Everyone’s excited about the three-day mini-tour at the 2010 SuperTour Finals, and why not? Featuring a mass start classic race, a classic sprint, and an uphill climb, the event has something for everyone: sprinters and distance specialists, climbers and all-rounders, fans, and the media. The only ones who might have reservations are the coaches, since they have to wax all the skis and tackle the logistics. But a survey of those here in Fort Kent...
Midway through the U.S. 50 k Championship race on Wednesday, Ivan Babikov was a nation of one. The lone Canadian in a group of five Americans, he was ineligible for the U.S. title. But that didn’t stop him from skiing away with the win, and the $1,200 check that goes with it. Nearing the end of the last of five ten kilometer laps, Babikov put the hammer down, dropping CXC’s Tad Elliot and APU’s Lars...
After four races and flying across half a dozen different time zones in the last week, Kikkan Randall probably had a tough time telling up from down and left from right on Wednesday. But in the U.S. 30 k National Championship, she could still do the one thing she does best: ski fast, and win. “My body really doesn’t know what to think,” she said. “But it’s in good shape, so we’ll just keep rolling.”...
Fort Kent and Madawaska may not be the most scintillating of towns, but there are, in fact, a handful of things to do aside from eat potatoes and chase moose around. We talked to a couple of locals to get the skinny on Fort Kent and Madawaska. Here are some suggestions. Fort Kent In terms of restaurants, there’s pretty much one game in town for dinner, and that’s The Swamp Buck, on Main Street. Nothing...
Ivan Babikov (CAN) has traveled more than 10,000 kilometers since the conclusion of the 2010 Winter Olympics in late February. He only has to go 50 more on Wednesday, but they’ll feel every bit as long and painful as his circuitous journey from Vancouver to Fort Kent, Maine. Babikov is the clear favorite for tomorrow’s U.S. freestyle 30/50 k championships, but racing just 72 hours removed from the World Cup Finals in Sweden, he’ll be...
There’s one way to guarantee yourself a good result in a biathlon race: hit all the targets. In the men’s 15 k mass start World Cup in Oslo, Russia’s Ivan Tcherezov was the only one of 30 starters to do so, and he won, by 26 seconds, over Austria’s Christoph Sumann and Norway’s Emil Hegle Svendsen. From the first loop and first shooting stage, Tcherezov was in the hunt, ensconced in a big group and...
It doesn’t happen that often, but when Russell Currier gets hot on the range, there’s not a lot that can stop him. The Maine native is a notoriously fast skier—but also a notoriously inconsistent shooter. Sunday, at the North American Biathlon Championships, he wasn’t exactly on fire—more of a slow burn, perhaps—but the fifteen of twenty targets he hit was just enough to net him a satisfying win in the 15 k mass start race,...
Seven penalties would normally be enough to take a biathlete out of a race. Not Susan Dunklee. In the North American Biathlon Championships 12.5 k mass start, Dunklee overcame some sketchy shooting to win a sprint finish with Tracy Barnes-Colliander, who was deprived of her third straight victory. It was the first North American championship for Dunklee, and it looked impossible after she missed six of her first ten shots—three penalties in each of the...
Two athletes, two races, four wins. Saturday morning, Germany’s Simone Hauswald and France’s Martin Fourcade each took their second consecutive biathlon World Cup victory in Oslo, this time in the 10/12.5 k pursuit. Their results come after victories in Thursday’s sprint. In the pursuit races, athletes start in the order of their finish in the sprint, so to have repeat winners wasn’t unprecedented. In the women’s event, though, all three podium places were identical to...
Sometimes, pretty good is good enough, and in Saturday’s races at the North American Biathlon Championships, that was the case. Despite a smattering of misses by each of them, Tracy Barnes-Colliander and Wynn Roberts skied to convincing wins in the 12.5/10 k pursuit. Walt Shepard and Marc-Andre Bedard took second and third in the men’s race, while Claude Godbout and Annelies Cook rounded out the women’s podium. “I was a little disappointed with my shooting...
The distance of the first race of the World Cup finals may have been unfamiliar, but the pair of names atop the results sheet on Friday were anything but. Though rarely raced on the World Cup, the 3.3/2.5k prologue was just right for Poland’s Justyna Kowalczyk and Switzerland’s Dario Cologna, as each skied to a convincing victory in the first of three races held in Falun, Sweden. Men Cologna finished five seconds ahead of Mats...
Neither Tracy Barnes-Colliander nor Casey Simons got what they really wanted this winter, which was a trip to Vancouver to compete in the 2010 Olympics. But after today’s 10/7.5k sprint in Fort Kent, those two have pretty good consolation prizes: a North American biathlon title. Pushing through mushy trails, Barnes-Colliander and Simons were the winners of the first event of the three-race championships here, overcoming fields that included Olympic competitors in both genders. While Barnes-Colliander...
You can always count on snow in northern Maine. Throw in skis and guns, and you’ve got a recipe for a pretty good week. Three days of racing kick off this morning at the North American Biathlon Championships in the biathlon-crazed town of Fort Kent, Maine. The fields are small, but competitive at the top, with four biathletes racing fresh off the 2010 Olympic Games: Americans Haley Johnson, Laura Spector, and Wynn Roberts, and Canada’s...
The IOC hasn’t yet decided on a location for the 2018 Winter Olympics. But it’s safe to say that the road to those Games travels through Slovenia, at least for some of America’s cross country skiers. Thanks to a $10,000 grant from the National Cross Country Ski Education Foundation (NCCSEF), and more funding from the U.S. Ski Team, a group of 15 athletes has set up shop in the resort town of Rogla. There, the...
Before the NBC video feed of the cross-country skiing events at the 2010 Vancouver Games reaches a single American household, it must first flow through a cramped, spare, six by eight foot room perched above the bleachers at Whistler Olympic Park. Inside, off two small monitors, is where announcers Al Trautwig and Chad Salmela call the action, with the help of their three producers and researchers. No room for lunchboxes—those are outside the door. Fifty...
As writers and commentators deconstructed the decision to sit Brian McKeever in the men’s 50 k classic on Sunday, the four Canadians in the race got down to business. It wasn’t a good day for Alex Harvey and Ivan Babikov, who were dropped from the lead pack early on. But Devon Kershaw and George Grey had a pair of strong performances, skiing at the front and asserting the team’s status as a force to be...
Whistler, British Columbia – With five k to go before the finish of the men’s 50 k classic Sunday morning, the front of the pack looked remarkably similar to the way it did five k from the start. Dario Cologna (SUI), Petter Northug, (NOR), Alexander Legkov (RUS)—all the heavy hitters were there. It wasn’t until 400 meters to go that things really started heating up, when Germany’s Axel Teichmann threw down a hard attack, stringing...
As much as anyone might begrudge Team Canada coaches Dave Wood and National Inge Braten’s decision to sit Brian McKeever in Sunday’s 50 k classic, it’s hard to disagree with the fact that the two were presented with an agonizing choice. While starting McKeever would have meant making history—the Canadian would have been the first athlete to compete in both the winter Olympics and Paralympics—it also would have meant holding a potential medal contender out...
Saturday’s race at Whistler Olympic Park was about 20 times as long as Kikkan Randall’s best distance. But no matter: the Alaskan more known for her sprinting put in another outstanding performance Saturday in the 30 k classic, finishing 24th—a career-best in the event. It was Randall’s first time competing in the long-distance race at the Games, and only her third time racing over 15 k on the World Cup. Coming into the Games, she...
There are very few athletes in the U.S. brimming with potential like Simi Hamilton. With a national championship in the skate sprint, a win in the qualifying round of the same event at the U-23 World Championships (punctuated by an