On May 26, Maddie Phaneuf wrote a crisp and revealing blog post about her struggle with mental health issues after the 2018 Olympics. The blog post was titled Invisible Battles, and like many who suffer from a mental health crisis, her struggle was real but often difficult to discuss candidly. Phaneuf does a great service to the community by describing the symptoms she experienced and how she sought help from mental health professionals. Phaneuf...
Kelsey Phinney brings to the sport of cross-country skiing a big-world view as she has rolled with challenges and fine-tuned her athletic performances. First things first: Phinney has become a voice for Parkinson’s Disease advocacy and education. She produced this great podcast episode for the Davis Phinney Foundation titled The Neuroscience of Parkinson’s — it’s part of a broader series from Phinney called The Parkinson’s Podcast. Phinney’s father, himself a former professional cyclist who was diagnosed...
“Everyday has been a new adventure,” were the words from the U.S. Ski Team’s (USST) Kevin Bolger as he summarized his first full-time season on the World Cup. At twenty-six-years-old, Bolger is a relatively new face on the team’s evolving crop of sprint skiers. He was re-nominated to the USST for a second consecutive year this past May. Bolger’s ski path took him to Sun Valley for two seasons as a post-graduate skier. He matured physically...
Press release (FasterSkier will be running an article about the 2019/2020 U.S. Ski Team later this week.)
He is proudly Alaskan and has resisted the temptation over the years to migrate elsewhere. We are talking about twenty-nine-year-old Reese Hanneman who has in fact migrated from his hometown of Fairbanks to the more southern maritime climate of Anchorage, Alaska. So the question has been, is Reese Hanneman retired? After many years on the SuperTour, winning five national titles, stints on the World Cup, and an Olympic team nomination last year, the answer to that question...
As we start to close out the race season, we wanted to provide a link to John Lazenby’s gallery from the Québec City, Canada World Cup finals. The dichotomous weekend was the World Cup beginning for some and a stop for others like Canada’s Alex Harvey and the U.S. Ski Team’s Ida Sargent — both are retiring from World Cup racing.
Vermont based photographer John Lazenby was recently immersed in Seefeld, Austria shooting images of the World Championships. We’re posting this gallery with a few select images from Lazenby’s shots. There’s some culture and some race grit. Two weeks at the world nordic ski championships in Austria meant a lot of people met, a lot of stories seen and heard, and a lot of photos taken, from the ski jumper flying toward the Alps to the...
It’s Junior National time in Anchorage, Alaska. These photos come to FasterSkier from photographer EA Weymuller who is shooting the race scene in Anchorage and cheering his daughter on. Weymuller has begun creating a larger gallery from the Anchorage races which can be found here. Double click the images below to enlarge. Weymuller Photography Junior National photos can be purchased here.
In this episode, we speak with Estonian athlete Karel Tammjärv. If you are unfamiliar with the latest news, Tammjärve was arrested last week in Seefeld, Austria as part of an investigation into doping. FasterSkier first contacted Tammjärv yesterday and in a quick turn of events, Tammjärv offered us an interview this morning. Although the interview was conducted on short notice, we had no pre-conditions when it came to the types of questions we could ask. where to buy vancomycin...
In this episode, we talk with Zuzana Rogers an Anchorage, Alaska based physical therapist who can often be found working with elite cross country skiers from APU and the U.S. Ski Team. We spoke with Rogers on February 19th when she was finishing up a pre-World Championships high altitude camp with the distance skiers in Davos, Switzerland. She currently is assisting U.S. skiers in Seefeld, Austria at the 2019 World Championships. We talk about how...
FasterSkier’s American Birkebeiner coverage is made possible through the generous support of New Moon Ski & Bike in Hayward, Wisconsin. While you are at the Birkie be sure to visit New Moon Ski & Bike for all your local expertise. In this quick-hit Nordic Nation episode, we speak with five-time American Birkebeiner winner Caitlin Gregg from her home in Minneapolis. Lucky for some, Gregg will not be starting Saturday’s race as she, along with her husband...
Cross country and nordic combined athletes have arrived in Seefeld, Austria to prepare for the 2019 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships which begin on Thursday, Feb. 21. To ready themselves for the competitions, athletes, techs, and coaches are trying out the courses and testing wax. Nordic combined athletes are also practicing on the Olympic jump at Innsbruck. Click each photo in the gallery below to enlarge. Photos courtesy of John Lazenby / lazenbyphoto.com .j24a5f {display:none}
Ski testing has ensued. The wax buses and trailers are humming. And you can bet the athletes’ gathered in Seefeld, Austria are revving the engines too. On Thursday of this week, the sprinters will have a go on the first regular day of competition at the 2019 World Nordic Ski Championships. The women and men race a freestyle sprint on the same courses used for last season’s World Cup test-event. American Sophie Caldwell and Switzerland’s...
Putting yourself in another’s shoes – or ski-boots — is an age-old tenant. But it would be truly hard to imagine being twenty-one years old and thrust into the biathlon world spotlight. At least year’s Olympics in PyeongChang, Swedish biathlete Sabastian Samuelsson literally arrived on the scene in his canary yellow race suit — he won a silver in the pursuit and gold as a member of Sweden’s men’s relay team. During his post-race press...
Last Saturday, the American women placed fourth in the U20 relay at 2019 World Junior Ski Championships. In any other year before 2017 this result would probably be headline news; considering that the Americans had the youngest team in the race (you can compare athlete birthdates from the women’s race here if you really want to get into the minutiae), this may well be headline news next year, or the year after that, when the same...
Images from the U20 women’s 1.4-kilometer classic sprint from the 2019 Junior World Ski Championships in Lahti, Finland. (U.S. in white/blue, Canada in red/black.) Images from the U20 men’s 1.4-kilometer classic sprint from the 2019 Junior World Ski Championships in Lahti, Finland. (U.S. in white/blue, Canada in red/black.) Noel Keeffe, pictured above (left), placed 12th overall for the U.S. in the U20 men’s field. He is currently enrolled at the University of Utah where...
This morning we’re running a few remaining Dresden, Germany city sprint images sent to FS from former U.S. Ski Team athlete and Lumi Experiences founder Garrott Kuzzy. Chemijos, lietuvių ir anglų kalbos bei matematikos korepetitorius https://intellectus.lt/korepetitoriai/
This weekend in Davos, Switzerland the World Cup returns for the high life. Many World Cuppers consider Davos to be a high elevation venue and with the thinner air comes a tinge of lung burn as skiers pace themselves around the 5-kilometer loop used for distance events. (Davos sits around 5,000 feet in elevation.) The 5 k loop features a long and steady climb up and out of the valley. Then a technical descent with...
Here at FasterSkier, the primacy of the written word is often emphasized. We remain text driven, but we have delved into videos to help our readership learn more about the sport and of course, we rely on the eyes and vision of sport photographers to deliver visual stories in a way words simply cannot. John Lazenby is a model of the artist and the deep-in-the-trenches photographer who creates some of the images we feature...
Andy Newell of Nordic Team Solutions provides a video course preview of the Lillehammer Triple. Starting Friday, the World Cup returns to Lillehammer, Norway. The racing begins with Friday’s freestyle sprint. The men’s and women’s courses are slightly different. The men sprint 1.6 kilometers, the women 1.3 k. The Friday sprints are followed by a 10 k/15k individual skate. The women and men race on the same 5 k loop. Sunday features a 10 k/15...