Back in 2008, Susan Dunklee chose to become a biathlete after finishing her collegiate ski career. This was a solid decision both for Dunklee and for the US Biathlon program. With two World Championship silver medals, she is the most decorated biathlete from the U.S. women’s team. Born and raised in Vermont, Dunklee finds comfort in familiarity. During the offseason, she is based near Craftsbury and can often be found training with her Green Racing...
We often hear of the pipeline in Olympic sport. The path to the highest level of elite competition. The pipeline is not consistent in diameter: Wide-mouthed at its start, tapered to needle-wide at its terminus. There are many ways to identify talent within a pipeline. In the cross-country ski world, there are incremental benchmarks to progress to the next tier. Within U.S. Ski & Snowboard, for example, skiers in the pipeline begin in the club...
This is Part 2 of a series delving into how biomechanics and movement patterns affect skiing technique. If you haven’t already, start with the introduction and Part 1, which introduces the concept of a neutral spine posture. There are many ways to conceptualize biomechanics, but they all need a starting place. If we think about ski technique, where do we want to start? On the glide leg? With the poles? At the hips? For this...
Gian Franco Kasper, President of FIS for the past 23 years stepped down earlier this month. Under his leadership, FIS grew to be the preeminent winter Olympic sport federation. Yet despite its growth, Kasper resisted most efforts to reform and modernize FIS, and he left the organization much as he found it. In 1975, FIS President Marc Holder needed a hand at FIS and brought in the then 29-year-old Kasper—who up to that point had...
Building a Better Skier is a multi-part series born from the inquisitive mind of a physical therapist and late-blooming Nordic skier. (You can find the intro to the series here.) The objective is to explore how biomechanics and movement patterns affect skiing technique, and more importantly how you can apply these concepts to improve your skiing. To cover this topic thoroughly would likely require a hefty book, so apologies in advance if these articles lack depth or...
I used to think cross-country skiing was a niche sport. Any self-proclaimed Nordic skier can relate to telling someone you’re a “skier” and having them automatically assume you mean alpine skiing. And if you bother to explain what kind of skier you actually are, there’s a good chance they will still have no idea what you’re talking about. Now combine Nordic skiing with the similarly-niche (though better known in Europe) sport of orienteering and you...
The International Biathlon Union (IBU) remains committed to improving its online and mobile products according to a recent announcement. The IBU, along with the global app and web developer Vincit, claims the new products, “will allow fans to follow competitions in real-time, as well as provide a second-screen experience with user-friendly statistics and insights into competitions, personalized user experience, and top-notch content with images and video.” More on this in a bit. Live event streaming or...
No two bodies are alike. This holds true for athletes and non-athletes. As activewear becomes an increasingly popular outfit choice, the clothing market has seen a proliferation of brands — from Lululemon to Athleta, to Girlfriend, the options seem endless. In spite of the availability of activewear, it is perhaps not always designed with a spectrum of athletic body types in mind. Enter Indura Athletic, a small-business startup run by nordic skier Abby Drach. Her...
The decade of the aughts witnessed the decimation of wide swaths of forest in Colorado due to a pine beetle infestation. This was no slow drip affair. What was a tree-to-tree process eventually swallowed whole green mountainsides morphing them into a desiccated dead-tree blight. Those dead trees, unable to hold moisture, were hundred-foot matchsticks during wildfire season. Over the past few decades, an ominous cycle prevailed. Warming temperatures due to climate change made life easier...
Pursuing my interest in the French women’s team further, I was put in contact with Thibaut Chene, the women’s coach for L’équipe de France. Before coaching the women’s national team, Chene worked with the French junior team for four years. Thus, many of the women now at the senior level have worked with him since they were junior skiers. In 2015, the prior women’s team coach, Anaël Huard, left and Chene took over. An article written at...
The Journal of Science in Sport and Exercise recently published a paper titled ‘Preparing for the Nordic Skiing Events at the Beijing Olympics in 2022: Evidence-Based Recommendations and Unanswered Questions’, written by Øyvind Sandbakk, Guro Strøm Solli, Rune Kjøsen Talsnes, and Hans-Christer Holmberg. This is essential reading for anyone who is hoping to represent their country next year, covering the basics of elevation, time zone changes, cold weather, and the possibility of race format changes...
Part I of this article examined Sadie Maubet Bjornsen’s childhood, World Cup debut, and the injuries that she overcame along the way. This article, Part II, starts with a frank look at some of the challenges of being an American World Cup skier, then discusses her overall career highlights, her final World Championships earlier this year, and what comes next. In addition to the injuries, there are some challenges to life on the World Cup...
The debate to run equal race distances for men and women remains. Molly Peters, the head cross-country ski coach at Vermont’s St. Michael’s College, has led a grassroots campaign to make equal distance racing commonplace at the NCAA level and beyond. She’s the lead voice for The Ski Equal Team. The group sent a letter to the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Cross Country Sport Committee, its Equity and Inclusion Committee, and CEO Tiger Shaw asking...
To classic ski, and to do so well, requires an athlete to perform an almost stupidly large number of tasks at the same time. You have to move two arms, two legs, and two ankles in alternation, in almost infinite variations depending upon the snow, the wax, the course, and your remaining energy. You have to mediate between power and finesse, kick and glide, stimulus and weight transfer. In short, you have to balance a...
Living in France for the past year, and with ski racing never far from my mind, I was interested in learning more about the athletes and system here, particularly for the women. While the French men’s team is a force to be reckoned with, both in sprinting and distance, results, or even athletes, on the women’s side are sparse. For example, at the Oberstdorf World Championships in Germany this past season, the French men’s relay...
Last fall, one thing was certain — the pandemic would worsen. And it did. Rosie Brennan, summed up her feelings about traveling to Finland for the first round of World Cups by jumping in head first, masked, of course. “I don’t believe anyone knows the answer [to if we should or should not have a World Cup] as we are all experiencing this pandemic for the first time and still don’t have a full grasp...
Last year at this time, I was primarily gym-ridden. After roughly five months on snow, my fitness was high but my tolerance for the impact and specific demands of running were low. Throwing better judgement to the wind, I gave in to the allure of warm days, rapidly drying trails, and beloved road loops around town, and paid the price. Despite running between zero and ten miles total between December and the end of February,...
Let’s start with some basic gender equality facts in skiing. The first women’s downhill at the Olympics was in1948. Women were awarded Olympic medals in combined (one downhill run and two of slalom) beginning eight years earlier in 1936. FIS has awarded a women’s World Championship in downhill since 1931. The FIS database marks 1967 as the first year for an official FIS World Cup downhill race for both men or women. It’s a different...
Sten Fjeldheim, the cross-country ski coach at Northern Michigan University announced his retirement on March 30th. He coached and mentored at the school for 35 years. This piece from The Mining Journal speaks to Fjeldheim’s legacy and the many accolades NMU skiers achieved under his tutelage. Below are thoughts about Fjeldheim from former NMU skier, U.S. Ski Team athlete and Head Coach, Peter Vordenberg. According to a NMU press release, Fjeldheim had this to say...
According to the FIS database, sprints on the cross-country World Cup began during the 1996-1997 season. That year, American Simi Hamilton was nine years old. And if you listen to any of the Hamilton-lore floating around adventure circles, the Aspen, Colorado native was already eyeing deep-country adventure. We’ll touch upon this often here, but Hamilton moves in the mountains as few can. He’s capable of pushing at near race pace in technical terrain with a...