Russian cross-country skier Nikolai Pankratov faces a two-year ban from competition after being caught with intravenous equipment and 22 vials of actovegin, a drug derived from calf’s blood. Pankratov, who is not on Russian national team, had spent time training in Norway in August. He was detained at the Swiss border on Monday, according to
Evidence of autumn abounds at the U.S. Ski Team’s camp in Sun Valley. Temperatures on Thursday struggled to break 50 degrees, there’s snow in the mountains outside town, and with three time trials over the next week and a half, the team’s training focus has shifted from volume to intensity. But despite the signs of the inexorable creep towards winter, nobody’s getting ahead of themselves. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, still,” said...
As I pulled into the parking lot in Lake Placid at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, two hours before the launch of my ski jumping career, I was feeling an appropriate amount of trepidation. Not none, but not a jaw-clenching, heart-thumping terror, either. More like pre-race nerves. I got out of the car, carried my backpack up to the lodge, and took a look around. I could see four ski jumps: the two gigantic Olympic...
How do you get dozens of youngsters to try out a sport like ski jumping? For the staff of the New York Ski Educational Foundation (NYSEF), that’s not just an idle question to ponder. It’s crucial for the club to attract large numbers of kids to try out the sport if they want to turn out athletes with hopes of ever competing at an elite level. From the outside, ski jumping seems like it should...
Former Olympian and U.S. Ski Team member Andrew Johnson is heading to the University of Vermont as the new assistant coach of the school’s cross-country ski program. Johnson did not respond to a request for comment, but UVM Head Coach Patrick Weaver confirmed on Monday morning that Johnson had accepted a position with the university. “We’re really excited to have him,” Weaver said. The assistant coaching job is full-time, but Johnson will also be able...
For the past two years, Norway’s Petter Northug has been the best in the world. One look at the medals tables from the 2009 World Championships and 2010 Olympic Games serves as proof: Over the 12 competitions at those two events, Northug took gold in five of them, and reached the podium on two other occasions. FasterSkier had the opportunity to talk with Northug over breakfast in Las Vegas in July, immediately following the rollerski...
The harder the race, the greater the chance you’ll see Ivan Babikov at the top of the result sheet. So it’s no surprise that he uses a brutally difficult training session to prepare himself for the winter. In an interview from his home in Canmore, Babikov said that this workout – a variation on bounding intervals – was a holdover from his younger days training in Russia. In Canada, Babikov said, most athletes do their...
Cross-country skiers and country music singers don’t have a whole lot in common, but just like Garth Brooks, CXC’s Garrott Kuzzy has got friends in low places. After meeting Kuzzy at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, Australian National Team Coach Finn Marsland invited Kuzzy Down Under for some training and racing at the Falls Creek resort. Kuzzy arrived in Australia last Wednesday, and has already competed in the country’s national championships in the 10...
A few days before competing in the Engadin Marathon in Switzerland last March, Ben Sim stood atop a snow-covered hill in Germany. Sim, an Australian, was about to find out whether he could make the jump from cross-country skiing to nordic combined. Literally. Observing were Finn Marsland, the coach of the Australian cross-country ski team, and Fabian Mauz, a German coach who had assisted some Australian athletes at the Junior World Championships in the Black...
There aren’t many people who can spend more time in work boots than cycling shoes and still harbor reasonable hopes of keeping up in a bike race with Tour de France veterans. But count American nordic combined skier Billy Demong as one of the few members of that group. Over the past few years, Demong has been an avid bike racer during the off-season. This summer, though, he’s been more focused on remodeling his house...
It’s not quite the same as a Nike-Reebok merger, but Wednesday’s acquisition of Toko by Swix Sport will dramatically alter the ski industry’s competitive landscape—at least behind the scenes. Consumers will see few changes to the products stocked on store shelves. But according to Swix Sport USA President Steve Poulin, his company now controls nearly 75 percent of the worldwide market share for wax and tools, and almost 90 percent in the U.S. According to...
What do you do when you can’t keep up with Andy Newell? For most of us, the answer is that we continue on with our normal lives, content to compete for a spot in the elite wave at the American Birkebeiner rather than the top spot on a World Cup podium. But Steinbock Racing’s Chris Cook was not so easily deterred. Instead of giving up, he turned to a sprint workout: sets of all-out 30-second...
Sure, it’s only August. Sure, it’s the Southern hemisphere. And yeah, okay, the Americans and Canadians have been training over 20 hours a week during their camps in New Zealand. But all this notwithstanding, most people would still agree that winning a skate sprint over Andy Newell is a great way to start your rookie season on the U.S. Ski Team. And that’s what Simi Hamilton did on Saturday, nipping Newell by inches at the...
One day into their three-race series in New Zealand, it’s U.S. 1, Canada 1. In Friday’s 10/15 k classic mass start at the Waiorau Snow Farm, the North American teams stamped their authority on the trails of the southern hemisphere. In the women’s race, Liz Stephen (USA) bested teammate Morgan Arritola in a lunge at the line, while Canada’s Devon Kershaw took the victory over American Kris Freeman in the men’s edition. Kikkan Randall (USA),...
In Las Vegas, where FasterSkier had the opportunity to interview Marcus Hellner, the Swedish skier was able to stay relatively undercover. At the card table, such was his anonymity that he had other players thinking he was a professional poker player, not a professional athlete. But in Europe, and especially in Sweden, Hellner is a star. At the Olympics in February, he vanquished rival Petter Northug, breaking the Norwegian’s pole on the way to winning...
At 23 years old and without a college degree, Willy Graves does not seem like the kind of guy who could compete with scientists at wax companies like Swix or Toko. But armed with a blender in the confines of his garage, Graves has invented a product that just might eat into those companies’ market shares—at least a little bit. Along with his former teammate Eric Camerota, Graves, a recently-retired U.S. nordic combined B-teamer, has...
University of Utah Director of Skiing Eli Brown has resigned, leaving his job at the helm of one of the country’s most storied programs. In an interview, Brown cited a desire to spend more time with his family combined with changes to the direction of the Utah program as the reasons for his decision. When the University finds a replacement, Brown will be heading to join his wife and two children on the family farm...
Four months after the conclusion of the Vancouver Paralympic Games, Canada’s Para-Nordic Ski Team has suffered cuts amounting to roughly one-third of its total budget. According to Cross-Country Canada Executive Director Davin Macintosh, the cuts represented 56 percent of the program’s funding from Own the Podium (OTP), the high-performance sports initiative that was set up to propel Canadian athletes to medals at the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver. The exact impacts of the...
If one of his athletes was forced to endure a serious injury, U.S. Nordic Combined Head Coach Dave Jarrett would probably prefer that it happen to Johnny Spillane. Earlier this week, Spillane—the 29-year-old triple Olympic silver medalist—was diagnosed with a torn ACL and MCL in his left knee, which will likely require at least four months of recovery. But according to Jarrett, after several injuries over the past few years, Spillane is “a pro at...
In the voice mail he leaves me with directions to his cabin in the woods, Andy Newell gives me the street address—number 380—but tells me to just give him a call when I get close, since it’s not marked. But when I drive through the nearest town, he doesn’t answer, and then, predictably, when I find 376 and 382 a mile down the dirt road, I don’t have cell service. After driving past two surly-looking...