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Gabby Naranja

Gabby Naranja considers herself a true Mainer, having grown up in the northern most part of the state playing hockey and roofing houses with her five brothers. She graduated from Bates College where she ran cross-country, track, and nordic skied. She spent this past winter in Europe and is currently in Montana enjoying all that the U.S. northwest has to offer.
Svensson, Nilsson Delight Home Crowd in Gällivare Sprint; Beatty, Valjas Reach Heats

For the third and final day of International Ski Federation (FIS) racing in Gällivare, the home crowd would not be let down. Both the men’s and women’s 1-kilometer classic sprints were won by Swedes, one of whom has established herself as one of the world’s best sprinters, ending last season second in the 2016/2017 Sprint World Cup at the age of 23. Stina Nilsson, now 24 and entering her fifth year of racing on the...

Manificat Wins Two Out of Three at Saariselkä FIS Weekend

There were plenty of options this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for cross-country skiers looking to get an International Ski Federation (FIS) race in before the official start of the World Cup season, now less than one week away. While some athletes headed toGällivare, Sweden, about 120 made their way to Saariselkä, Finland. This included several French skiers, including Maurice Manificat, Jean-Marc Gaillard, Coraline Thomas Hugue, and Anouk Faivre Picon. Those who made the trek to...

Frozen Thunder Day 2: Euro-Bound Holmes, Valjas Top Distance Races

Frozen Thunder lived up to its name on Friday, with temperatures hovering below the legal race limit prior to the start of the second competition series of the week: the women’s 7.5- and men’s 10-kilometer freestyle individual starts. An hour delay was enough time to see temperatures rise to -10 degrees Celsius (14 Fahrenheit), and many skiers bundled in Buffs in prep for the five to six laps of racing. Overcast skies were a celestial...

Frozen Thunder Day 1:  Locke Wins Qualifier for World Cup Spot; Valjas Outlunges Thompson in Final

Clouds heavy with building snow and a winter-storm warning already in effect cast a second anticipatory shadow over a jittery group of racers gathered on Wednesday for the first Frozen Thunder race of the season at the Canmore Nordic Centre in Canmore, Alberta. At stake for some of the top Canadians participating in the day’s classic sprint was the opportunity to secure the final spot on the men’s World Cup team for the first period...

Hall and Studebaker-Hall Take Reins with Team SoHo

Last September, amidst the chatter of others gathered for the 11th annual U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Assembly in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sara Studebaker-Hall and the CEO of the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation (UOLF), Colin Hilton, shook hands. Studebaker-Hall, a two-time Olympic biathlete, was attending the meeting as an athlete rep for the US Biathlon Board of Directors and was introduced to Hilton by US Biathlon Association (USBA) President and CEOthe future of the UAA Ski...

Wednesday Workout: Making a Mountain King with Felicia Gesior

This week’s Wednesday Workout comes from Central Cross Country (CXC) Team member Felicia Gesior. In her second year with CXC, Gesior, 24, is currently working on coordinating the Bergkönig Trail Run, an annual event that began six years ago to raise money for post-collegiate CXC skiers. Race registration and information can be found here. *** Bergkönig. In German, it translates to “mountain king”. In 2011, it translated to the perfect name for the trail run Northern Michigan...

Eliška Albrigtsen (Formerly Hájková) Heading Three CXC Programs

Many mornings, Eliška Hájek Albrigtsen’s husband, Tobias Albrigtsen, has to peel her out of bed. Living the life of an early bird like her spouse is nowhere near the top of her list — partly because she spends most nights prodding her hubby awake as he finishes his work, partly because she is strung out between four jobs of her own. Being in charge of three ski programs while assisting a fourth is not where...

On the eastern side of the Northern Michigan University (NMU) campus, where Fair Avenue and Presque Isle Ave intersect, a righthand turn presents visitors with a view of the Berry Events Center and the school’s 26-year-old Superior Dome — a semi-Star-Trek-like outcropping in an otherwise conventionally secular setting. Between the two recreational buildings sits another building, the college’s Physical Education and Instructional Facility (PEIF). Designed predominantly as a practice venue for basketball players, the complex...

Lustgarten, Diggins Double Up on Wins at Winter Games NZ

What if getting to snow-covered groomed trails came in three steps — those literally being from the front door to the trailhead. While recent winters may make this seem like a melting dream for many, a number of Americans made it their reality these past two weeks while staying at the Snow Farm in Wanaka, New Zealand. U.S. Ski Team (USST) members, as well as American skiers representing the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP), Sun...

Americans Dominate 2017 Merino Muster and Half Marathon

Visibility was thin and temperatures were below freezing last Saturday at the Snow Farm. Opaque white clouds of fog swept over the landscape near Wanaka, New Zealand, showcasing a skyline that seemed to play on the country’s largest historical farm industry: sheep. If bluebird skies and sun had greeted competitors in previous years, racers in the 2017 Merino Muster experienced temperatures around -5 degree Celsius (23 Fahrenheit) and a four-meter radius of visible track, then...

Havlick Wins 2017 Australian Hoppet; Rose Repeats in Second

When Australian Phillip Bellingham lunged for the finish line in the men’s 2017 Kangaroo Hoppet a week ago on Saturday, Aug. 26, in Falls Creek, Victoria, it wasn’t his fellow Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Gold Team in 2016, Havlick enrolled at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, to obtain a master’s degree in exercise physiology (he received an undergraduate degree in exercise physiology from the University of Utah...

To the Top and Back Again, Bono Sets Denali Speed Record

Editor’s Note: The subject of the following article, Katie Bono, spent one season as a become one, the state is also the home of Dartmouth College, Bono’s alma mater. Though originally recruited for cross-country skiing (she was the 2006 Minnesota state skiing champion), within two years of attending the Ivy League university, she had learned to love what many of her Big Green comrades adored: climbing. Introduced to the sport by the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club...

Caitlin Patterson Races to 23rd at Mountain Running Worlds

Note: This article has been updated to correct Caitlin Patterson’s birthplace. She was born in McCall, Idaho. *** The clang of a cowbell is a sound Caitlin Patterson has heard plenty of times during a ski race — but never while running — at least until she raced the 33rd edition of the World Mountain Running Championships (WMRC) July 30 in Premana, Italy. In her debut WMRC, which Kasie Enman (Enman also competed for the...

Kalla Cranks Out Win in Blink’s Lysebotn Opp; Stephen 6th

There’s a little more than six months to go until the opening ceremony of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. For the recently turned 30-year-old 2014 champion,Stephen finished sixth overall (+3:35.7) on Thursday, after  Norway’s Ragnhild Haga in fourth (+2:43.4) and Pärmäkoski in fifth (+2:47.0). Prior to winning three years ago, Stephen also placed third in the famous rollerski hill climb in 2012 (the Lysebotn Opp was Women |

Summer Success for Sundby, Wins First Race of Blink Festival

Stands crowded with 50,000 cheering spectators. Bibbed athletes clad in shorts and T-shirts clicking by on rollerskis. Competitors representing various countries dousing themselves with bottled water as they cross the finish line. These were among the sights and sounds of the world’s largest summer rollerski-race series, Norway’sjust 10 women.  Slind took the win in a time of 2:20:04.2, while fellow Norwegian Kari Vikhagen Gjeitnes claimed second, 2:11.1 minutes back. Belarus’s Yulia Tikhonova completed the women’s...

BEA Founder and Director Husaby Leaves His Post, But Mission Continues

In the summer of 2013, Bend Endurance Academy (BEA) Executive Director Ben Husaby made what some may have considered a strange company purchase. The two-time Olympic cross-country skier bought an old yellow school bus, painted a pale-blue stripe lengthwise down its side and inscribed the organization’s moniker where an educational institution name once was. Why? Was he planning to shuttle BEA student-athletes to and from school during his spare time? Not quite. When Husaby founded the...

‘Why Not Go Again?’ Patterson Makes Mt. Marathon His Own One Year Later

As with other epic modern-day adventure race series, the fabled origin of Seward, Alaska’s annual Mount Marathon — held every July 4 — began with beer and a bet: who among us can run from the streets of downtown to the top of the 3,022-foot mountain crowding Seward’s skyline, then back to the bottom the fastest? What about within the hour? While the footrace race has evolved massively since the port town’s pioneer miners took...

Goodbye USSA, Rebrands to U.S. Ski & Snowboard

Earlier this month, a group of leaders from World Taekwondo stood smiling before flashing cameras and their newly unveiled organization logo. Since 1973, the sport’s governing body was known as the World Taekwondo Federation, using the acronym WTF to represent its globally recognized organization and mission. But recent mas organizational mark (the master mark accompanied by the words “Ski & Snowboard”), and the launched on June 18. (Article continues below)  The idea to change the logo emerged during...

Wednesday Workout: Aqua Jogging and Plyos NoCo Combo

Following the Women’s Ski Jumping USA national team. In order to train for nordic combined, Armstrong jumps during her scheduled practice times and joins the NYSEF cross-country skiers whenever she can. One workout she likes when she’s not with the NYSEF nordic team is aqua jogging with her sister and cousin, an endurance athlete who also holds the unofficial aqua jogging record at Stanford University. “She really knows what she’s doing,” Armstrong said of her cousin with a laugh....

Wednesday Workout: Redefining Endurance with Joe Howdyshell

You name it and Joe Howdyshell, director and founder of U.S. Ski Mountaineering national team. An average workweek for Howdyshell entails 40-60 hours for the SEA and another four to five hours for his national team coaching duties. His introduction to the U.S. Ski Mountaineering position and sport itself was in large part due to his background in cross-country skiing: he’s been nordic skiing since the age of 12, and he was previously head coach of the Summit Nordic Ski Club prior to...