The tension in the interval start race comes down to watching the clock. The seconds tick, the time checks pass, the squirm of the of the skier in the leader’s chair only quelled after the top-prospects slide past the finish — and there’s only a reference to time back. On Dec. 12, that was France’s Maurice Manificat, the thirty-two-year-old skate skiing star, residing where he often belongs, sitting in the leader’s chair in Davos,...
IBU World Cup Antholz, Italy Women’s 7.5 k sprint For Marketa Davidova of the Czech Republic it was a career first IBU World Cup win in Antholz, Italy. She won the women’s 7.5 k sprint in 21:40.7 minutes after she shot clean in both her prone and standing shooting stages. Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen placed a close second, finishing 1.7 seconds behind after skiing a single penalty lap after her standing bout. Marte Olsbu Røiseland of...
This Wednesday Workout comes from a true cross-country coaching whisperer: Bernie Nelson. First off, if you aren’t familiar with Bernie — she’s not a dude as the name might suggest. It’s Bernadette, but its Bernie on the name tag. Nelson grew up in Truckee, California as a cross-country ski racer and you’d have to ask her yourself, but she came into her own mentoring aspiring skiers. An informal or formal on-snow technique session with Nelson...
There is nothing black and white about the world of anti-doping. The fight continues against those who bend the rules, lack the core values of clean sport, and play hocus pocus with positive samples rendered negative. When the saga is penned about the anti-doping movement from 2014-January 2019, this much will be clear: strictly defined rules and conditions with hard timelines are mercurial. On Tuesday, the World Anti Doping Authority (WADA) announced Russia would receive...
Some proverbs hang in there. From situation to situation they simply capture, in the moment, how best to move forward. “Patience is a virtue,” has an etymology going way back. Yet the timeworn saying and it’s wait-wait-wait underpinnings helped dictate the outcome of Saturday’s World Cup 1.3-kilometer classic sprint in Otepää, Estonia. That is until Maiken Caspersen Falla broke up the final. But we’ll get to that in a moment. It was the modern course...
2014 is when a relatively green Patrick O’Brien took charge of the Stratton Mountain School’s elite team, otherwise known as SMS T2. In a relatively short time, by way of juggling athletes, wax-teching, training plan writing, and life-living O’Brien has become a problem-solving resource. Jack of many trades, and very much an emerging master of elite level coaching, FasterSkier tossed a general question out to O’Brien for our Wednesday Workout series: what are some workouts...
A strip of imported snow along the Elbe river, iconic architectural reminders of old-world Europe’s city-scape in Dresden, Germany, Lycra, speedy skiers, and teams of two: all the ingredients for the men’s 1.6-kilometer freestyle team sprint. With tight pack skiing a function of the the relatively flat Dresden ski loop, the ten teams in the final attempted to play stay-out-of-trouble-skiing for the six total laps. But with a crowded tag area and tight corners where...
The International Biathlon Union (IBU) came off a two-week break for the holidays today in Oberhof, Germany. The women raced the 7.5-kilometer sprint under mostly calm conditions on a course that had received fresh snow. The fir trees lining Oberhof’s ski tracks were loaded down from recent storms that have passed through the region. The relatively calm and non-blizzard conditions were noted by US Biathlon’s Susan Dunklee in an email to FasterSkier. “The sun peeked...
Link to skate sprint photo gallery. Julia Kern’s young season has been rife with success. Two SuperTour sprint wins, and a second place in this Craftsbury nationals in the classic sprint are among the twenty-one-year-old Kern’s peaks since 2018/2019 elite level domestic racing began in West Yellowstone days after Thanksgiving. As much as her season so far has been without pitfalls, her pathway to the women’s 1.5-kilometer finals was, for Kern, a test of...
Risk is part of putting on the race bib. In an individual sport like cross-country skiing, athletes expose themselves to be judged by place, time back, splits, sector times, overall rankings, fastest (or slowest) times on the day. In the latest version of the Tour de Ski (TdS) overall winners were crowned on Sunday; Norwegians Ingvild Flugstad Østberg won the women’s Tour, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won the men’s. Both were first-time winners. Within...
Link to mass start skate race photo gallery. Always a threat in the grinding and longer distance races, APU’s David Norris positioned himself as the primary disruptor in the men’s 30-kilometer freestyle mass start at the U.S. Cross-Country Ski National Championships in Craftsbury, VT. With the men racing after the women’s 20 k, the 5 k ski loop used for the mass starts had been skied in, with a faster, narrower best-line often making for...
Link to mass start skate race photo gallery. Another distance race at U.S. Cross-Country Nationals in Craftsbury, Vermont and another win for Caitlin Patterson of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project. Count them up: eight U.S. national championships for the twenty eight year old. And in as many days at her home course, Patterson has further solidified both her legacy and the fact she is the distance racer to watch and match as the start gun...
With the ascent comes the end. On Sunday the 2018/2019 Tour de Ski (TdS) Stage 7 9-kilometer skate pursuit brought the Tour de Ski to a close atop Val di Fiemme’s Alpe Cermis. The basic Alpe Cermis stats are stout: the slope approaches a 30 percent grade in sections, and averages 12 percent, and climbs 420 meters in 3.5 k. It’s a lung-buster. After the 60.67 k seven-stage Tour that began on Dec. 29...
Link to Cross-Country Nationals Classic Sprint Gallery. With the thirty men who qualified for the men’s classic sprint heats on Friday in Craftsbury, VT. winnowed down to six in the final, Ben Saxton had already made made his mark in the quarterfinal. The SMS T2 skier laid down the fastest qualifier in 3:18.58 minutes. He won his qualifier ahead of second place skier Zak Ketterson (who eventually made the finals as a lucky loser)...
Link to Cross-Country Nationals Classic Sprint Gallery. For many, there’s no place like home. Tucked into the Northeast Kingdom, the Craftsbury Outdoor Center takes pride first and foremost for making outdoor sport accessible to the region’s children. The icing on the cake is when one of those local kids goes big, skis on the World Cup, and comes home for a classic sprint national championship. Although the in-between details are missing, that’s the short-version story...
Link to photo gallery. The attention of the domestic racing scene has focused on Northen Vermont’. Thursday was the first day of racing at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center which featured a 10-kilometer classic interval start for the women. The home club, Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP), had athletes take first and third in the women’s race. Patterson won in a time of 30:44.7 minutes. At twenty-eight-years-old, Caitlin Patterson won her seventh national title on Thursday. This...
The crux of today’s Tour de Ski (TdS) Stage 5 15-kilometer freestyle pursuit came down to a simple yet taxing pulse of energy. That move occurred well into a race as the day’s main narrative was established by the two charging off-the-front. Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo began the pursuit in the blue bib as the Tour’s overall leader. Under overcast skies, free from the snowstorm that pummeled Stage 4, Klæbo started 15 seconds ahead of the...
Today in Val Müstair, Switzerland Stage 3 of the Tour de Ski (TdS) the 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint course was one star of the show. In two laps of the course, the women ascended a steep climb — even for World Cup standards — navigated technical and high-speed corners, hopped over a small jump, tucked over manufactured rollers, all within roughly 3:30 minutes. With the added technical features over 1.4 k, at an altitude of roughly...
The day is wrapped up in many parts of the globe — the new year has been celebrated, or the anticipation of midnight Jan.1 still tingles for some. In Moscow, Russia at the time this draft was begun, it was 2:30 AM, Tuesday, Jan. 1. For those who follow nordic sport, you know the clock has ticked past the deadline the World Anti Doping Authority (WADA) had set for Russia to meet the conditions set...
For the World Cup seasons 2016-2018, along with Norwegians like Martin Johnsrud Sundby and Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, the name of Russian Sergey Ustiugov was a regular at or near the top of the results sheet. In 2016 Ustiugov marked 11 World Cup podiums. He had another 11 in 2017, and five last season along with the Tour de Ski (TdS) overall title. Ustiugov didn’t exactly suffer a shattering fall from grace. His five podiums last...