U.S. Ski & Snowboard recently announced its U.S. Ski Team nominations for the 2022-23 season. Of the 22 athletes named to the team this season, six were not on the previous year’s roster, either newly named or renamed: Michael Earnhart, Walker Hall, Zak Ketterson, Will Koch, Finn O’Connell, and Sammy Smith. To help fans get to know these new(er) faces, FasterSkier is doing a series of interviews, providing insights into the factors that have contributed to development,...
U.S. Ski & Snowboard recently announced its U.S. Ski Team nominations for the 2022-23 season. Of the 22 athletes named to the team this season, six were not on the previous year’s roster, either newly named or renamed: Michael Earnhart, Walker Hall, Zak Ketterson, Will Koch, Finn O’Connell, and Sammy Smith. To help fans get to know these new(er) faces, FasterSkier is doing a series of interviews, providing insights into the factors that have contributed to development,...
U.S. Ski & Snowboard recently announced its U.S. Ski Team nominations for the 2022-23 season. Of the 22 athletes named to the team this season, six were not on the previous year’s roster, either newly named or renamed: Michael Earnhart, Walker Hall, Zak Ketterson, Will Koch, Finn O’Connell, and Sammy Smith. To help fans get to know these new(er) faces, FasterSkier is doing a series of interviews, providing insights into the factors that have contributed...
Adam Martin’s skiing has always tended to be best described in conjunctions rather than disjunctions. He could do this and he would do that. Or, that’s always how his mentors looked at it. My most distinct memory of Martin is from a CXC (Central Cross Country Skiing) camp about a decade ago when Sten Fjeldheim, then Martin’s coach at Northern Michigan University (NMU), gathered a group of us J2s (U16) around in the lobby of...
With a cohort of some of the best U23 skiers in the country, the program is setting a trend for young American skiers pursuing international-level and college skiing simultaneously. After the first day of this year’s NCAA Championships, held at Soldier Hollow, Utah, the team scoring was close. The familiar schools were all there, the University of Utah (UU) at the front, with the University of Colorado (CU), Denver University (DU), and the University...
The ski community has known there’s a problem for awhile now. Fluorinated waxes, whose extreme hydrophobic properties make them ideal for fast skis, also are by that same property impossible to break down in the environment, allowing them to permeate through the soil into water supplies. The compounds are also known carcinogens, and frequent exposure to these compounds, particularly when heating and inhaling the fumes of waxes in which they are contained, is linked to...
A look at what’s ahead for the Birkebeiner, and its former home at the Telemark Lodge. When I reached out to American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation (ABSF) Executive Director Ben Popp before Christmas to set-up an interview discussing the Birkie’s plans for the now-defunct Telemark Lodge property, he was already putting plans into action. An interview would have to wait until after the holidays, because that weekend ,the Birkie was hosting a SuperTour race which would...
“So after the World Cup, Olympics, and NCAAs, is that it for you this season?” “Well…I think I’m going to race the Rikert Grand Prix this weekend.” (He won). I couldn’t have stumbled upon a more apt soundbite to describe Ben Ogden, and he offered it up ten seconds into our interview. Skiing for the US Ski Team and University of Vermont (UVM), Ogden is primed to write the next chapter in American men’s skiing...
“You need some Gordie Howe elbows out there today” said the commentator on the live feed at one point during Friday’s Team Sprint in Whistler. You know, just in case you needed a reminder that this is Canadian Nationals. Alongside his legacy as one of hockey’s greatest players of all time, leaving his mark on the sport as an indomitable force with both his goal scoring and dynamism on the ice, Howe was known as...
Racing at the joint Canadian Nationals/US SuperTour Finals resumed on Wednesday, showcasing some of the best racers in North America facing off for a classic sprint. As the Whistler Olympic Park was home for cross country skiing during the 2010 Vancouver Games, the classic sprint course on Wednesday was one that played host to an important stepping stone in North American skiing history. In that competition, both American and Canadian skiers solidified the inroads they...
To trace the thread of the past, present, and future of American cross-country skiing, all you have to do is look at a golf course in Minneapolis that touches 3 of those 10,000 lakes in Minnesota; Theodore Wirth Park. Over the past week, America’s most-skied loop played host to the US Ski and Snowboard Junior Championships (formerly Junior Nationals, or “JNs”), bringing the top under-20 year old skiers from across the nation together for the...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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 wasn’t much to be decided, only facts to reaffirmed. In the last individual race of the World Cup season on Saturday, a 10-kilometer individual start freestyle in...
Skiing-wise, Ian Torchia has nearly done it all. And now, in life, he’s ready to do some more. In an Instagram post following the American Birkiebeiner, Torchia announced that he is retiring from professional skiing with his trademark blend of gratitude and humor, saying, “In the end I won’t remember the races won (a few) or lost (many more) but the lifelong bonds of teammates, the support of friends and family, and how special the...
In a history of American skiing centered around the Upper Midwest, author Ryan Rodgers weaves together the stories of individuals who have found joy, love, and purpose in skiing with their heel detached, inspiring his readers to do so, too. At the intersection of outdoors and pursuits, the street signs read “myth” and “heroes.” And we, those who spend our time outside, are here to patiently listen. That intersection has given rise to classics across...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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. In Oslo on Sunday, came another sign of the times. The Holmenkollen Ski Festival, the beating heart and center of the modern sport of skiing since Torjus Hemmestveit won...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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. Cross country skiing’s most ancient, classic, weekend of racing in Norway (the Holmenkollen ski festival) began with a sprint through the center of Drammen, about 45-kilometers (30 mi)...
A pair of American skiing pioneers skied up Mt. Mansfield, Vermont in 1946, skied down to settle a bet, and in the process created a race that’s remained true to the individual and communal spirit that sustains nordic skiing to this day. At one point in time, skiing was simply a way to get from point A to point B. Take stock of humans gliding on snow at this moment in 2022, though, and it can...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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. The team sprint: it’s the youngest event on the Olympic program, having been contested only since the 2006 Torino Games. The event has since become a marquee event...
Diggins’ historic accomplishment was glanced over by the giants of American media, falling back into harmful tropes that are all-too-common regarding women athletes. Reflecting on it re-centered how meaningful her vulnerability in sharing her struggle to overcome an eating disorder was to the skiing community, and was a source of strength for me. The Olympic sprint race on Tuesday in Beijing was perhaps one of the most nuanced and complex races in Olympic history. We...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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. In the sport of cross country skiing, the Olympic 15-kilometer individual start classic might be considered the “granddaddy of them all.” The technique was classic, as was the...