HomeAuthor

Ben Theyerl

Ben Theyerl was born into a family now three-generations into nordic ski racing in the US. He grew up skiing for Chippewa Valley Nordic in his native Eau Claire, Wisconsin, before spending four years racing for Colby College in Maine. He currently mixes writing and skiing while based out of Crested Butte, CO, where he coaches the best group of high schoolers one could hope to find.
Skistad Wins Again: Crystal Globe Race In Focus Under Tallinn’s Lights

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.  For the last week of World Cup sprinting, two pairs of skis have followed each other back and forth, every stride marked in tandem with the other. Twenty meters from the finish...

Swedes Bring Home Victory in Falun Mixed Team Relay

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.    There had been glimpses of Swedish firepower all day. Into the first exchange, Calle Halfvarsson (SWE) had shot through the field. When Federico Pellegrino (ITA) broke away on leg three, Edvin...

Novie McCabe Becomes Three-Time NCAA Champ, Remi Drolet Makes Harvard History

The second half of this year’s NCAA Championships took place Saturday in Lake Placid, New York, with a 20 k mass start classic which both the women’s and men’s field would race in true, dynamic, mass start style. Packs came, moves went and, in the end, one skier would come out the strongest on the day in both the women’s and men’s races. Thursday’s results left open the possibility for plenty of history to be...

Joe Davies and Novie McCabe Win NCAA Championships in Lake Placid Freestyle Race

The NCAA Ski Championships began in Lake Placid, New York Thursday, marking the culmination of America’s collegiate race season in one of America’s most storied ski venues. This marked the fifth time that Lake Placid has hosted NCAA Championships, and the first time since 2015 when the Freestyle event that kicked off the event was won by Dartmouth Sophomore Patrick Caldwell on the Men’s side, and Austrian Freshman Veronkica Mayerhofer from the University of Utah...

“A Mix of Everything.” Rosie Brennan Reflects on Hard-Fought Battle for Podium, as Andersson Wins 30 k

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.  On the final day of a World Championships defined by new highs in terms of results for the United States, Rosie Brennan (USA) delivered a performance that reiterated that—for Brennan and her...

David Norris Does it All: Steamboat Springs Coach Heads to World Championships Fresh Off Birkie Win

The coaching staff for the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club (SSWSC) huddled around a tinny iPhone speaker set out on a wax bench. It was the last Rocky Mountain Junior National Qualifier of the season in Aspen, Colorado, but there was no illusion about where the main event in North American skiing was last Saturday. On the American Birkebeiner live stream, Adam Verrier and Dennis Kruse delivered the news that one of the coaches usually...

Shuffled Podium, Same Norway. Americans Ski to Promising Results in 15 k Skate

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.  What was old is new again: for the first time since equal-distance racing policies were put into effect this season, the men’s field was set to race a 15 kilometer individual start....

USA Earns World Championship Bronze with Diggins and Kern, Team Sweden Triumphant

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.  Five years on from the milestone of Olympic gold—and ten years on from the milestone of World Championship gold—the event was the same for US skiing; the Team Sprint. Socks adorned with...

Nordic Nations’ Cup 2023: USA’s Best U18 Skiers Shine in First International Race Experience

It was the end of the weekend, but the start of a whole new generation of Americans skiers on the World’s stage. Tabor Greenberg, the Green Mountain Valley School attendee and a U16 national champion last season pulled into the final kilometer of a 3 x 5km Team Relay, locked stride-for-stride with the familiar red suit of his Norwegian counterpart. The stadium was ahead, and for the first time clad in a US Ski Team...

Klaebo Dominates Chaotic World Championship Sprint, Schoonmaker Scores Top Ten

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. By the time the men’s final started, the procession had all but begun. Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) went to the front, kept the rest of his competitors just out of reach, and...

My Friend Anni Goes to the World Cup: The Trail to Gold Fellowship Experience

All friendships have a mythology, and all mythologies have their origin story. For Annika Martell and me, that origin story takes place in a marsh outside of West Bend, Wisconsin. Anni and I did not meet until college—we were both part of the incoming class of 2020 at Colby College that arrived on campus in Waterville, Maine in August 2016, but my mother and her father were both raised in this same heart of heartlands...

Norway Wins, US Women Battle to Podium as Germany Disqualified in Team Relay

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. As the World Cup entered its third day of racing in Toblach for a 4 x 7.5 km Team Relay, the tone was one of anticipation: what would happen in the race?...

World University Games: Young Americans Shine as Lake Placid Returns to International Stage

Do you believe in miracles? Lake Placid is where they’ve happened before: speedskater Eric Heiden’s single-winter games medal record, Wassberg’s Olympic Gold by one hundredth over Mieto, and no less than the “Miracle on Ice.” If miracles were going to happen again, this was likely to be the place.  With the State of New York having spent $500 million (through the Olympic Regional Development Authority) to dramatically overhaul facilities originally constructed for the Olympic Winter...

Action in Les Rousses:  Klaebo Back on Top, Cyr Again Top Ten, Patterson Powers to 12th

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. Ski racers know steep hills: the stomp up the first climb in the Swedish Vasaloppet, Wave 8 of the American Birkebeiner on “B**** Hill,” the race-changing “Russian Hill” on Lake...

Jessie Diggins Returns to World Cup Podium, Rosie Brennan 5th in Les Rousses

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award.  To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. If there is a common theme to the cross country skiing World Cup, it is change. Tweaks, adjustments, selections, illness, and injury all factor into who even makes it to...

Kern and Brennan Combine for 3rd, Sweden and France Win Livigno Team Sprints

The high alpine valley containing Livigno, Italy is as beautiful and sublime as any place on Earth, seemingly heaven-sent to feature the high drama of the FIS Cross Country World Cup; for the first time, Livigno was hosting World Cup races this weekend. That idyllic scene made Sunday’s Team Sprint all the stranger, since so many of the usual players and storylines were absent from the World Cup. As FasterSkier reported on yesterday’s Sprint, many...

US World Junior Championship/U23 Teams Named Following Nationals in Houghton

Following a record-setting number of athletes competing in the U.S. Nationals in Houghton last week— over 400 skiers from across the US made the trip to the Copper Country—US Ski and Snowboard has announced the selections for the US World Junior and U23 Championships, to be held in Whistler, British Columbia from January 28th-February 4th. Athlete selections have also been announced for the U18 Nordic Nation’s Cup Trip, to be held in Jyvaskyla, Finland February...

Sophia Laukli’s First World Cup Podium as Karlsson and Klaebo Win Tour de Ski on the Slopes of the Alpe Cermis

The Alpe Cermis When the Grand Tour of skiing—the Tour de Ski—was dreamed up by Vegard Ulvang and Jurg Capol in 2006, one of the first definitive decisions was that it would need a Queen Stage: a stage that sought to distill the essence of ski racing—the brutal beauty of the slog—to its purest state. The Tour de France had its Alp d’Huez, and the Tour de Ski would have the Alpe di Cermis. Through...

Ben Ogden Intrepid, Antoine Cyr Impressive, as North Americans Add Flair to TDS Sprint

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award.  To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. Ben Ogden was going to risk it . . . This season, the young American skier has made a rapid push in World Cup sprints, twice racing to the verge...

Tour de Ski Stage 3: American Men Fly, Klaebo Wins, On Warm Day in Oberstdorf

This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award.  To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. Gus Schumacher crossed the finish line, and started a long skidding stop. His skis chattered as klister gripped in spots and bits on the transformed, re-frozen snow at Oberstdorf, Germany....