It’s a funny time we live in . . . one in which many of us struggle with harboring multiple opinions on particular topics (especially political ones). That’s me when it comes to whether or not Russian and Belarusian athletes should be allowed to enter the Olympic Games . . . multiple opinions make sense, and no easy or straightforward decisions seem likely. One thing’s for sure: when it comes to those decisions, someone’s going...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. It’s Tour de France season, when the eyes of the endurance sports world turn toward the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Champs Élyssées. For three weeks in the middle of summer, a field of aerobically gifted, whippet-thin cyclists race endless miles across France, conquering knee-wobbling...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. This final installment in the “Bad Sports” series chronicles the actions of those athletes who simply got caught. There are plenty of reasons, plenty of rationalizations, plenty of explanations, plenty of excuses that quickly follows any doping test that delivers positive results . . ....
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. These “Bad Sports”installments have allowed us to spend mid-summer days reflecting on ways that the world’s best skiers have been tempted tempted to misbehave in seasons past, and in the season to come. But the world’s best are not the only ones who may resort...
The nefarious use of performance enhancing drugs is not limited to shadowy old communist nations that once hid behind the Iron Curtain. There are also those many cases involving relatively believable (though equally questionable) explanations of the circumstances—food contaminations, mistaken prescriptions, innocent mistakes, misunderstood limitations and/or applications. As FasterSkier cited in an earlier article, Martin Johnsrud Sundby claimed to have had no knowledge of the illegality of the mechanism (a nebulizer) with which he administered...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. There are many famous innovators and trend-setters in the sport of cross-country skiing: I’m not one of those, though I was around at a time when cross-country skiing was changing fast, and when many voices participated in discussions of what the sport would become. A...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Norway’s great champion, Martin Johnsrud Sundby, would lose his overall World Cup title and his Tour de Ski championship in 2015 over doping infractions related to the use of asthma medication nebulizers. Sundby had been the dominant figure in distance racing for a number of...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. A Winter Olympics on the horizon in 2026 reminds inherently-skeptical ski-journalists of Sochi in 2014. At those Olympics, a whole host of Russian athletes were disqualified due to their involvement in a government-sponsored doping scheme. Remember that one? The secret hole in the wall of...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. The Olympics are designed to be a simple thing: “The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight,” said Baron de Coubertin (founder of the modern Olympic Games)” The essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well.” Those...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. “A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.” So said the inimitable and irascible vaudeville and film comic, W. C. Fields. We can assume his statement was made in jest . . . sort of. What we do know is that plenty of...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. When it comes to the Olympics, every skiing nation may dream of winning the relay, but every skier dreams of winning the 50 k. It’s the race with history; it’s the race with bragging rights. Even more so when it’s raced in Classic technique ....
According to stories released today by the Associated Press, Norwegian cross-country skiing legend, Therese Johaug, has announced her retirement. Only a day after FasterSkier postulated whether or not Johaug was still considering another run at the Olympic Games (which would’ve been her fourth Olympics), she took a new direction—announcing that she wants to be fully devoted to her young family—and stepped out from under one of the brightest Nordic skiing spotlights that the sport has...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Therese Johaug’s Olympic dilemma is fairly straightforward. It’s this: why bother? She’s done everything there is to do in the sport of cross-country skiing—World Cup Crystal Globes (which she certainly won’t chase in 2026), Tour de Ski (which she probably won’t enter in 2026), World...
In all FasterSkier’s recent mentions, suppositions, and explanations regarding Olympic races scheduled to be staged in 2026, one factor has repeatedly been highlighted: the potential for all such predictions to be overturned by the presence of athletes from Russia. The most recent statements from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) report that no such decision has been made yet (though that could literally change at any moment). For the time being, Russian athletes remain banned from...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Track and Field’s Sprint Relay is a full-throttle dash of 4 x 100 meters transporting a sometimes-slippery baton around a single lap of the 400 meter track. True sprinters only, please. Track Cycling’s Team Sprint is a one kilometer max effort in which three cyclists...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. The International Ski Federation (FIS) recently announced its World Cup schedule for 2025-2026. The questions that announcement inpsires are these: does it really matter, and will skiers actually show up? It’s an Olympic year, after all . . . it’s hard for athletes to prioritize...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. With the Norwegian men and Swedish women so likely to dominate the relays, these should be the least surprising races on the Olympic cross-country skiing schedule. But Olympic relays have a long history of not turning out the way that fans, experts, and odds-makers predict....
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo faces a bizarre dilemma of the sort experienced only by stars and legends: either he authors another miracle in 2026—making lightning strike a second time—or he disappoints the whole sporting world. Those are Klaebo’s options as he looks forward to the Olympic...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. In an earlier era of our sport, all Nordic ski races were interval start events; every distance at every championship, individual skiers racing against the clock, disappearing into the woods on a single sinuous track, returning to a finish line after the challenging completion of...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. In 2025, Jessie Diggins won the World Cup overall title for a third time—and for the second year in a row. How can such a terrific achievement end up creating a dilemma? Here’s how . . . American media has numerous and gaping blind spots...