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. “It’s the right message that we want to send to young girls all over the world: you work just as hard as the guys, you train just as much, you should get...
The second half of this year’s NCAA Championships took place Saturday in Lake Placid, New York, with a 20 k mass start classic which both the women’s and men’s field would race in true, dynamic, mass start style. Packs came, moves went and, in the end, one skier would come out the strongest on the day in both the women’s and men’s races. Thursday’s results left open the possibility for plenty of history to be...
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. No other professional ski race can match the prestige and lore surrounding the Holmenkollen 50 kilometer race held in Oslo, Norway. Win it—and your name will be etched into history. Like all...
The NCAA Ski Championships began in Lake Placid, New York Thursday, marking the culmination of America’s collegiate race season in one of America’s most storied ski venues. This marked the fifth time that Lake Placid has hosted NCAA Championships, and the first time since 2015 when the Freestyle event that kicked off the event was won by Dartmouth Sophomore Patrick Caldwell on the Men’s side, and Austrian Freshman Veronkica Mayerhofer from the University of Utah...
PLANICA, SLOVENIA — Anyone who knows Rosie Brennan, and the ups and downs of her professional cross-country ski racing career, can relate to her mother’s experience at the World Championships here. Walking among the crowds in U.S.-themed clothing, Wiggy Brennan heard the same thing, over and over, from European fans: “We love Jessie Diggins!” — a reference to Rosie Brennan’s gold-medal winning teammate. “And I say, ‘Okay. But what about Rosie?’” Wiggy said. That question...
Dear Readers, I’m writing this from my desk at the media center in Slovenia, where I’m surrounded by journalists all over the world: Japan, Estonia, Scandinavia. I am, literally, the only writer here from North America — the U.S. or Canada. In the past week, I’ve helped the FasterSkier team bring you an array of work: in-depth coverage of the American medal-winning performances, podcasts breaking down each race, and features on athletes and family...
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 — Rita White, Oumar Cherif and Anna Dehler arrived in Slovenia from Minnesota on Monday. The next day, they headed up to the World Ski Championships competition venue at Planica,...
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...