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Chelsea Little
When racers like Therese Johaug and Ivan Babikov reach the final day of the Tour de Ski, their bodies are already exhausted from day after day of racing. Their legs are tired, are they’re not alone: a recent study found that some aspects of heart function can not only decline, but remain suppressed after several days of consecutive races. But thanks to the human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to repeated stress, Johaug, Babikov, and...
A dispute between the Finnish ski federation and members of the national team was resolved on Monday, the federation reported, meaning that all 18 members of the team have rejoined the coaching staff and are training together in the final period before World Cup competitions begin. “Now it’s finally time to focus only and exclusively on elite sport,” a group of athletes who had been training independently while embroiled in the conflict said in a...
For a long time, Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess has known he was fast. He won a junior national championship in the sprint, won carnival races while representing Dartmouth College, qualified for a World Cup in Canada, and then transitioned into being a full-time, post-collegiate racer. But it wasn’t until this past January that the Bend Endurance Academy racer had his breakthrough, finishing fifth in the freestyle sprint at U.S. Nationals in Rumford, Maine. While Blackhorse-von Jess...
U.S. Biathletes: Home on the Range at Soldier Hollow Camp (with Photo Gallery)
Chelsea LittleOctober 18, 2011
The U.S. biathlon community may be small, but one benefit of its size is that almost everyone can gather each year in October for a training camp at Soldier Hollow. This year, the senior national team is joined in Utah by the junior national team as well as biathletes from the Maine Winter Sports Center, Durango and as far as Canada. Inviting everyone brings training quality up, said national team women’s coach Jonne Kahkonen, who...
CAS Overturns IOC’s Rule Against Dopers, Opens Door to Sochi for Yaroshenko, Matveeva, and Others
Chelsea LittleOctober 10, 2011
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) recently reached a decision which could drastically change the competitive landscape at the Sochi Olympics. “I can not describe in words how happy I will be able to defend the honor of Russia in Sochi,” Russian skier Natalia Matveeva told skisport.ru. Matveeva has stood on the World Cup podium ten times, and recently finished a two-year doping ban after testing positive for EPO. But even though she had...
When John Koons was growing up in Waterville, Maine forty years ago, skiing was the thing to do. “When I was a youngster we had a ski hill,” Koons told FasterSkier. “It was sponsored and run by Colby College. It was an alpine slope, and we had snowmaking and we had lights, and it was really a wonderful place for kids to go.” But like so many small hills around New England and the rest...
After a Year of Health Struggles, Nilsson Forced into Early Retirement
Chelsea LittleOctober 3, 2011
Swedish biathlete Mattias Nilsson is hanging up his rifle at age 29, he abruptly announced on Thursday. After struggling with health problems all year – including hemochromatosis, when too much iron builds up in the body – Nilsson received confirmation last week that he had a leaky heart valve and that it was dangerous for him to continue competing in endurance sports. “I had been somewhat prepared that this could be the news, but not...
Youth Olympic Games Presents: Aleksandra Zakrzewska
Chelsea LittleSeptember 27, 2011
(Note: This is the fourth in a series of interviews with athletes who will be competing at the first-ever winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria this winter. The first interview was with Sean Doherty, the Nick Proell.) When the Youth Olympic Games kick off in Innsbruck, Austria this January, one American biathlete will have a lot of experience on her side. It’s not her own experience: neither of the two girls named to the...
Fast and Female to Host First-Ever Park City Event October 8th
Chelsea LittleSeptember 27, 2011
A dynamic and inspiring group of world-class female athletes is preparing to host a once-in-a-lifetime Fast and Female event in Park City on October 8, 2011 at the USSA’s Center of Excellence. Held in partnership with the U. S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) and open to girls ages 9 to 19 practicing all sports, the event will feature an afternoon of fun and non-competitive dryland training followed by a motivational presentation. The activity will...
As soon as the news broke that Estonian Olympic gold medalist and world champion Andrus Veerpalu had tested positive for human growth hormone (HGH), the ski world knew that a fight lay ahead. For Veerpalu and the Estonians, a doping ban would be disastrous; as FasterSkier reported a 1999 study by a group of European and Australian researchers showed that exercise did spike HGH levels in the bloodstream by more then tenfold, the decline was dramatic...
(Note: This is the third in a series of interviews with athletes who will be competing at the first-ever winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria this winter. The first interview was with Sean Doherty and the
Kocher Regroups and Moves Forward as Part of New Biathlon Alberta Regional Training Center
Chelsea LittleSeptember 19, 2011
When two-time Olympian Zina Kocher was left off of Biathlon Canada’s “A” team this spring, she was surprised. “Criteria was never set before the season started,” Kocher told FasterSkier in an interview; it wasn’t until after the season was over that athletes learned whether their results were good enough for a nomination. Instead of simply adjusting and continuing on with the national team, Kocher turned down the “B” team nomination altogether and joined another squad,...
Youth Olympic Games Presents: Anna Kubek
Chelsea LittleSeptember 14, 2011
(Note: This is the second in a series of interviews with athletes who will be competing at the first-ever winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria this winter. The first interview was with Sean Doherty.) Of all the biathletes set to compete at the Youth Olympic Games in January, Anna Kubek of Duluth, Minnesota, might have the least experience: she only picked up biathlon in 2010, and hadn’t even skied before that point. But to...
(Note: This is the first in a series of interviews with athletes who will be competing at the first-ever winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria this winter.) The North American Rollerski Biathlon Championships, held in Jericho, Vermont last month, were the last in a series of qualifying races for U.S. athletes hoping to compete at the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in January. While YOG as a whole includes athletes ranging from 14 to 19...
U.S. Biathletes Shine in European Training Camp; Women’s Team Attends for the First Time
Chelsea LittleAugust 31, 2011
Last year, the U.S. Biathlon Association (USBA) took eight men to Europe for a summer training camp, leaving the women’s team to train by themselves in Lake Placid. Since then, a dedicated women’s coach (Jonne Kahkonen) has been hired, so the women are in some ways more than ever their own team. But this summer three of them were invited to the camp in Germany and are training alongside the men. “For us, it’s definitely...
How does a high school student from Massachussetts end up skiing on a glacier with the best athletes from the United States and Canada in the middle of the summer? The answer is a program, and a promise for other young skiers. Corey Stock, a 17-year-old racer who usually represents the Cambridge Sports Union, was nominated this year to be a member of the National Training Group (NTG), a program of the U.S. Ski Team....
(Author’s Note: While some of the athletes and coaches contacted by FasterSkier for this story were willing to openly discuss birth control, many wished to remain anonymous rather than allow the public to make assumptions about their sexual choices, a desire that FasterSkier respected. For these sources, pseudonyms will be marked with an asterisk (*) the first time they appear, and they will subsequently be referred to by first name, rather than last name like...