Jason Albert – Page 12

Ski Clubs and the Urban Hurdle Part 1: Momentum Northwest Makes it Work in Seattle

Jason AlbertJuly 31, 2019

This is part one of a series featuring urban based cross-country clubs and how they make it work in the concrete jungle. It’s no mystery that some kids simply have better access to snow than others. When looking at population density clusters and access to snow, some win, some lose, and some make the best with what they have. Since the early nineties when great coffee, grunge, the outdoors, and tech jobs made Seattle a...

Interviews News

Connor Green: An American in Biri, Norway Building Skis

Jason AlbertJuly 26, 2019

Twenty-three-years-old, a mechanical engineering degree from Harvard in hand, and a love for cross-country skiing. Lots of opportunity. Connor Green, raised in Rochester, New York, deep into cross-country skiing, and a brain fixated on asking questions and solving problems through better engineering has brought his services to Biri. He is a product engineer with Madshus AS in Norway. Green was interviewed this past May. After hearing that Green worked for Madshus through a

Interviews News

After 23 Years, Luke Bodensteiner Exits U.S. Ski & Snowboard

Jason AlbertJuly 15, 2019

Singularly focused on winning and the commensurate hardware that validates that supremacy, 48-year-old Luke Bodensteiner will leave U.S. Ski & Snowboard after a 23 year run with the organization. For the last 12 years, Bodensteiner has served as the organization’s Chief of Sport. His job description placed him at the helm of US Ski & Snowboard’s teams. Bodensteiner was a cross-country athlete at the University of Utah, a U.S. Ski Team member, and a two-time...

General News

The EPA and Regulating the Ski Wax Industry

Jason AlbertJuly 9, 2019

There’s truth in jest as the saying goes. While FasterSkier’s April 1 piece made light of the issues, it hit home in some unexpected places. During one of FasterSkier’s conversations with the Environmental Protection Agency to examine why it had begun investigating the importation and sale of perfluorinated waxes, the EPA’s representatives cited the April 1 piece to question why FasterSkier had begun reporting on the issue. Whether readers appreciated the humor or not, the...

General Interviews News

A Half Ironman Win: Next Up for Kris Freeman, the Lake Placid Ironman

Jason AlbertJuly 5, 2019

This is the second story following Kris Freeman as he builds towards his first Ironman triathlon in late July. You can read part 1 here. *** They are not baby steps, but they are incremental steps. Retired elite cross-country skier Kris Freeman has been eyeing the Lake Placid Ironman triathlon on July 28. As part of his step by step race and training plan for the full Ironman, Freeman contested an Olympic distance tri...

Multimedia Nordic Nation Podcasts

Nordic Nation: Finding Balance with Maddie Phaneuf

Jason AlbertJune 26, 2019

On May 26, Maddie Phaneuf wrote a crisp and revealing blog post about her struggle with mental health issues after the 2018 Olympics. The blog post was titled Invisible Battles, and like many who suffer from a mental health crisis, her struggle was real but often difficult to discuss candidly. Phaneuf does a great service to the community by describing the symptoms she experienced and how she sought help from mental health professionals. Phaneuf...

News Team nominations

Alpine Insurance Alberta World Cup Academy Team Announcement 2019-2020 (Press Release)

Jason AlbertJune 21, 2019

For Immediate Release Alpine Insurance Alberta World Cup Academy Team Announcement Press Release June 11, 2019 Canmore – The Alpine Insurance Alberta World Cup Academy is proud to announce our new team for the 2019-20 season. Comprised of two formal training groups, one in Calgary and one in Canmore, the 2019-20 team is the most diverse group of athletes to date. Led by six national team members, Emily Nishikawa, Dahria Beatty, Elizabeth Elliott, Benita Peiffer,...

General News US Biathlon

IBU Moves Forward on Building Equity

Jason AlbertJune 20, 2019

The numbers speak the truth when it comes to leadership in Olympic sport. Let’s take International Technical Officials (ITOs), the people responsible for a range of duties like enforcing rules and race timing protocol during competition. Across four Olympics, including summer and winter Games from 2010-2014, women constituted no greater than 30 percent of ITOs. On the coaching side, the numbers were starker. Between 2010 and 2014, female accredited coaches at the Olympics never rose...

Doping General News

FIS and CAS Anti-Doping Division Sign Agreement

Jason AlbertJune 18, 2019

FIS recently signed an agreement with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that ceded its adjudication power in doping cases to the CAS Anti-Doping Division or ADD. The CAS ADD is touted as a body able to make independent decisions when reviewing suspected doping violations. Prior to the agreement in early May, the most basic process for adjudicating a FIS initiated doping violation progressed within the organization. Once evidence for...

General News US Ski Team

The Seeds of Collaborative Coaching

Jason AlbertJune 14, 2019

Fostering cultural change within complex organizations is painstaking. U.S. Ski & Snowboard is no different. Most often the most effective type of change comes less from edict and more from many a collection of stakeholder’s voice For the past decade, the U.S. cross-country team has had unparalleled success. Whether the metric is developing athletes to winning medals, most observers see a winning culture. That has not kept the minds at U.S. Ski & Snowboard from...

Resources Training Workouts

Wednesday Workout: Lizzie Larkins and Ski Tunnel Hot Laps

Jason AlbertJune 12, 2019

In September, I got an email from my high school club coach, Gus Johnson, about an opportunity to go to Östersund, Sweden to start the summer. The camp entailed participating in some research being conducted at the Swedish Winter Sports Research Center of the Mid Sweden University and training with college age skiers in a part of the world that I had never been to. I decided to Öster-send it, and a little more...

General News Racing Training

From World Cups to Triathlons: Kris Freeman’s Diabetes Management and Pushing the Envelope

Jason AlbertJune 7, 2019

Kris Freeman manages Diabetes. He did this on the World Cup for years and at four Olympics. He remains a competitor and continues to test himself since retiring from elite level skiing in 2018. “Retired” for Freeman means remaining fit and jumping into the odd cross-country ski race: he placed third this year in the National Championship 15-kilometer classic race in Craftsbury, Vermont. Freeman has turned his attention and his considerable capacities to triathlons. We...

Resources Training

Wednesday Workout: Evaluating the Training Year with Caitlin Patterson

Jason AlbertJune 5, 2019

This Wednesday Workout dives into one athlete’s approach to reviewing last season’s training and how to move forward. Newly minted U.S. Ski Team member and longtime Craftsbury Green Racing Project athlete Caitlin Patterson provides the details. *** Looking back on a year of training is an important part of planning the year ahead. My first step is to think broadly over the past year as a whole and to ask myself a series of...

General News Racing World Cup

IMHO: The Most Challenging Cross-Country World Cup Courses

Jason AlbertJune 4, 2019

At the close of the season, after some striding and skating on some heavy courses, FasterSkier sent out a query to get some athletes’ opinions on which course (distance and sprint) was the most difficult? We also asked which specific World Cup climb was the deepest-dig grind. Here are the responses. We’ve included some course profiles for reference at the end of the piece. In your opinion what World Cup distance course is the most...

Multimedia Nordic Nation Podcasts

Nordic Nation: Real Life with Kelsey Phinney

Jason AlbertMay 29, 2019

Kelsey Phinney brings to the sport of cross-country skiing a big-world view as she has rolled with challenges and fine-tuned her athletic performances. First things first: Phinney has become a voice for Parkinson’s Disease advocacy and education. She produced this great podcast episode for the Davis Phinney Foundation titled The Neuroscience of Parkinson’s — it’s part of a broader series from Phinney called The Parkinson’s Podcast. Phinney’s father, himself a former professional cyclist who was diagnosed...

General News Opinion

“The Norwegian Way”: From HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel

Jason AlbertMay 21, 2019

If you happen to have an HBO subscription, this evening, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel will air a segment titled, The Norwegian Way. You can tune in/log in at 10 p.m. ET/PT for HBO’s exclusive. The impetus for Real Sports’ investigation appears to have been Norway’s overwhelming success at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Norway won an unprecedented 39 medals in PyeongChang. In cross-country skiing alone, Norway won 14 medals. Russia was second with eight medals. “When we are...

News US Ski Team

Bernie Nelson Leads the U.S. Development Team into a New Era

Jason AlbertMay 20, 2019

There are days skiing here in Bend, Ore. when the privilege of sliding on groomed trails becomes ho-hum. Maybe you’re not feeling the energy buzz. Maybe the technique is breaking down. First world problems. But we stress about them anyhow. Those are the days when it’s a sight to see Bernie Nelson gliding along. She gobbles up the meters as she presents a holy grail of vertically stacked imagery. Hip, knee, and ankle perfectly aligned....

Multimedia Nordic Nation Podcasts

Nordic Nation: The Steady State Episode with Kevin Bolger

Jason AlbertMay 14, 2019

“Everyday has been a new adventure,” were the words from the U.S. Ski Team’s (USST) Kevin Bolger as he summarized his first full-time season on the World Cup. At twenty-six-years-old, Bolger is a relatively new face on the team’s evolving crop of sprint skiers. He was re-nominated to the USST for a second consecutive year this past May. Bolger’s ski path took him to Sun Valley for two seasons as a post-graduate skier. He matured physically...

News US Ski Team

USST 2019-2020 Nominations: The Breakdown

Jason AlbertMay 9, 2019

On May 6, U.S. Ski & Snowboard sent out a press release announcing the 2019-2020 U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team (USST). Twenty athletes were named to the team comprised of A, B, and D-Team selections. One of the most notable aspects of this year’s iteration of the USST is that all 20 skiers were nominated by meeting objective criteria. No athletes were discretioned despite the published criteria including language for discretionary picks and no specific limitation...

Community

Bridging the Gap: Nordiq Canada’s Female Coach Mentorship Program

Jason AlbertMay 8, 2019

It is no secret that the lineup of coaches, wax techs, and support staff in high level cross country skiing is predominantly male; while the percentage of female coaches and support staff varies by country, it is far from 50-50 across the board. The degree to which nations are addressing this disparity also varies. On March 20th, the Women’s Committee of Nordiq Canada launched its second iteration of the Female Coach Mentorship program, which provides...

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