Long before the “Here comes Diggins” call by 47-year-old Chad Salmela at this season’s Olympics, he was already known throughout the ski world as an athlete and sports commentator. Let’s just say since the now famous call, Salmela’s announcing talents have become more well known. In what now may be considered his spare time, Salmela is a varsity cross country running coach and assistant track and field coach at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth,...
On Saturday Nov. 24th, Ruka, Finland will host the season opening World Cup race, a 1.4 kilometer classic sprint. It’s the eleventh time in a row Ruka will host the first World Cup sprint of the season. The Ruka course is iconic with it’s steep stride-then-run decisive hill before the finishing straight. Former U.S. Ski Team member (USST) Andy Newell provides insight into how athletes race the Ruka classic sprint course. In our course preview...
As the title suggest, we are giving away the keys: Eric Packer, long of the Alaska Pacific University Elite Team, will be posting to our instagram account this week. If you know Packer, his own IG account can be found here, @eric_packer, you understand he has a fondness for the camera lens. He’s a rocket fast skier. But he balances his athletic pursuits by working as an engineer and getting behind the lens. His still photography...
Back in January 2016, Tad Elliott emerged back onto the national championship scene with a win in the men’s 30-kilometer freestyle mass start at U.S. Nationals in Houghton, Mich. It had been some time since the skier originally from Durango, Colorado had felt unleashed from the grips of the energy-sapping Epstein-Barr virus. Elliott went on to make the 2017 Nordic Ski World Championship team in Lahti, Finland. There, it was hard to miss his stunning...
FasterSkier caught up with former, yes former U.S. Ski Team member Andy Newell on October, 8 in Park City, Utah. Newell was in Utah assisting with the latest NEG camp and training with his old cohort when time permitted. No longer a staple of the national team, the 34-year-old Newell has partially turned over a new leaf. He’s still training as a professional skier, but he’s also the owner of a cross-country skiing business called Nordic...
From 2011 to 2014, Sylvan Ellefson, based out of Edwards, Colorado, was on a roar. SuperTour wins, World Cup starts, and a 30-kilometer skate national championship in 2014. Now, at 31 years old, it seems the skier who began his ascent in the sport during high school would rather focus on being a husband, father, brother, and coach rather than draw attention to himself. Based as a business person in Colorado’s Vail Valley, Ellefson is giving back...
In late August, U.S. Ski Team (USST) Head Coach Chris Grover broke his own news, releasing three new sets of criteria on behalf of U.S. Ski & Snowboard, the national governing body for cross-country skiing. The three separate documents discussed by Grover and linked in his blog disclosed the selection criteria for World Cup and World Cup Period 1 team selection, 2019 World Ski Championships (WSC) in Seefeld, Austria, and the 2019/2020 national team. Grover...
He’s another skier who bleeds maple syrup. Raised in Putney, Vermont. Skied at the Statton Mountain School (SMS), Dartmouth, and post-collegiately with the Craftsbury Green Racing Project — take a breath — and yes, still in Vermont as the SMS T2 Team head coach is Pat O’Brien. Thirty years old this summer, O’Brien has been at the helm of one of the dominant elite level programs in the U.S. since 2014. As he begins his fifth...
Last week was a big one for the New England Nordic Ski Association (NENSA). On Wednesday, Aug. 8, in conjunction with a U.S. Ski Team U16 (under-16) camp, NENSA hosted rollerski events at the Olympic Jumping Complex in Lake Placid, N.Y., starting with agility courses designed by NENSA Competitive Program Director Justin Beckwith and Olympian and former nordic combined national-team coach Joe Lamb (complete with rollers, gates, jumps, backward skiing, and a grass runup). buy birth control...
press release detailing its position on the likely closure of the jumping venue. Making matters more complex, it appears Calgary is preparing a bid for the 2026 Winter Olympics. In a study (
Øyvind Sandbakk. If you are new to his name, he is one of the key reasons Norway has remained ahead of the sport-performance curve in nordic sport. If there’s an interesting question to answer with regards to things like double-poling efficiency, Sandbakk or one his students is on it. Yes, Norway has strength in numbers when it comes to cross-country athletes, but they also have a Sandbakk and a cadre of graduate students who keep...
This month, the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team (USST) held dryland camps simultaneously, about 6,000 kilometers away from each other, inSeptember staple on the USST calendar. Meanwhile, four of the team’s men trained together in the picturesque, mountainous region of southeast France from July 9-18. Who was where? In Lake Placid,
And she won that in un-Bjørgen like style by coming from behind to reel in a speedy Jessie Diggins. This brings us to the point that this is the 50th episode of Nordic Nation. So, we wanted to go big. Really, no one is bigger than Bjørgen in the sport. In this ‘Take a Bow’ episode with Marit, we cover motherhood, training, racing, the media, and growing up in a small Norwegian club with three racers. The...
von Ballcap episode, we sit down with newly retired pro-skier Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess in his hometown of Bend. At 32, Dakota, or “Dak” as he’s most often called, had been on the scene for over a decade. In that time, Blackhorse-von Jess won the support of his peers and fans as a skier’s skier. The man is nothing but energy and intellect wound into a 5-foot-9-inch body that ultimately became a sprinting force. His story...
Here’s a link to that piece. Most recently, she drilled down into the
Alison Owen-Bradley was once the American skier to chase to the top of the podium in North America and on the highest tier of international cross-country ski racing. Long before Kikkan Randall, Jessie Diggins, Sophie Caldwell, and Sadie Bjornsen attracted a wave of attention to high-performance skiing with regular World Cup podiums and ultimately an Olympic gold, Owen-Bradley made the U.S. women’s nordic team relevant when considering podium and medal potential. (You may also remember her...
Skiku. Kornfield is not alone in this endeavor: many skiers and coaches have volunteered their time to “to foster the health and recreational benefits of skiing, biathlon and running through sustainable programs across Alaska”. We spoke to Kornfield on May 3 to learn more about his commitment to Skiku and get the rundown on his year. (To subscribe to the Nordic Nation podcast channel, download the iTunes app. If you have iTunes, subscribe to Nordic Nation here.)
Olympic gold medalist, her time and attention have been in high demand. Just a few of those commitments have involved the following: an appearance at the Minnesota State Capitol where she advocated for a Minneapolis World Champs. And just last Wednesday, April 25, Diggins was in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby and Protect Our Winters (POW), lobbying members of Congress about the effects of climate change on winter snow sports. Reflecting on...
