The American women have had highs and lows at World Championships in Oslo this week, packing three finishers in the top 30 in both of the first two races but also watching Kikkan Randall’s medal hopes in the sprint evaporate in a crash. And while the U.S. made the final in the team sprint and placed ninth in the relay, neither of those performances were quite as good as some were hoping for. On Saturday,...
Much to the Americans’ and Canadians’ chagrin, the men’s 4 x 10 k relay at World Championships on Friday did not unfold as it often does. “At the start, they usually jockey for a bit,” Canadian leadoff skier Stefan Kuhn told FasterSkier. “But one Swede, Daniel Rickardsson, was thinking otherwise today, because he had two bad races. So he wanted to prove a point.” Instead of a tactical first leg, where many of the teams...
The eyes of the ski world may have been focused on Oslo today, where the Norwegian women ran away with the win in the 4 x 5 k relay, but the biathlon world is focused on Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, where World Championships kicked off today with a mixed relay. And while the result was the same – Norway on top by a solid margin – the route to victory was a lot more challenging for Norway’s...
When Dasha Gaiazova started the 4 x 5 k relay at World Championships in Oslo on Thursday, she still had a hangover. Was it from drinking? No. “We went to bed on time,” Gaiazova told FasterSkier, promising that the women’s team had behaved themselves and not celebrated too hard. But after her teammates Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw won the men’s team sprint in thrilling fashion on Wednesday and got to stand atop the podium...
Last year, Susan Dunklee’s top finish at U26 Open European Biathlon Championships was 17th place in the sprint. At the time, she was pleased with the performance, but this year, she’s eclipsed that success – twice. In the open individual race at this year’s U26 event, which took place in Ridnaun, Italy last week, Dunklee finished 15th – an auspicious start to the week for the only senior U.S. woman nominated for the races. Then...
Devon Kershaw’s day could not have changed more drastically over the course of two hours than it did on Wednesday in Oslo. While he ended the day atop the podium with teammate Alex Harvey, there was a moment when becoming one of Canada’s first World Champions seemed next to impossible. On the first uphill in Canada’s semifinal in the World Championships team sprint, Kershaw, the leadoff skier, lost a ski. “I had a small heart...
The Canadian men might have won gold in today’s World Championship team sprint, but they weren’t the only ones walking away from Holmenkollen Stadium in Oslo with smiles on their faces. Another Canadian team was excited about its results, too: Canadians Perianne Jones and Dasha Gaiazova, who finished sixth in the women’s final. After the semifinal, in which the pair was forced to ski mostly alone after Slovenia, Norway, and Sweden went off the front,...
When Matti Heikkinen caught Kris Freeman just three kilometers into Tuesday’s 15 k classic race at World Championships, Freeman was surprised. “I was thinking, holy God, what is going on,” Freeman told FasterSkier. “Turns out he was having the race of his life.” The Finn has just one World Cup victory to his name this season, and came into the individual start race more favored than Freeman, but only barely. So when he had made...
Early on in Monday’s 10 k classic individual start race, it looked like Marit Bjoergen was on track to lose her first gold medal of the 2011 World Championships. On the first steep hill of the tough course in Oslo, the Norwegian was slipping – and not long after, she began to get splits telling her that Justyna Kowalcyk of Poland, who had started one spot behind her, was catching up. “Today was a very...
As the only senior American woman at Under-26 Open European Championships in Ridnaun, Italy, Susan Dunklee didn’t get the chance to start a relay on Thursday. “I’m disappointed, but I don’t want to make a big deal out of it,” she told FasterSkier. But while sitting on the sidelines might not have seemed as fun as racing, a couple of her teammates had even more frustrating days. The American men’s relay team, after a promising...
Last year, the Birkie Elite Sprints, held on Main Street in Hayward, Wisconsin, two days before the Birkie, were a mostly American affair. Morten Pedersen of Norway won the men’s race, but most of the other top finishers were natives – including Audrey Weber, then skiing for CXC, who won the women’s heats. This year, things changed. The men’s final on Tuesday came down to a battle between Norwegian teammates Vetle Thyli and Martin Andersen....
The American and Canadian teams have been off to a good start in Ridnaun, Italy, collecting three top-20 finishes in the opening individual-format races at IBU Under-26/Open European Championships. On Monday, the men kicked things off in the 20 k individual race, a format where each missed shot represents a one-minute time penalty. Tyson Smith of Canada missed only two of his twenty shots and finished 19th, just under four minutes behind Artem Pryma of...
The International Competition Committee of the U.S. Biathlon Association has announced which athletes will be competing at World Championships in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia, in early March. The men’s team is led by Lowell Bailey (Lake Placid, NY), who has been on a tear in recent World Cup competitions. He finished ninth in the mass start in Fort Kent, Maine last weekend – a career-best result for himself, and the only top-10 finish for any American...
Just a month into his tenure as governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker made a bold political move: he proposed a bill which would limit the rights of union workers to use collective bargaining. With a strong Republican majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the bill appeared poised to pass. On Thursday, Senate Democrats boycotted: they didn’t come in to work, meaning that the Republicans didn’t have a quorum to hold a...
VTXC team member and former University of Vermont (UVM) standout Juergen Uhl, a 2009 NCAA champion in the men’s 10 k classic, recently competed at the World University Games in Erzurum, Turkey. Unfortunately, Uhl came down with the stomach flu upon arriving in Turkey, which stymied his efforts on the trails. Nevertheless he finished 25th in the 10 k classic and 42nd in the 15 k continuous pursuit while representing his home country, Germany. Uhl...
Going into Saturday’s relays, Grace Boutot hadn’t had the best World Juniors of her career. In Canmore in 2009, the American was second in the youth women’s individual race and contributed to a fifth-place relay team. But this year, in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, her top finish was 39th in the individual. “I haven’t had the results that I hoped for in the past two days,” she said after the pursuit. And after the individual,...
After a World Junior Championships where it has already proven dominant in the medal counts, Russia sealed the deal by winning both the youth men’s and women’s relays in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic on Friday. And it wasn’t even close: both teams won by more than a minute, the men over Italy and the women over Ukraine. Elena Badanina, the leadoff skier for the Russian women’s team, doesn’t see herself as becoming a star, despite...
On Friday morning at 9:30 a.m., the United States will hold its first World Cup race since 2004. The IBU World Cup circuit will be making stops in Presque Isle, Maine, this weekend, and then in nearby Fort Kent next weekend. While it might take almost as long to get to “The County” from the U.S. as from anywhere else, the races should be spectacular. If you can’t make it to Maine, the event will...
In an individual race in biathlon, every missed shot adds a minute to an athlete’s ski time, so it’s even more important to hit all the targets than it might be in other formats. Canadian Scott Gow had missed two shots over the first three stages of the junior men’s 15 k individual race at World Junior Championships in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic on Wednesday, which normally wouldn’t bode well. But today, it did –...
First, retired star Thomas Alsgaard showed up at Norwegian national championships and placed third in the 15 k classic, leading commentators and fans alike to bemoan the state of the national team. Sure, Alsgaard is an amazing talent and is training fairly seriously for marathons, but should a man who has been retired for almost ten years be able to beat everyone except Martin Sundby Johnsrud and Eldar Roenning? Then the Norwegian team for World...