This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. With the mounting success of the American women’s cross-country program, the one prize continuing to elude it has been a major championship relay medal. In some ways, it has become an obsession...
The coaching staff for the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club (SSWSC) huddled around a tinny iPhone speaker set out on a wax bench. It was the last Rocky Mountain Junior National Qualifier of the season in Aspen, Colorado, but there was no illusion about where the main event in North American skiing was last Saturday. On the American Birkebeiner live stream, Adam Verrier and Dennis Kruse delivered the news that one of the coaches usually...
PLANICA, SLOVENIA — If Victoriia Olekh isn’t having her best showing at the World Ski Championships here, she has a good reason: war. Olekh is from Ukraine. The Russian invasion of her country started just as she finished racing at the Olympics in Beijing last year. The Russian military has mined the fields and forests where she used to work out, Olekh said. Air raid sirens went off in the middle of running workouts, forcing...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. Numerous questions have been simmering regarding these World Championships: today’s Women’s 10 Kilometer Freestyle Individual Start brought those questions to a full boil. Could anyone knock the Swedish women from the top...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. Five years on from the milestone of Olympic gold—and ten years on from the milestone of World Championship gold—the event was the same for US skiing; the Team Sprint. Socks adorned with...
PLANICA, SLOVENIA — From the stadium at this Slovenian ski venue, Wiggy Brennan watched on the jumbotron as her daughter, Rosie Brennan, raced with the lead pack in Saturday’s World Championships skiathlon race. Brennan, who trains with Anchorage’s Alaska Pacific University team, was feeling good and gunning for a medal against the best in the world. It’s easy to pick her out, Wiggy said, with her bright orange Rossignol skis. Then, someone crashed. “And I’m...
This World Championship coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. PLANICA, SLOVENIA – Wang Qiang was cross-country skiing’s Next Big Thing. Wang, 29, was the product of a colossal investment from his home country to identify and train potential medal winners in...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. PLANICA, SLOVENIA – A year ago, Canadian cross-country skier Graham Ritchie had reached the pinnacle of his sport: He was competing at the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. His parents? They...
It was the end of the weekend, but the start of a whole new generation of Americans skiers on the World’s stage. Tabor Greenberg, the Green Mountain Valley School attendee and a U16 national champion last season pulled into the final kilometer of a 3 x 5km Team Relay, locked stride-for-stride with the familiar red suit of his Norwegian counterpart. The stadium was ahead, and for the first time clad in a US Ski Team...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. By the time the men’s final started, the procession had all but begun. Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) went to the front, kept the rest of his competitors just out of reach, and...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. Today the Classic Sprints marked the beginning of the first full day of competition at the FIS World Championships in Planica, Slovenia. In the women’s field, there was not a prohibitive...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. PLANICA, SLOVENIA — What a difference a year makes. Last February, the world’s top cross-country skiers were in China, hermetically sealed inside the Olympic Covid bubble. When they emerged to race, they...
All friendships have a mythology, and all mythologies have their origin story. For Annika Martell and me, that origin story takes place in a marsh outside of West Bend, Wisconsin. Anni and I did not meet until college—we were both part of the incoming class of 2020 at Colby College that arrived on campus in Waterville, Maine in August 2016, but my mother and her father were both raised in this same heart of heartlands...
On the final day of the 2023 Biathlon World Championships in Oberhof, Germany, the top thirty women in the world took to the course for the 12.5 k Mass Start. For some, it was the seventh race in twelve days. Under steady rain, the top fifteen athletes from the World Cup Overall standings plus the medalists and other athletes with the most cumulative points from the World Championships Sprint, Pursuit, and Individual races battled...
In spite of steady rain, over twenty thousand spectators packed the stadium and lined the course in Oberhof, Germany on Sunday for the grand finale of the Biathlon World Championships: the Mass Start. The 15 k race format is a head-to-head battle of ski speed and shooting composure featuring the top thirty athletes in the world. At World Championships, start berths are awarded to the top fifteen athletes in the World Cup Overall standings,...
If there’s one competition to watch from the 2023 Biathlon World Championships, it’s the Women’s 4 x 6 k Relay. (Replay available here.) In a dazzling display of biathlon mastery, the Italian quartet knocked down 40 targets with 42 bullets, excelling one after another under pressure in difficult conditions to capture Italy’s first-ever Women’s Relay title. The “Blues” have been investing heavily in biathlon development with their sites set on the 2026 home Olympic...
Coming into this race, the Norwegian team of Vetle Christiansen, Sturla Holm Laegreid, Tarjei Boe, and younger brother Johannes Boe, had never lost a relay. But the windy range and the pressure on the Norwegians to carry Johannes Boe to his sixth straight gold medal of the 2023 Championships proved too much for the team to handle. Already one minute behind in 12th place after Christiansen’s lead leg, the team played catch-up for for the...
Twenty seven nations took part in the Single-Mixed Relay today at Biathlon World Championships in Oberhof, Germany, but none could match the star power of Norwegian duo, Marte Olsbu Roeiseland and Johannes Thignes Boe. They teamed up to win Boe’s fifth straight gold medal at the 2023 Championships, and Olsbu’s record-breaking 13th World Championship gold. But it did not come easily. Though Norway were heavy favorites coming into the race, nothing is certain in biathlon,...
Canmore, Alberta—February 9-13, 2024 The Alberta World Cup Society (AWCS) will host the COOP FIS Cross-Country World Cup for three race days at the Canmore Nordic Centre Provincial Park and one City Sprint in Calgary from February 9-13, 2024. This marks the seventh time that AWCS has invited the world’s best skiers to experience Alberta’s world renowned Canmore Nordic Centre Provincial Park. And a new challenge has been undertaken by the organizing committee, hosting a...
Ever since Hanna Oeberg burst onto the podium for the first time, winning Olympic gold in the 15km Individual at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, she has been a consistent force in the event. She defended her title at the 2019 World Championships, just missed the podium in fourth in 2020, and took silver in 2021. After faltering slightly in the 2022 Olympics in Beijing with a 16th place finish, Oeberg came back today to...