This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers who have helped put our Nat Herz on the ground at the Olympics. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. TESERO, ITALY — After Gus Schumacher and Ben Ogden on Wednesday won only the third-ever U.S. men’s medal in cross-country skiing at the Olympics, one of the biggest grins in the stadium was on the face of...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers who have helped us put our Nat Herz on the ground at the Olympics. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. From FasterSkier reporter Nat Herz, in Predazzo: Here in northern Italy, where I’m covering the Olympics, I’m technically the chief fashion critic for the bureau — though only because it’s a one-man bureau. And unfortunately,...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers who have helped put our Nat Herz on the ground at the Olympics. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. PREDAZZO, ITALY — When Astrid Øyre Slind was 26, she almost retired from cross-country skiing. She was a good skier, just not quite good enough to break into the international circuit from her home country of Norway, where...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers who have helped put our Nat Herz on the ground at the Olympics. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. PREDAZZO, ITALY — Johannes Høsflot Klæbo is four for four — and officially the most golden Winter Olympian in history. By anchoring Norway’s relay team to first place Sunday, Klæbo claimed his ninth Winter Olympic gold —...
Gus Schumacher is one of the stars in U.S. cross-country skiing, and he was one of the team’s top medal hopefuls coming into the Winter Olympics in Italy. Against the same field that competes at the Games, the Alaskan won a World Cup race in Minnesota in 2024. Then, Schumacher, 25, was on the World Cup podium twice more just last month, in Switzerland. So far, though, his Olympics haven’t gone as planned, with tough...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers who have helped put our Nat Herz on the ground at the Olympics. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. PREDAZZO, ITALY — On Denali in Alaska, there’s a famed climbing route called Slovak Direct — a nod to a group of skilled alpinists from Slovakia who established it in 1984. Now, as this year’s Winter Olympics...
Two years ago, U.S. cross-country skiing star Jessie Diggins was battling a relapse of an eating disorder — an episode that she publicly acknowledged at the time. What she didn’t share until now, though, was how close it came to derailing a year in which she won cross-country skiing’s season title and celebrated the return of the top-level World Cup circuit to the U.S., in her home city of Minneapolis. In the middle of that winter,...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers who have helped put our Nat Herz on the ground at the Olympics. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. TESERO, ITALY — There’s having your Olympic debut. Then there’s having your Olympic debut in an event that you’ve literally never raced in before. That was the story Saturday for Maddie Hooker, a 21-year-old Australian for whom Saturday’s...
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. PREDAZZO, ITALY — By day, Andrew Kastning’s life sounds conventional: He’s a father of three, with a desk job in Alaska doing permitting work for a federal agency. During the winter? It’s another story. On periodic Friday and Saturday mornings, you’ll find Kastning awake at 1 a.m., 2 a.m. or 3...
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. PREDAZZO, ITALY — The Olympics have traditionally been known as a kind of sports melting pot, where competitors from different backgrounds and countries could share meals and trade pins at tight-knight athletes’ villages. For winter sports, though, those social traditions ground to a halt at the COVID Olympics in China in...
Between World Cups, the Tour de Ski, and the Olympic Winter Games, there will be 72 elite cross-country ski races contested this winter on the international scene. FasterSkier remains committed to covering each and every international race—we’ll get up early to prepare race reports based on live results, and publish them here in our online forum. And when we have all the information on streaming, viewing, and network broadcast coverage, we’ll pass that along, too....