between OPA and Scandinavian Cup races when the penalty calculation methods is exactly the same. Recall that these [...] Related posts:
I started writing an answer to a comment to Monday’s post, but it started getting long, so I thought I’d make it a short post, instead. Basically, the question was how can the points be so different between OPA and Scandinavian Cup races when the penalty calculation methods is exactly the same. Recall that these [...] Related posts:
Some comments on a recent post got me curious about the FIS points awarded at OPA Cup races. Similarly to my commenters, I’d noticed that oftentimes the top skiers at an OPA Cup race would receive very low (i.e. good) points for that race, and that this often wouldn’t seem to match up well with [...] Related posts:
Some comments on a recent post got me curious about the FIS points awarded at OPA Cup races. Similarly to my commenters, I’d noticed that oftentimes the top skiers at an OPA Cup race would receive very low (i.e. good) points for that race, and that this often wouldn’t seem to match up well with [...] Related posts:
On various occasions I have looked at FIS point race penalties, in a very general, roundabout way. Most recently, I looked at whether the FIS points you get in a non-World Cup race accurately reflect what you would have scored if you had raced in a World Cup race. The answer appeared to be: kind of. At [...] Related posts:
The USST has expanded somewhat, adding several younger skiers. Acknowledging that FIS points are only a small piece of performance assessment, it has interested me that at various times USST staff have mentioned comparing skiers’ FIS points to medalists, or some other group of top skiers. So here are two graphs showing the younger US [...] Related posts:USST Preview: Liz Stephen & Morgan Arritola USST Preview: Simi Hamilton & Noah Hoffman USST Preview: Kikkan Randall