This article has been updated with a link to additional information in an Anchorage Daily News story. ANCHORAGE — The University of Alaska Anchorage announced Wednesday a planned “reconfiguration” of the UAA Athletics Department, which will involve cutting both the men’s and women’s ski teams after the 2020/2021 school year. School leaders will seek approval of their plan, which would also cut men’s hockey and women’s gymnastics, at the upcoming Board of Regents meeting on September...
This article has been updated to clarify the relationship between the junior races now known as FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships and its precursor, the World Junior Nordic Championships and the European Junior Nordic Championships. There are, to briefly traffic in the obvious, 60 seconds in a minute. Sixty seconds in a minute; 60 minutes in an hour; 3,600 seconds in an hour. Skiers measure their lives in these increments; we track total yearly training hours,...
First in a two-part series. Coming next week: The meaning of a single FIS point for national team selection. The recent news that David Norris was not named to the national team by the narrowest of margins, following the application of objective selection criteria tied to an athlete’s position on an overall FIS points world ranking list, has inspired FasterSkier to take a closer look at where these numbers come from. The goal of this...
You may have noticed that health concerns are on everyone’s mind these days. You may also have noticed that your favorite park/ski trail/hiking trail/bike path is unusually crowded, as a nation of stay-at-home individuals ventures out for fresh air and the undeniable health benefits that physical exercise provides. FasterSkier here compiles some recent popular scholarship on the topics of exercise best practices in the time of coronavirus. FasterSkier explicitly does not give its imprimatur to any...
You may have heard that the World Cup is returning not only to North America, but also to American soil, within the next few weeks. The world’s best skiers will be contesting sprint races in Québec City on March 14 and 15; a sprint in Minneapolis on March 17; and distance races plus a mixed relay in Canmore on March 20-22. For all six races, including the five across the border, the U.S. has an...
You may have heard that the World Cup is returning not only to North America, but also to American soil, within the next few weeks. The world’s best skiers will be contesting sprint races in Québec City on March 14 and 15; a sprint in Minneapolis on March 17; and distance races plus a mixed relay in Canmore on March 20-22. For all six races, including the five across the border, the U.S. has an...
There are certain precepts that permeate Brave Enough, the new memoir by Jessie Diggins: Teamwork is good. So is glitter. Self-belief is important. Training hard pays off. As for substance, I have nothing snarky to say about these morals; nordic skiing, if not the entire world, would be better off if we all felt these things so fervently, and it is engaging to trace the development of these themes in Diggins’s life. But as for...
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9XFQaIJgAK/ This article has been updated with comments from race organizers regarding the three North American World Cup stops later this month, and with additional information from the Holmenkollen website. * * * A hundred thousand or so Norwegian ski fans will need to change their plans this weekend, after Oslo health and government officials decided Thursday to hold this weekend’s Holmenkollen races without fans due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. A Thursday Instagram post...
This post will be updated throughout the day with additional information. The last time Erik Bjornsen (APU/USST) raced at mid-season U.S. Nationals, it was January 2014. Competing at Soldier Hollow in a series of races designed to choose the American team for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Bjornsen captured his last mid-season national title when he won the 15-kilometer classic interval start race. He was followed by Reese Hanneman, Kris Freeman, and Sylvan Ellefson,...
Midway through the 2020 U.S. Cross-Country Championships in Houghton, Michigan, a couple of things are becoming clear. SMST2 skiers are skiing very well, with podium finishes for Ben Saxton, Alayna Sonnesyn, Sonnesyn again, Kyle Bratrud, and Ian Torchia. APU skiers are skiing well, with podiums for Hailey Swirbul, Erik Bjornsen, and Swirbul again. And 19-year-old Gus Schumacher of Alaska Winter Stars has arrived, his brace of podium finishes announcing him as likely the most dominant American junior...
This post will be updated throughout the day with additional information. At the final SuperTour stop before this week’s Cross-Country Skiing National Championships, Riitta-Liisa Roponen of Finland took the win in a 10-kilometer freestyle interval start race over the fastest Americans in Sun Valley in mid-December. Friday morning, the scene changed to Houghton, Michigan, but the final result was the same, as Roponen (Finland’s Oulon Hiihtoseura club team) covered two laps of the 5 k course...
A national team uniform for cross-country skiing has to do a lot of things. At the most utilitarian level, it has to wick sweat and aid performance while an athlete pursues one of the world’s most demanding sports at temperatures between –4 F and 40, in steady snow or driving rain or anything in between. At the functional level, it has to let spectators and coaches identify where their athlete is out on the course,...
View this post on Instagram Moving West! I’m excited to share that I have decided to transition away from full time skiing to start a new career as a renewable energy developer in Denver CO. Thank you for being part of my journey skiing. I am so grateful for all the opportunities I’ve had in this amazing sport and I can’t wait for my next chapter in skiing to begin. See you out on the...
View this post on Instagram Teamwork makes the dream work! So fun to run the @nycmarathon with @lizhillstephen and @idasargent . We all ran for @aktiv_usa , just appreciated a great day running with humanity and all got UNDER 3! #bettertogether #aktivagainstcancer A post shared by Kikkan Randall (@kikkanimal) on Nov 3, 2019 at 12:43pm PST FasterSkier previously reported on four boldface names, former Winter Olympians all, who were planning on racing the 2019 New...
It’s no secret that skiers spend a lot of time running as part of their ski training. And even if it’s not their “real” sport, some of them become quite good at it. Hence Scott Patterson wins Alaska’s Crow Pass Crossing backcountry marathon six times (and counting), Erika Flowers takes the victory in The Rut 50k in Montana, or Therese Johaug runs a 10km on the track in 32:20.86 to win the 10,000m at the...
HATCHER PASS, above Palmer, Alaska — The phrase “early season skiing” tends to evoke several things for your average skier: Dark. Cold. Rock skis. November. And so on. Think a training opportunity to be endured as much as enjoyed. Happily enough, none of these things was in evidence Sunday morning at Hatcher Pass, elev. 3,500′, in Independence Mine State Historical Park in the Talkeetna Mountains above Palmer, Alaska. The sun was out. The views were...
National team naming for American cross-country skiing tends to roughly correspond to the overall rhythm of the training year. Team nominations come out in May; World Cup Period I starts are (at least these days) announced in June; American professional skiers then know where they stand early in the summer, and can plan out their training and racing seasons accordingly. So far, so good. A total of twenty athletes were named to the U.S. Cross-Country Ski...
It’s late May. Athletes are a month into official training for the 2019/2020 season. Here’s some recent news of note from the domestic and international nordic ski world. German cyclist confesses to doping following Seefeld sting The police action in Seefeld, Austria, at the time of the 2019 World Championships that led to the arrest of several athletes and this remarkable and candid interview with Estonian skier Karel Tammjärv has led to another athlete leaving...
If you’re reading this website, you’re probably well aware that the nordic skiing training year begins on May 1. In a sport where most races happen between November and March, and demand of athletes that they repeatedly race to the point of nearly losing consciousness, the preparation for race season had better start a long time before that. As the well-worn, but accurate, saying has it, skiers are made in the summer. tretinoin Embracing the...
ARCHANGEL ROAD, above Palmer, Alaska — The tenth annual Race to the Outhouse #2, held amidst the Talkeetna Mountains on April 6, marked a neat bookend to the 2018/2019 race season in southcentral Alaska, and possibly in North America. While this season’s Race to the Outhouse #1 was held in early December 2018, roughly one month later than normal, it still marked the season’s first race in southcentral Alaska, and, behind perhaps only Frozen Thunder and...
