This year was a big year for women’s Nordic combined racing, not in the way 2020 was a “big year”, but in a record-breaking, moving forward to better things kind of way. For those of you who don’t follow Nordic combined, here’s what you need to know: Competitions involve ski jumping, in which athletes are scored based on style and distance, and later in the day, they compete in a pursuit-start skate race based on...
Let’s dial back to mid-March and the close of the 2021 World Championships with the men’s 50-kilometer mass start classic race. Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov and Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo came into the final corner and finish-straight in close quarters for the win. In the real-time fast-paced moment, Bolshunov and Klæbo tangled, with both skiers barely maintaining balance. To summarize, Bolshunov used all available real-estate coming around the final turn. Klæbo, as he had been doing...
*This is the second part of a multi-piece series on photographing skiing, ranging from capturing skiing on your smartphone to taking a deep dive into how professionals capture skiing on the World Cup. You can read part one here. Smartphones are versatile cameras to have on the go, but if you want to take your photography another step further and dive into the inner workings of a camera, experimenting with a manual camera is your...
This article is part of a series regarding female athlete specific physiology and nutrition. To get started, you can find a primer on the menstrual cycle here and listen to this podcast on Nordic Nation discussing female athlete specific nutrition with registered dietician and professional runner Maddie Alm. The survey analyzed here is an extension of the conversation with Guro Strøm Solli on her research on female athlete specific physiology and effects that the menstrual cycle has on training...
By the time you read this story, Vermont’s Sophie Caldwell Hamilton will have turned a fresh thirty-one. Her birthday is today, Monday, March 22. Although Caldwell Hamilton began representing the U.S. Ski Team on the World Cup in Québec City in 2012, she is profoundly Green Mountain State. Raised in Peru, Vermont near where she later attended the Stratton Mountain School, we’re pretty certain that, in a metaphorical sense, she bleeds maple syrup. As much...
* This is a part of a multi-piece series on photographing skiing, ranging from capturing skiing on your smartphone to taking a deep dive into how professionals capture skiing on the World Cup. Just about everyone carries around a smartphone these days. Also, bundled up in that hi-tech rectangle is a tiny, powerful camera. People often joke that their phone takes a better photo than they could with a manual camera. For many users,...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and their 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. Four months after the season debut in Ruka, Finland the women lined up at the start line one last time to conclude a season many were skeptical would even...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and their 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. This is a story that might make Jessie Diggins cringe. We’re here to render her efforts to the singularity of cross-country ski results. (A quick nod – her default is...
“Go back and watch the video,” is something I have heard and done maybe 100 times collectively since the men’s 50 k mass start classic concluded with a winner then a DQ, then another winner on Sunday as the 2021 World Championships slammed the door on competition. To say it was a bizarre scene would be an understatement as Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo and Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov rocketed into and around a sweeping left-hand curve...
This World Championship coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and their 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 was under overcast skies that the men made their final preparations before the start of Sunday’s mass start 50 k classic, the final event of the 2021 World...
This is the first part of a three-part series on Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov. You can find part two here. At 24 years old, Alexander Alexandrovich Bolshunov has become arguably the best men’s skier in the world. He has already secured this season’s World Cup title, to go along with his 2020 Overall Crystal Globe. He has a handful of Olympic and World Championship medals—all silver. At the Oberstdorf World Championships, his least favorite...
This is the second part of a three-part series on Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov. You can find part three here. During the season of 2018/19, there was fierce competition for the overall World Cup between Johannes Høsflot Klæbo and Alexander Bolshunov, who surprised the Norwegians by proving to be a versatile and resilient competitor. Sergey Ustiugov was initially seen to be the main threat to Klæbo’s World Cup campaign, haunting him in the Tour de...
This is the third part of a three-part series on Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov. You can find part one and part two here. This season, the Alexander Bolshunov vs. Johannes Høsflot Klæbo show has been largely sidelined due to Norway pulling from cross-country World Cups due to the coronavirus. When the Norwegians returned to the World Cup in Lahti, the wait proved a pressure cooker of tension. When Bolshunov fell in the closing stages of...
Part one of this series covered regional racing in Alaska and parts of the Lower 48. It surveyed multiple sources suggesting that the true health risk involved with ski racing is not what happens on the race course, perhaps especially in an interval-start competition, but rather what happens outside of it, in the process of traveling to the race, or eating or drinking or sleeping while doing so, or returning to a home community after...
The winter of Covid continues. Most of the FIS races scheduled for this country this year did not happen. A few did. No one in Canada has done a single official high-level race this winter. No one in Vermont has, either. Some athletes from Canada and Vermont did not race and were chosen for international travel teams. Some athletes in Alaska raced a ton and were not. It’s been a tumultuous winter for everyone, for...
Canada’s Katherine Stewart-Jones landed on the World Cup this season beginning in January – and late January at that. The Canadian National Team remained off the race circuit until then due to a variety of issues related to the pandemic. Domestically, Canada took a hard stance on running races. When Stewart-Jones and her teammates raced in Lahti on January 23, their only “race” experience since the end of last season were head-to-head efforts within...
This article is part of a series of interviews with professionals in sports nutrition and female physiology. To get started, you can find a primer on this topic here, and listen to this podcast on Nordic Nation discussing female athlete specific nutrition with registered dietician and professional runner Maddie Alm. Readers who have followed cross-country skiing for several decades may be familiar with the name Guro Strøm Solli. Now 37-years-old, Solli was a member of...
By Ella Hall and Jason Albert So many moving parts when considering Alexander Bolshunov’s aggression towards Joni Mäki of Finland in the closing moments of the men’s 4 x 7.5-kilometer relay in Lahti on January 24. The finish line was in sight for the two skiers as Mäki came around the sweeping left-hand turn into the final straight ahead of Bolshunov. Mäki, it seemed, sensing Bolshunov making a move and advancing in the outermost...
This article provides an introduction to a series of interviews with professionals in sports nutrition and female physiology. Results from a survey regarding how elite US cross-country skiers and biathletes use insight into their cycles in their own training will also be analyzed and shared. An arguably essential component of developing as an athlete is learning how to listen to the signals one’s body sends. Am I skiing easy enough on my recovery days to...
To say Coronavirus is reshaping our world is to state the obvious. Even in the tucked-away haven of the Methow Valley, COVID-19 is having an impact in more ways than one. An article written by the Methow Valley News in October, details how the valley is becoming a “zoom town”, a phenomenon echoed by many mountain towns around the country as the pandemic encourages remote work and less densely populated living environs. Just three hours...