Heading into Saturday’s 15 k classic race, it had been more than four years since Eldar Roenning won a World Cup distance race. But even before he left the starting gate in Otepaa, Estonia, the Norwegian knew that it was going to be a solid day. “I had a good feeling—I was feeling that I was good enough for the podium,” he said. Roenning wasn’t just good enough for the podium—he was good enough for...
If any of the women on the World Cup circuit are still holding out hope that they can beat Marit Bjoergen, they’re running out of time to figure how to do it. With a 33-second victory in Saturday’s 10 k classic in Otepaa, Estonia, Bjoergen remained unbeaten in every individual-start distance race she’s entered this season. The start of the 2011 World Ski Championships in Oslo is nearing, and some are speculating that Bjoergen could...
On Saturday morning, I will be just one of the nearly 15,000 people expected to fill the stadium and line the trails for this weekend’s World Cup races in the ski-crazed nation of Estonia. The country of 1.3 million—the same population as the state of Maine—has produced six Olympic medals in cross-country skiing over the last decade, courtesy of three legends: Kristina Smigun-Vaehi, Jaak Mae, and Andrus Veerpalu. Just how serious about cross-country skiing is...
Kris Freeman wasn’t satisfied with his overall ranking at the 2011 Tour de Ski, in which he finished 28th, 13-and-a-half minutes behind overall winner Dario Cologna. But one thing that was satisfactory? In fact, close to perfect? Freeman’s blood sugar management, as evidenced by the fact that he was able to ski to seventh place in the final climb on the last day of the Tour—less than a minute behind winner Lukas Bauer, and just...
One day after a sports website reported that budding Russian cross-country ski star Petr Sedov was suffering from a potentially serious heart problem, the president of the Russian Ski Association, Elena Vyalbe, said that Sedov had been to see specialists in Davos, and that “cause for concern was not found.” “The final conclusion is not ready yet, but according to preliminary data, Peter’s heart is all right,” his father told the website SkiRun.ru that he failed...
Alex Harvey turned heads at the 2011 edition of the Tour de Ski, capping off four top-10 finishes with 10th place overall. But the 22-year-old Canadian insists that the best is still to come, later this season. “I feel really good, but I don’t feel like I’m peaked,” he said, in an interview on his way home from the Tour. “The plan was never to be in the best shape here.” Harvey’s strong results in...
A familiar and dominating form will miss this year’s U-23 World Championships. According to the website Sports.ru, 20-year-old Russian phenom does not include Sedov, and according to the report in Sports.ru, he will “most likely” miss the remainder of the season. The piece does not cite a source for its information, but nonetheless, the news spread quickly in the European ski media on Monday morning. Russian Eurosport commentator Andrey Kondrashov told FasterSkier in an e-mail...
Norway’s Marit Bjoergen can’t have been pleased when her season-long winning streak came to an end in Liberec, Czech Republic on Saturday. But seven victories in her eight World Cup starts isn’t all that bad. After being edged out for a berth in the finals of Saturday’s freestyle sprint, everything was back to normal in the women’s field in Sunday’s classic team sprint. Led by Bjoergen and rounded out by Maiken Caspersen Falla, the Norwegian...
Saturday morning wasn’t a bad one for APU Head Coach Erik Flora. Just before 9:30 a.m., his athlete Kikkan Randall won a World Cup sprint race in the Czech Republic. And by 10:30, his team had already racked up win number two, as Holly Brooks skied to a dominating victory in the 10 k freestyle SuperTour in Lake Placid. Brooks said she learned of Randall’s victory moments before starting her own race, and harnessed that...
APU’s Holly Brooks began her 2011 domestic campaign 50 days ago, with a pair of sprint qualifier wins in West Yellowstone, MT. One day before that campaign concludes, not much has changed. In Friday’s SuperTour in Lake Placid, a 6 k classic, Brooks led an APU sweep, with an eight-second victory over her teammate Kate Fitzgerald. Morgan Smyth was third, another five seconds behind. It was Brooks’s sixth win of the season, and with another...
Lars Flora finally got the hard course he was looking for. After the two distance races at last week’s U.S. national championship were held on relatively pedestrian courses—to Flora’s disappointment—Friday’s SuperTour race in Lake Placid, a 10 k classic, featured five trips up an unrelenting, steep climb: a full kilometer from the landing of the town’s Olympic ski jumps, all the way up to the take-off point. Flora (APU) made the most of the challenge,...
Just before the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) named its team traveling to the 2011 World Championships in Oslo, Brian Gregg got a voicemail from U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover. Gregg, a strong domestic skier on CXC’s Team Vertical Limit, was ranked eighth nationally, and had a shot—albeit a small one—at being selected to the group heading to Worlds. But the news from Grover was disappointing: Gregg’s results had been good, but...
SuperTour action continues this weekend, as the domestic circuit moves from Rumford, ME, to Lake Placid for races on Friday and Saturday. Organizers are expecting between 325 and 350 athletes competing in a 10 k/6 k classic and a 15 k/10 k freestyle, headlined by competitors from the U.S. Ski Team and the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Club. With two hours until entries closed at noon on Wednesday, Noah Hoffman (USST), Lars Flora (APU),...
Russian cross-country skier Nikolay Pankratov has received a two-year ban from the International Ski Federation (FIS), FIS Anti-Doping Administrator Sarah Fussek said Tuesday morning. Pankratov, who was caught by Swiss customs in September with intravenous equipment and 22 vials of Actovegin—a suspicious, though legal drug—was barred from FIS competitions through September, 2012. Pankratov was sanctioned based on article 2.6 of the FIS Anti-Doping Rules, which addresses the possession of “prohibited substances” or “prohibited methods.” According to...
Eight races at four venues over the course of 10 days is enough to stretch even the world’s best cross-country skiers to their absolute limits—the U.S.’s Kikkan Randall included. Randall wrapped up her efforts at the 2011 Tour de Ski with a 23rd-place on Sunday’s final climb up the Alpe Cermis, for an overall finish of 21st. “Felt pretty good to lay in the snow after that,” she said. The result left her 20 seconds...
Dumped from the U.S. Ski Team (USST) after a sub-par 2010, Torin Koos (Methow ODT) clearly had something to prove coming into the 2011 U.S. National Championships—and he didn’t disappoint. With a victory in Saturday’s skate sprint, Koos collected his second title of the week, coming out on top in a frantic dash to the line with Simi Hamilton (USST) and Lars Flora (APU). Koos’s two victories in Rumford could easily serve as the opening...
At 19 years old and 5’4”, CXC’s Jessie Diggins isn’t all that big. But her performance at the 2011 U.S. National Championships this week has a lot of people expecting big things—and that was before Saturday. Diggins closed out an impressive week in Rumford, ME with a storybook finish in the women’s skate sprint, coming from behind after a fall on the last rise to top Dartmouth’s Sophie Caldwell in a lunge, with APU’s Sadie...
Sun Valley’s Colin Rodgers lost his shot at the 2010 Olympic team after a battle with compartment syndrome last year. But in Saturday’s skate sprint prelim at the 2011 U.S. championships in Rumford, he showed that he still has his speed. With the men’s qualifier concluded, live timing showed Rodgers edging CXC’s Garrott Kuzzy by a tenth of a second, with Simi Hamilton (USST) in third. Torin Koos (Methow ODT) was fourth, and Tim Reynolds...
At last season’s U.S. national championships in Anchorage, Jessie Diggins was a very strong junior skier, but not a whole lot more than that. Fast forward 12 months, and she’s transformed herself into a legitimate title threat through a post-grad year with Central Cross-Country’s Team Vertical Limit. After popping a couple podiums in domestic races in the fall, Diggins put the country’s elite women on notice in Saturday’s skate sprint qualifier at the U.S. championships...
If the men who skied eleven laps in Thursday’s national championship 30 k were hoping for some longer loops in next weekend’s SuperTour in Lake Placid, event chair Ethan Towsend has some disappointing news: unless Mt. Van Hoevenberg receives a huge dose of snow from an impending storm, it’s likely that one of the two competitions will have to be moved to a two-kilometer loop. The SuperTour, scheduled for next Friday and Saturday, includes two...