If you’ve read the International Ski Federation’s (FIS) website in the last few weeks and deviated from exploring the cross-country sub-site, U.S. alpine star Mikaela Shiffrin has been prominently featured. Her season was record-breaking. With 17 wins, she set a FIS World Cup record for alpine victories in a single season. With the fattening of her win total, was the commensurate growth of her bank account. She became the first World Cup...
Biathlete of the Year With the 2018/2019 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is running a series of articles highlighting some of the players and performances from the season. This honor goes to the outstanding North American biathlete on the international circuit. About ten seconds into the IBU TV interview with U.S. biathlete Clare Egan that follows, her first statement regarding her then career-best World Cup Result – a sixth place in Pokljuka, Slovenia’s 10-kilometer pursuit –...
Junior Skier of the Year With the 2018/2019 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is running a series of articles highlighting some of the players and performances from the season. This year, the junior skier of the year is Gus Schumacher. Perhaps it is a testament to the steady growth of U.S. developmental programming or perhaps it is a trickle down effect as Americans see more success on the World Cup level; one thing...
With the 2018/2019 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is running a series of articles highlighting some of the players and performances from the season. This year, the breakthrough skier is Rosie Brennan. Rosie Brennan raced her first World Cup pre-Vancouver Olympics. That was 2009. Since then her career has been mercurial. In fact, this is Brennan’s second nod for breakthrough skier of the year. She was named to the U.S. Ski Team (USST)...
For years under the leadership of Bernd Eisenbichler and Per Nilsson, US Biathlon was a polyglot enterprise. It’s often claimed the high performance staff at USBA had a decidedly United Nations vibe. As a sport firmly entrenched in Europe, siphoning some of that expertise into the U.S. program paid dividends over the past two decades. IBU World Cup podiums and World Championship medals were the payback. Lowell Bailey, at thirty-seven years old, is a hybrid...
ARCHANGEL ROAD, above Palmer, Alaska — The tenth annual Race to the Outhouse #2, held amidst the Talkeetna Mountains on April 6, marked a neat bookend to the 2018/2019 race season in southcentral Alaska, and possibly in North America. While this season’s Race to the Outhouse #1 was held in early December 2018, roughly one month later than normal, it still marked the season’s first race in southcentral Alaska, and, behind perhaps only Frozen Thunder and...
“Twenty years and two months ago I began with US Biathlon,” Bernd Eisenbichler said to FasterSkier last week during a phone call to discuss his March 31, resignation as high performance director. For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Eisenbichler has worn many hats during his tenure with US Biathlon: Ski/wax tech, high performance director, and chief of sport. With a title like chief of sport, more fitting head-ware might have been a crown....
Over and out on the SuperTour. The season-long series of races running from December in West Yellowstone, Montana to SuperTour finals in Presque Isle, Maine have concluded . Eighteen competitions in total with points allocated for each race, athletes are ranked in three categories: Overall, sprint and distance. The overall winners on the SuperTour, male and female, are guaranteed Continental Cup winner starts for World Cup Period 1 beginning in Nov. 2019. Kyle Bratrud (SMS...
For six in the morning, the text message was dark and terrifying. “They are not selling ski crack any more. WTF they can’t be out.” At the time of the message, Jarrod had no idea he had a substance abuse issue or how far it would take him down a path of desperation. He just wanted to ski faster. He continues recounting the morning he hit the bottom. “With the realization, I might be out...
Press Release
Press Release
Amidst overcast skies and spectators bearing signs for the local cross-country favorite, Canadian Alex Harvey, World Cup Finals resumed on Saturday in Québec City, Québec with a men’s 15-kilometer classic mass start race. Thanks to his win in Friday’s freestyle sprint, Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo lead Saturday’s 78 starters out of the gate, his yellow bib also indicative of his first place rank in the 2019 Overall World Cup Standings. With Saturday and Sunday being...
The IBU World Cup resides in Oslo this week. The women began the racing with the 7.5-kilometer sprint on Thursday. The podium rundown goes like this: Slovakia’s Kuzmina Anastasiya shot 1+0 to win in 19:56.2, Germany’s Franziska Preuss placed second (+21.2, 0+0), with Paulina Fialkova of Slovakia in third (+25.1, 0+0). This was Kuzmina’s fifth win at Holmenkollen and secured her the IBU sprint overall title. Canada’s Emma Lunder was the top North American in...
In a year of outstanding performances from junior and under-23 U.S. skiers, Evelina Sutro has been a force to be reckoned with. She had a debut performance of 18th in the 10-kilometer freestyle at World U-23 Championships in Lahti, Finland and went on to sweep every EISA freestyle race this season. Sustaining that benchmark, Sutro placed third last weekend in the NCAA 5 k skate, a mere 1.09 seconds behind winner Julia Richter from the...
(Press Release) March 20, 2019 – Our Academy programs in Canmore and Calgary are currently accepting applications. We have brought changes to our Program Guidelines for 2019-20, new options are now available, providing financial flexibility. Program Guidelines Submit your application with the Alpine Insurance Alberta World Cup Academy by April 7, 2019. Apply Here! We welcome questions through
BEITOSTØLEN, Norway — Team USA led the participation numbers while Russia topped the medal table in the 2019 Masters World Cup, the annual competition for skiers aged 30 and over that wrapped up in this mountainside hamlet on Thursday. Roughly 1,000 skiers from 26 different nations, from the predictable (Norway, Finland) to the unexpected (Thailand!), made their way to the Oppland region for seven days of competition and up to four races per athlete, three...
Sunday’s men’s 15-kilometer freestyle individual start race in Falun, Sweden, was the final European stop for the World Cup. With the race concluded, athletes will pack up ski bags, moth-ball the wax buses, and jet across the Atlantic. Next week athletes will race amidst the crowds and city-scape of Québec. The final Euro-leg of the World Cup saw Alexander Bolshunov of Russia win his third individual race in a row. His top-step effort was his...
In all of the individual distance races she has entered this season, both World Cup and World Championships events, Norway’s Therese Johaug has remained the undeafeated distance winner, with Sunday’s victory in the women’s individual start 10-kilometer freestyle race in Falun, Sweden marking her twelfth win so far. Starting in bib number 34 out of 56 starters on Sunday, Johaug passed the 3 k mark 11.9 seconds faster than Sweden’s Ebba Andersson to take the...
If you’ve ever wondered what the elite wave is like compared to one of the larger later starting waves here is a crash course. A little background for context, the 2018 American Birkebeiner was my first introduction to the Birkie and the 50K distance. I started in wave 2 and paired with perfect conditions my first Birkie is by far my favorite race I’ve done. Wave 2, while crowded and congested (think penguins huddled...
The 4 x 10-kilometer men’s relay was a two-team tango as Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov and Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo were tagged for their respective anchor legs on Friday. The two teams stuck together until Klæbo moved ahead with less than five k to go and gapped Russia by 22 seconds. naltrexone revia It was enough final leg surge for Norway’s Emil Iversen, Martin Johnsrud Sundby, Sjur Røthe, and Klæbo to win in 1:42:32.1 hours. Russia’s...