“There’s almost nothing I love more than being in the hunt during a pursuit,” American sixth in the junior women’s 12.5-kilometer individual on Thursday, Levins, 19, raced to seventh place in Saturday’s 7.5 k sprint, which will put her in seventh (and within 10 seconds of fourth place) for the start of Sunday’s 10 k pursuit at the International Biathlon Union (IBU) Junior World Championships in Otepää, Estonia. Last year, Levins raced to Megan Bankes...
Eight points. That’s the number that separated Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla and Sweden’s Stina Nilsson in the Sprint World Cup standings before Saturday’s freestyle sprint in Lahti, Finland. Three sprints. That’s the number of World Cup sprint races that remained in the 2017/2018 calendar, one of which took place on Saturday. With one down and a classic sprint and skate sprint to go, Falla’s lead has grown to 28 points. It’s not much, with 150...
Caitlin Gregg has raced the American Birkebeiner enough times — and won it more than anyone else — that she’s got the course down pat. Powerline, Big Bertha, High Point, Heckler’s, OO, Gravel Pit, Mosquito Brook, B*tch Hill, Hatchery, the lake, the bridge, the Main Street finish. But the conditions and the competition, that’s something that changes from year to year. The elite racers were among the first to start the 50-kilometer American Birkebeiner (“Birkie”)...
FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, Four years ago in the men’s relay in Sochi, Russia, Svendsen as Norway’s anchor had been in the medal hunt until the final shooting. There, he used all of his spares and still left a target standing, which sent him to the penalty lap. After leading by as much as 20 seconds in the middle of that race, Norway finished fourth. But as they say, that’s biathlon. And on...
Like the rest of the U.S. cross-country skiing community with a watchful eye on the Olympics, Bill Koch had been waiting for Olympic women’s freestyle team sprint unfold via live timing on the computer — numbers rather than images — as opposed to a live broadcast. When he saw USA rank first at the finish, becoming the first Americans to do so in an Olympic cross-country race (and the first to win a medal since his...
FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, Americans Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins capture the first Olympic gold for the U.S. in cross-country skiing. It was motivating and inspiring, even confidence-boosting, Bjornsen reflected after his race in an in-person interview with FasterSkier. But he and Hamilton had their own medal hopes to tend to. Like most of the men’s finalists, they weren’t able to watch the women’s race beforehand and came out onto...
FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, Frenzel had previously taken gold and Watabe silver in the first nordic-combined event of the 2018 Olympics, the normal hill/10 k on Feb. 14. Riiber was fourth for the second-straight competition. American Bryan Fletcher Jumping |
FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, said when asked of her younger brother, Anton Shipulin, who was one of the Russian athletes women’s 10-kilometer pursuit on Monday. Two days before that, she had finished outside the medals, 13th, in the Olympics’ opening biathlon sprint. But Kuzmina, who was born in Tyumen, Russia, and started racing for Slovakia in 2008, has been an all-around threat in the sport for some time. At her first Olympics in 2010...
FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, men’s 10-kilometer sprint, Fourcade finished eighth, missing three out of five in his first shooting stage, and Bø had the same problem with prone — missing three then shooting another penalty in standing — to end up 31st. It was the kind of result no one saw coming after those two had taken first or second in every non-relay World Cup race this season (except for one, the sprint...
FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, men’s 10-kilometer sprint on Sunday wasn’t frustrating. It was disappointing. “It was a really strange feeling,” Fourcade said after Monday’s 12.5 k pursuit. “… I was disappointed because yesterday I did not understand why I missed three, and I wanted this Olympic gold in the sprint more than any of the competitions. I worked really hard for this competition. I worked on my shooting for being good in the...
Since March of last year, Cendrine Browne has been waiting and trying, with all her might, for another top 30. She achieved it twice last season, placing 26th in the World Championships 30-kilometer mass start and 35th in the World Cup 10 k skate in Ulricehamn, Sweden (30th with Olympic-style scoring, which counts the top-four athletes for each nation in a given race). To meet Cross Country Canada’s (CCC) alternate qualifying criteria for the 2018...
About seven minutes into the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle mass start on Sunday at the World Cup in Seefeld, Austria, Jessie Diggins made her intentions clear. She wasn’t in it for a free ride — she was willing to pull, and not just take her turn up front, but actually try to string out the field and win this thing. As she led a group of 31 within 15 seconds of her at 3.3 k, Diggins,...
(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Canada’s Bob Thompson.) Federico Pellegrino’s winning move in the men’s 6 x 1.2-kilometer freestyle team sprint on Sunday wasn’t exactly the same as yesterday when the Italian attacked on the final climb of the Saturday’s individual sprint, Locke placed 15th for a career best. The two ultimately finished seventh in the first team-sprint semifinal, just one place behind Great Britain’s James Clugnet and Andrew Young....
How do you beat Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo at his competition-crushing game? Take him by surprise with minimal time to recover. Italy’s Federico Pellegrino did just that on the last uphill rise of the 1.2-kilometer sprint course on Saturday in Dresden, Germany. Dresden, a historic city in eastern Germany, debuted its brand-new course along the Elbe River on manmade snow amid damp conditions and temperatures above freezing throughout the day. Pellegrino had done what he...
Like ants swarming a bread crumb — skating ants — on ice. That was one image that could be conceived from the men’s 15-kilometer freestyle mass start on Thursday, which served as Stage 5 of the 2018 Tour de Ski in Obertsdorf, Germany. Aftercancellation of Stage 4 after the women’s qualifier — so organizers opted to salt the course to preserve it as much as possible for the mass starts. It was raining again on...
Not one of the last three days in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, were alike, with three different American women standing on the coveted podium and three vastly different conditions for the first three stages of the 2018 Tour de Ski. Technically, it wasn’t 2018 until today — with Jessie Diggins racing to third in the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle pursuit on Monday, the first day of the new year and her first podium of the season. She did...
Susan Dunklee’s start to another International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup season hadn’t played out as she’d hoped, specifically in terms of results. Coming off a banner winter, with a silver at 2017 World Championships (in the women’s mass start), Dunklee 31, had so far placed 53rd, 79th and 97th, respectively, in non-relay races over the last two weeks. She had yet to race a mass start, but also had yet to qualify for a...
Emma Lunder may be aclose to zero visibility in the sprint, in the women’s 10-kilometer pursuit in Hochfilzen, Austria. Despite having started more than two dozen World Cups since the 2013/2014 season, this was only her third pursuit. “I went into this race knowing that both snow and wind were expected, so I anticipated conditions similar to yesterday’s sprint,” Lunder, who had previously raced to 42nd in the sprint with 9-for-10 shooting, wrote in an...
Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Biathlon Canada’s Nathan Smith and Emma Lunder. Calm wind and a light drizzle for the men’s International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup sprint on Friday afternoon in Hochfilzen, Austria, turned into a full-blown blizzard for the women’s sprint that followed. One multiple-time Olympic and world champion weathered the elements best, as Darya Domracheva of Belarus won the latter with clean shooting. She was one of...
Another SuperTour season opened in West Yellowstone, Montana, one weekend later than usual this year but with a lot of the old standbys, including a twisty, technical freestyle sprint course and puzzling conditions for the classic distance race. In a crash-marred women’s final on Saturday, Dec. 2, Anne Hart of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team avoided a tangle between Caitlin Gregg (Team Gregg) and Caitlin Patterson, of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP),...