Something unique is happening in Bend, Oregon this week. No, not the mere existence of multiple kilometers of groomed trails in May, though that certainly plays a big part. For the first time in recent memory, four North American national teams will be training on the same trails at the same time for their first official camps of the summer. Athletes started arriving this week, and will be in Bend for the next ten days...
The U.S. Ski Team announced Monday morning its 2012-2013 nominations, listed below. According to the press release, the nominations include those active athletes who qualified based on published selection criteria. The USSA will announce the actual team roster this fall, naming those athletes who accept the responsibilities of being a part of the U.S. Ski Team and are planning to compete in the 2012-13 season. Athletes nominated to the 2012-13 U.S. Ski Team are: A...
Trailer: Is it fact or is it fiction? Wait it is both. These two polar extremes outline the heart of nordic skiing. Working hard and beating fast, the heart of our community expands. Our sport, while misunderstood by some, is truly extraordinary. Revived Films has pledged to document and expand the heart of nordic skiing for the past two years. This year we bring to you our newest installment, Fact or Fiction. From the thin...
Looking out at his athletes plugging along during a workout last fall, Mike Cavaliere of the Alberta World Cup Academy sat inside the team van and listened to his coaches. A few years ago when Cavaliere started the Canadian national training centre in Canmore, Alberta, he and his staff recognized the lack of high-level female skiers. Back then, they resolved to work toward producing more, but at a training camp in Whistler, British Columbia, all...
Earlier this week, OneWay Sport announced that it had signed Finnish skier Sami Jauhojärvi to compete on its brand-new skis for the coming year. OneWay has been around since 2004 when it began making carbon-fiber poles, but only introduced a complete line of cross-country equipment to its product lineup in 2012. As with any sporting goods brand, sponsoring a highly visible athlete is a big step in both establishing the company and integrating a new...
Today’s the day. After two days of searching through the war-scarred mountains south of Sarajevo, I am finally going to locate the cross country ski venue from the 1984 Olympics. This theoretically simple quest has not been simple at all, requiring about a bronze medal effort in the detective work department. Of course, as I set off in the morning from my resort hotel in a rented Chevrolet Aveo with Hungarian plates and make the...
The 2012 edition of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) spring congress starts this Wednesday in Park City, Utah. Coaches, officials and various constituents from around the country will gather to discuss rules, formats, junior development and the coming race calendar (among many other things). Last May, notable developments to come out of these meetings included format changes for certain events on the SuperTour and at Junior Nationals. The decision to legalize mid-50 k...
Note: This is a brief update on the status of the Canadian National Ski Team.
MONT SAINTE ANNE, Québec – Standing on the hill above the stadium at the Canadian Ski Nationals in March, Pierre Harvey smiled as he soaked up the sights and sounds buzzing around him. Earlier that morning on the last day of competition, his only son, Alex, purposely tied his best friend and teammate Devon Kershaw for the 50-kilometer classic victory. Several hours later, Pierre Harvey, a three-time Olympian whose name belongs to the Pierre-Harvey National...
The beginning of May is generally viewed as the official start of spring training, and everyone has their own preferred activity for getting back in the swing of things. Alaska’s resident Crystal Globe-winner Kikkan Randall (APU/USST) decided to kick her off-season into gear with a hard effort on the bike; over the weekend she entered her second-ever time trial, the 12th annual Bike For Women in Anchorage. A grand total of 526 women aged eight...
Tell Kris Freeman something he doesn’t know about racing with diabetes. Better yet, give him hope that he can ski faster. That’s exactly how Dr. Jim Stray-Gundersen piqued Freeman’s interest two months ago in Norway. Without having seen him race, Stray-Gundersen got right to the point in Oslo. Forget about what happened in the past; let’s look to the future. How do you feel about racing with a CamelBak? For Freeman and his personal coach...
With the news that Jason Cork will be joining the U.S. Ski Team staff as the
Editor’s Note: This article originally ran on April 20th. The topic has generated significant on-going discussion that many readers may have missed. On June 21, 2011, the Lake Placid, NY’s Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) inaugurated its new convention center with an open house. The soaring stone and metal exterior contrasts with the aging utilitarian lodges at Mount van Hoevenberg, site of the cross-country and biathlon events in the 1980 Winter Olympics. Mount van Hoevenberg’s...
Inside the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation center on Tuesday, Morgan Arritola made her usual rounds, visiting longtime friends and coaches and introducing them to her new addition – a puppy. A staple of the team for nearly a decade, the 25-year-old Olympian affectionately known as “Mo” wasn’t stopping in for training plans. She hadn’t just finished a workout and she wasn’t preparing to start one, either. Arritola was on a lunch break from her...
One week after announcing
The sixth annual Bysprinten took place over the weekend in the small town of Mosjøen, Norway. The town is home to less than 10,000 residents, yet the event manages to attract some of the biggest names in cross-country skiing every year from both Norway and elsewhere in Europe. This year, Petter Northug (NOR), Laurien Van der Graaff (SUI), Øystein Pettersen (NOR), Heidi Weng (NOR) and Ola Vigen Hattestad (NOR) were among the biggest draws of...
Back in early February, Stratton Mountain School (SMS), one of the country’s most successful ski academies, announced that it would be starting a new elite professional ski team in the 2012-2013 season. Gus Kaeding, who most recently coached at CXC, signed on as the head coach to join longtime Stratton nordic director Sverre Caldwell at the southern Vermont program. The announcement was subsequently buried by a busy period of domestic and international racing, but the...
No snow-speed records were broken at the sixth edition of Bysprinten, but the annual two-day ski festival on the streets of Mosjøen, Norway provided plenty of excitement for the 3,000 spectators who came out to see their favorite national team members ski as fast as possible. On Saturday, Eirik Brandsdal (NOR) prevailed in the men’s final sprint, and Laurien Van der Graaf (SUI) topped the women’s field. “I am very fond of Bysprinten. I often do...
The U.S. Ski Team announced on Wednesday that Pete Vordenberg — a leader on the team for the past 10 years and the man who literally wrote the book on modern American skiing — would be leaving his post as the men’s head coach. He became a new father this winter, and felt that he couldn’t be both a great parent and coach simultaneously. USST head coach Chris Grover said the team plans to find...
At the highest level of nordic ski racing in the U.S., athletes know making the national team isn’t so much of a black-and-white decision; coaches mostly see red. Based on U.S. Ski Team criteria, any skier that ends the season in the red group by finishing in the top 30 of the World Cup or FIS distance or sprint lists is essentially guaranteed a spot on the A-team. Those who finish outside those standards can...