After Susan Dunklee turned in the best-ever U.S. women's performance in an Olympic sprint, Sara Studebaker clocked in at 44th and Annelies Cook in 53rd, while Hannah Dreissigacker just missed the cutoff for Tuesday's pursuit in 65th. "So actually getting there, it’s a huge feeling for me," Cook said of her first Olympic finish.
Erik Bjornsen and Brian Gregg are looking to use today's 30 k skiathlon to boost their performances later in the Olympics, where Bjornsen is focusing on the 15 k classic and Gregg on the 50 k skate. Graeme Killick of Canada, meanwhile, adjusted to not being in the front with a huge gap. Kris Freeman struggled in the skiathlon, and he and coach Zach Caldwell are doing some soul-searching to figure out why.
Martin Johnsrud Sundby held onto his medal from Sunday's skiathlon -- his first at an Olympic Games -- while the Russian ski association attempted to make a second appeal on the grounds that Sundby cut off Maxim Vylegzhanin.
A single errant bullet forced Dunklee into a penalty lap and pushed her down to 14th place on the day — tantalizingly close to the podium, but still good enough for the best-ever Olympic finish in a sprint race by an American woman,
Anastasiya Kuzmina of Slovakia hasn't won a race in over a year, but today she repeated her Olympic sprint title from Vancouver, shooting clean and skiing the fourth-fastest time of the day. Olga Vilukhina, a Russian biathlete who this season switched to the training group of Vladimir Korolkevich, which also included two athletes who recently failed doping tests, took silver.
In the wrong place at the wrong time three months ago when he slipped on ice and tore ligaments in his ankle, Switzerland’s Dario Cologna made sure he was in position to do something stellar on Sunday at the first men's cross-country ski race of the Olympics. He won his second Olympic gold, beating the defending champion Marcus Hellner or Sweden to the line.
Alex Harvey, the Canadian medal hopeful, placed 18th in the Olympic pursuit, hindered by a pair of classic skis that he said were both slick and slow. Noah Hoffman led Americans in 35th.
For most, the Olympic experience goes much deeper than results, and that couldn't have been more true for several North Americans competing at the highest stage of their sport for the first time on Saturday. U.S. cross-country skier Jessie Diggins emerged in eighth and Canadian biathlete Nathan Smith tallied 13th to highlight the day.
Setting out on the last loop of today's 10 k sprint, Jean Philippe Le Guellec of Canada as sitting in fourth - all he had to do was make up a couple of seconds to earn a medal. But on Sochi's treacherous and brutally difficult course, Le Guellec gave it his all and still ended up fifth. It bettered his previous record for a Canadian men's Olympic performance by one spot; teammate Nathan Smith placed 13th.
Norwegian Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, 40, won the 10 k sprint at the 2014 Olympics on Saturday — earning his seventh career gold and 12th Olympic medal, besting competitors half his age over 10 kilometers of skiing and two rounds of shooting.
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On the eve of the Olympics, the air of excitement and anticipation among the Norwegian cross-country team was wiped out by the death of Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen’s younger brother, Sten Anders. Together, their women overcame adversity and put three in the top four of Saturday's skiathlon, with Marit Bjørgen leading the charge.
While the 15 k skiathlon, the first cross country ski race of the Olympic Games, could have been a warm-up, it turned into much more for the U.S. women: Jessie Diggins rocketed her way into eight, the best finish ever by a U.S. woman at the Games, and Liz Stephen placed 12th.
One of FasterSkier's three journalists in Sochi reports his first impressions.
Canada's Rosanna Crawford says that some features of the Sochi course have stayed the same since the World Cup visited last year: the big climbs, the shooting range with an easy approach and huge retaining walls which cut the wind. But as Max Cobb explains, some changes have been made to the courses as well based in part on Organizing Committee layout errors.
With the Winter Olympics set to kick off in earnest with the Opening Ceremony on Friday night, the Canadian National Cross-Country Team is ready to go in the mountain village of Krasnaya Polyana, where it's been training for the last few days. This is the story of how their team grew by two just a few weeks before the Olympics, shortly after the official nomination.
En Sochi, Alex Harvey parle de Québec et le niveau des athlètes seniors et juniors, fondeurs et biathlètes, de son province. Il est fier des résultats Québecois aux championnats mondiales juniors, et il a de grands éspoirs pour l'avenir. / In another bilingual piece, Alex Harvey talks about Quebec and the level of athletes, junior and senior, skier and biathlete, in his province.
FasterSkier caught up last month with Pete Vordenberg, the former head coach of the U.S. Ski Team. A former Olympic cross-country skier himself, Vordenberg coached with the American team for 10 years before resigning after the 2012 season.
The NorAm circuit resumed last weekend with the three-day Eastern Canadian Championships in Cantley, Quebec, where Graham Nishikawa and Alysson Marshall of the Canadian Senior Development Team both picked up two wins. Before the Western Championships Feb. 13-16, some are considering racing over in Europe.
With the Olympics starting Thursday and jam-packed week behind us, it’s almost futile to try and recap it all. But here’s the lowdown of what happened: The Junior/U23 World Champion began in Val di Fiemme, Italy, the final World Cup weekend before the Olympics took place in Toblach, Italy and NorAm racing continued at the Eastern Canadian Championships in Cantly, Quebec.