We read the FIS Anti-Doping Rules so you don't have to. Here are the answers to a few important questions in the wake of the Johannes Dürr EPO scandal. Yes, he was in FIS's registered testing pool (or at least, he should have been according to their own rules); and yes, they have a biological passport program. Dürr still dodged 14 tests, likely in part because of the short half-life of EPO.
In three Olympic competitions in Sochi, U.S. Nordic Combined didn't end up with the fairy tale some had come to expect after the 2010 Vancouver Games. But with icons in Billy Demong and Todd Lodwick likely in their last Olympics, the story was more about the team closing one book and opening another.
Austrian cross country skier Johannes Dürr says that he began taking EPO in June, after pressure to support his family became too much to bear. He says he acquired it from the former Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, the Austrian Ski Federation is considering kicking cross-country skiing out of the snow sports conglomerate after two scandals in three Olympics.
Already forget what happened in Sunday's 50 k freestyle mass start? The photos tell a lot of the story from start to finish, including Alexander Legkov leading the way for a Russian sweep.
Last season, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen was down and out. Little by little she has built back her fitness and self-confidence, with a secret ingredient: fun. After winning silver in the Olympic 4 x 5 k relay with her teammates from Finland, Saarinen thanked the U.S. women for inviting her to train with them in 2012 and said she had learned that you can't be so serious all the time.
This past weekend, nearly the entirety of the adult population of Midwestern skiers made their way to Hayward for the annual get-together of the ski community: The Birkie. The American Birkebeiner (or Birkie, for short), is the biggest ski race in North America. For many skiers, the race represents their culmination of training for the whole year. Read a first-timer's perspective on the race, the trail, and Birkie Fever.
Sunday's 50-kilometer freestyle mass start was the kind of race Russia had been dreaming of since it won the bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics nearly six years ago. For the first time in Olympic history, the Russians swept the podium, and for the first time in 78 years, a single nation took all three medals in the 50 k.
When Alex Harvey tripped over a pole broken by U.S. skier Noah Hoffman, it summed up the whole Olympics for the Canadian team: if one piece was there, the rest was unlucky. Harvey, Ivan Babikov, and Graeme Killick finished 19th, 20th, and 28th, while Jesse Cockney was "just thrilled to have the start."
With the leaders through 48 k, U.S. skier Noah Hoffman ended up 26th in the Olympic 50 k. He was far from happy with his result - it's "not what I’m looking for" - but said he feels more and more comfortable skiing at the front. Brian Gregg finished 51st and Kris Freeman 57th in the last race of the Olympics.
Late in the race as the pace accelerated, Tom Reichelt took the lead as the course began to open up in the wide fields approaching Lake Hayward. Behind him were Bonaldi and Paredi, hanging on and looking for an opportunity to make a move in the final two agonizing kilometers across the lake. “I was waiting for the others to catch me,” he said, “but nobody did. I thought in the sprint I had no chance.”
Russian anchor Anton Shipulin using perfect shooting and blistering skiing to emerge as the fastest of a four-man lead pack in the waning minutes of a scintallating men's biathlon relay race, capitalizing on a stunning collapse by Norwegian anchor Emil Hegle Svendsen.
It's not every day that you find yourself sprinting for all you're worth down the finishing stretch of the Olympics against Martin Fourcade. But that's just what happened to Canada's Nathan Smith, who not only dueled with Fourcade to the end, but beat him. "I thought I had good chances,” Smith said. “I’m usually pretty good at sprint finishes.”
With three teammates skiing at the front of the women's 30 k freestyle mass start from start to finish, it was no surprise it was Norway, and it wasn't exactly stunning that they dominated the podium. However, the last several hundred meters of the race turned out to be the most exciting, with Marit Bjørgen executing in her usual fashion. The victory made her the most successful woman in Winter Olympics history.
Seraina Boner, the best female marathon skier in the world, was focusing on the Vasaloppet. But then she realized she could go to the Olympics. This week she found herself holding her own in the team sprint, and then notched 9th place in the 30k skate, the best Olympic result for a Swiss woman in nearly two decades. "I can always do the Vasaloppet next year," she said.
Coming into the last prone stage of Friday's Olympic relay, the Canadian women were in second place - an unprecedented position. But five spare rounds and two penalty loops from Zina Kocher knocked them back into 8th. Even though It was still their best Olympic relay result ever, disappointment showed: "This is a relay we could have medaled in, flat out," said High Performance Director Chris Lindsay.
The case of German biathlete Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle seems different from other recent doping cases that involved substances with clearer benefits to endurance sports.
German biathlete Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle was caught using a banned stimulant at the Sochi Olympic Games, as American cross-country skier Kikkan Randall called her “the last person, really, that you would suspect.”
The US Biathlon women came out with both a fire and a desire to enjoy themselves in their last race of the Sochi Olympics: the 4 x 6 k relay. It worked as Susan Dunklee, Hannah Dreissigacker, Sara Studebaker, and Annelies Cook captured seventh -- an Olympic record for their program.
The Ukrainian women's biathlon team was careful not to learn too much about what is happening in Kiev, so that they could focus on their relay race and deliver something that might cheer the country up: a gold medal, Ukraine's first in a winter Olympics since 1992. The women called for a moment of silence in their press conference to honor the 77 dead in Kiev uprisings.
German biathlete Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle, 33, has tested positive for the use of a prohibited substance, according the German news agency DPA.