For the last two years, the U.S. Ski Team (USST) and U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) have been pushing American athletes to compete more in Europe, citing a need for experience in the cutthroat racing environment there. Belying that push, however, were thousands of dollars in prize money awarded to the winners of the sprint and distance disciplines of the SuperTour, the four month-long domestic race series. Those bonuses—$2,000 for each one, for men...
Before flying to Estonia last January, I didn’t know much about that nation’s cross-country skiers aside from their names—and their medal records. Jaak Mae, Andrus Veerpalu, and Kristina Smigun-Vaehi—between the three of them, seven Olympic and 10 World Championship medals. Not a bad record for a country with a population of 1.3 million, or the same as the state of Maine. But while Scandinavian stars like Petter Northug and Marit Björgen blend a certain appeal,...
Two skiers have received more than $5,000 in overdue prize money owed to them after the disqualification of a Russian skier for doping in 2009. This spring, both Finland’s Sami Jauhojaervi and the Czech Republic’s Lukas Bauer confirmed to FasterSkier that they had each received some 2,200 Swiss francs apiece from the International Ski Federation (FIS), for their performances in the 2009 edition of the Tour de Ski. Jauhojaervi and Bauer finished 10th and 11th,...
Stand on the side of a trail at an international cross-country ski race, and it’s easy enough to tell athletes apart as they pass by–you can just look at their spandex. But closing your eyes doesn’t make things much more difficult, thanks to the unique words of encouragement used by coaches of different nationalities. Using some auditory evidence from January’s World Junior and U-23 Championships, held in Otepaa, Estonia, FasterSkier digs into the phenomenon of...
Kris Freeman, the U.S.’s top male distance skier, will have a cutting-edge on-board computer system implanted into his skull this summer, completing his transformation into a race-winning cyborg. Freeman, a type one diabetic, has been racing for the last year with the help of two devices: a continuous glucose monitor and an insulin pump. Those products have helped him render the effects of his disease all but moot. But the computer, constructed by his longtime...
Ski fans who get nostalgic thinking back to the days of the two-day pursuit can take heart—you’re not the only ones. When cross-country skiers Kikkan Randall and Sami Jauhojaervi travel to the International Ski Federation’s (FIS’s) spring meetings, they could be advocating a revival of the format, based on feedback from their colleagues on the World Cup circuit. As the two athlete representatives to FIS from the discipline of cross-country, Randall and Jauhojaervi, who’s Finnish,...
In a gesture of unprecedented generosity, U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) chief Bill Marolt says that has taken a pay cut from his 2009 salary of nearly $652,000. With the effects of the economic having forced cuts to USSA staff and programs over the last few years, the organization released a statement Wednesday that as part of new austerity measures, Marolt agreed to have $4.52 sliced off his pay for the fiscal year 2010....
Scattered across the United States are a handful of skiers belonging to an exclusive club—one that includes Kris Freeman, Colin Rodgers, and Morgan Smyth. Earlier this month, biathlete Tim Burke became the club’s newest member, but not by choice. Instead, he joined the other three when he lay down on an operating table in Lake Placid and went under the knife, to relieve the symptoms of compartment syndrome. Quietly, Burke had endured the condition since...
The U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team (USST) for the 2011-2012 season is expected to be announced in a few hours, according to John Farra, the program’s director. The nominations haven’t been made public yet, but in making them, Farra and Chris Grover, the USST head coach, have faced a familiar dilemma: add a number of athletes to the squad, and dilute an always-tight budget, or preserve the higher levels of support that come with a smaller...
The tour format adopted over the past few years by the International Ski Federation (FIS) has been credited with injecting some excitement and suspense into cross-country skiing—the idea being that lumping different lengths and styles of races into one big event can lead to prolonged, back-and-forth battles and compelling storylines. But this season’s World Cup Final, a four-day mini-tour in Sweden? A total snoozefest. In the last stage, a handicap start that sent skiers out...
Citing an anonymous source, Postimees, Estonia’s largest newspaper is reporting that Andrus Veerpalu, the recently-retired Olympic and world champion medalist, has tested positive for doping. In an article posted earlier this week, Postimees said that an A-sample taken from Veerpalu in January had failed an anti-doping control, but that the opening of his B-sample, which is used for confirmation, has not yet occurred. The details of the report are sketchy, though. No sources are named,...
Kris Freeman (USST) had one last chance to nail it. A type 1 diabetic, Freeman had had two straight races in Sun Valley in which his efforts had been stymied by the disease. Saturday’s freestyle hill climb up Dollar Mountain, the final race in the four-stage SuperTour Finals, was his last shot to get it right. He did, which allowed him to leave behind three other athletes on the toughest section of the four-kilometer course,...
If there was anyone who deserved a beer after Saturday’s hill climb in Sun Valley, it was Kikkan Randall. After winning four straight races here—and the first three in the four-stage SuperTour Finals—Randall (APU/USST) had a whopping 1:23 head start over her nearest challenger in the four-kilometer hill climb up Dollar Mountain, which was handicapped based on results from earlier this week. Randall could have taken it easy. But that’s not the approach that gave...
Four down, one to go. The best season of Kikkan Randall’s career is almost over, and she’s going out in style, having won four straight races at the SuperTour Finals and U.S. 30 k Championships in Sun Valley. The latest was Friday’s classic sprint, in which she skied into the finish with a clear, two-and-a-half second lead over her roommate, Canadian Chandra Crawford, with Utah’s Maria Graefnings in third. Under a hot sun, the finals...
After the quarters and semifinals of Friday’s classic sprint in Sun Valley, it looked like there would be two separate races in the men’s final. The first would be for Andy Newell (USST/SMS), who had dominated his first two heats and looked to be in a class by himself. The second would be between Lars Flora (APU) and Mike Sinnott (SVSEF), who were locked in a battle for first place in the overall SuperTour sprint...
At the top of the results sheet for Friday’s classic sprint qualifier in Sun Valley, there weren’t any surprises: Kikkan Randall, Ida Sargent, and Chandra Crawford were the top three women, and Andy Newell, Simi Hamilton, and Skyler Davis were the top three men. But scanning down and looking through the rest of the top 30, one name was conspicuously absent: that of Kris Freeman, who was the overall leader of the SuperTour Finals mini-tour...
If practice makes perfect, it makes sense that there were a lot of hurting units in Tuesday’s skate prologue in the Sun Valley, which was the first stage of the 2011 SuperTour Finals. The prologue format has only been raced a couple of times on the domestic circuit, and while a number of teams and athletes have tested the distance in time trials, there’s only so much you can simulate it without a bib on....
Kikkan Randall was supposed to be the one to ski away from the field in Wednesday’s mass start classic race. In the women’s 10 k, she did. But so did her fellow U.S. Ski Team member Kris Freeman in the men’s 15 k—and in even more impressive fashion. After a mid-race cash sprint at the five kilometer-mark began splintering the field, Freeman flat-out broke it with a counterattack, distancing a five-strong chase group that included,...
The U.S. Ski Team’s Liz Stephen was in Sun Valley for the last few days, attending the national championship in the 30 k classic and the SuperTour Finals. But she wasn’t racing: instead, she was limited by a foot injury to cheering from the side of the trail. For the past month and a half, Stephen has been enduring severe pain while training and racing, stemming from inflammation in her heels near a bony enlargement...
The way Kikkan Randall skied in Sun Valley on Wednesday, she still wasn’t beatable. But at the very least, she showed that she’s human. Randall had won Tuesday’s prologue, the opening stage of the 2011 SuperTour Finals, with a thoroughly dominating performance, putting more than 15 seconds into her nearest competitors in a seven-minute race. In Wednesday’s 10 k mass-start classic, Randall (APU/USST) was again impressive—at least, for nine kilometers. Heading out on her last...