CRAFTSBURY, Vt. – In shades of red, blue, green and white, six highly competitive women stood at the start line at the SuperTour Finals on Tuesday waiting for their signal to get after the 1.6-kilometer classic loop one more time. On one end of the A-final lineup stood World Cup sprint champion Kikkan Randall, who flew in from Europe on Sunday. On the other, her World Cup teammate and distance specialist, Liz Stephen soaked up...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec — It all started with a little buzz about Québec hosting a World Cup. After the province’s native Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw struck gold in the team sprint at the 2011 World Championships in Olso, Norway, Cross Country Canada and the International Ski Federation got to talking. The World Cup should feature a few races in Canada, and why not consider bringing it to the eastern part of the country? Once...
MONT SAINT-ANNE, Québec – To say that Devon Kershaw and Alex Harvey are close would be a massive understatement. When Kershaw decided to pack it in for the season, Harvey and some of his other teammates on the Canadian National Ski Team convinced him to reconsider. They found Kershaw on the start line Saturday as fired up as ever for the 50-kilometer classic mass start at Canadian Ski Nationals. After skiing together with a lead...
CRAFTSBURY, Vermont — Looking calm and relaxed as he finished the two-lap 3.2 k freestyle prologue on Saturday morning, Simi Hamilton (SVSEF/USST) skied to a comfortable win in the opening event of the SuperTour Finals at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center. He beat Sylvan Ellefson (Team HomeGrown) by 6.6 seconds, and in a tie for third, Noah Hoffman (Team HomeGrown/USST) and Erik Bjornsen (APU/USST) both claimed bronze (+11.5). Kris Freeman (USST), skiing for Team HomeGrown this...
A day after flying into Finland, Brian McKeever and Erik Carleton of Canada nabbed gold in the first race of the IPC World Cup finals in Vuokatti on Thursday, the 1.2 k visually impaired sprint. On Tuesday, McKeever and Carleton drove straight to the airport after competing in the 15 k freestyle event at the Canadian Ski Championships. Carleton placed second on Monday in the 10 k classic and eighth on Tuesday. McKeever was 15th...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec — Alex Harvey had a lot going for him on Thursday. The hometown course and its accompanying fans, the helicopter and a little luck were just a few of the things in the 23-year-old’s favor in the 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint final at Canadian Ski Nationals. Heck, organizers even pushed the weeklong event back in March to accommodate Harvey and his national team’s return. When Harvey nearly missed his quarterfinal on Thursday, they gave...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec — Whipping along the first of two downhills on a chemically enhanced sprint course at Canadian Ski Nationals on Thursday, Chandra Crawford could feel the vibrations in the stadium. Everyone there could. A helicopter soared directly ahead, swaying above one end of the 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint loop to the other for an unrivaled viewpoint of the nation’s cross-country skiing finale. Spectators buzzed that the mayor of Québec was inside. In fact, it...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec — While Alex Harvey was the man of the day at Canadian Ski Nationals on Tuesday, Devon Kershaw, Lenny Valjas and the remaining World Cup crew (including Chandra Crawford, Dasha Gaiazova, Alysson Marshall and Kevin Sandau) also met a strong welcome after flying into Québec late Monday night and racing the next day. Cross-country ski fans, friends, family and media outlets came out to Mont Sainte-Anne to catch a glimpse of the...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec –Anyone trying to follow the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle individual start at Canadian Ski Nationals on Tuesday might have found the live splits a little confusing. Emily Nishikawa led at 5 k. No wait, Perianne Jones did. Ragnhild Haga sat in second, but Alysson Marshall later bumped her from that spot. Randomized seeding put some of the closest competitors considerably far apart on the start list, making it difficult to determine where athletes...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec – Alex Harvey had no idea what he was in for. Or maybe he did. Fourteen hours after he and several other Canadian National Team members stepped off a plane in Québec City and concluded a 32-hour trip back from the World Cup Finals in Sweden, Harvey was back in his native Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges, Québec, preparing to race again. If it had been up to Harvey, he would have slept in a little...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec – Four days after flying home from Europe, Ivan Babikov was back in action at Canadian Ski Nationals on Monday. The 31-year-old national team member was also back to his winning ways, hitting his stride as usual at the domestic championships and claiming his seventh Canadian title. Out of nearly 160 men in the 10-kilometer classic individual start, Babikov was the fastest, completing the two loops in 28:38.6. Runner-up Erik Carleton (Rocky...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec – After a whirlwind tour of Europe, in which Ida Sargent of the U.S. Ski Team/Craftsbury Green Racing Project came home just once for U.S. Nationals in January, the 24-year-old took on relatively simple task in Canada on Monday. She needed to pass one person and push hard in a 5-kilometer classic individual start. With soft conditions and temperatures upwards of 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) at Canadian Ski Nationals, that...
For her final European race of the year, Holly Brooks (APU) left her mark at the top of the results list yet again, holding off Sovenia’s Barabara Jezersek and Alenka Cebasek in the 10 k freestyle pursuit for the overall OPA Cup Finals win in Toblach, Italy. Outside the top three, the rest of the field had no chance — Debora Agreiter (ITA), the fourth-place finish, was 34.1 seconds back. All weekend, Brooks has battled...
VALCARTIER, Québec – As she rounded the penalty loop at Myriam Bédard Center on Sunday, Rosanna Crawford looked up and threw down her headband. Winning the pursuit wasn’t going to be a walk in the park at the Canadian Biathlon Championships, and the 23-year-old from Alberta needed all the firepower she could muster. But the shooting portion was over; Crawford missed one shot in each of the last three stages for three total misses. The...
QUEBEC CITY – Two tiny specks charging toward the finish, Graham Nishikawa and Jesse Cockney appeared to merge into a single lane, and then suddenly jolted in opposite directions. Whatever made them move must have been significant, and it could have explained why Nishikawa lost his lead and ultimately the classic team sprint at the Canadian Ski National Championships on Saturday. Turns out it was just water in the tracks on a balmy afternoon at...
QUEBEC CITY – As Alana Thomas stood in the finish pen on the Plains of Abraham and looked back beyond the line, she smiled as Perianne Jones cruised down the final stretch. The Canadian National Team member was going to win by a mile – or maybe a kilometer, figuratively speaking in Canadian terms. While Jones didn’t quite have a full lap on the 11 other teams in the open classic relay at the Canadian...
All 2012 FIS World Cup Finals coverage is brought to you through the generous support of decided to skip the race. * * * Chandra Crawford led the Canadian women in the 10 k classic on Saturday, finishing 35th in her best distance race of the year. “It was great,” said Crawford. “I was really charging.” She described the pace as steadily fast, but Crawford didn’t let it bother her. “I just tried to relax and...
While their compatriots were gutting it out in the World Cup Finals prologue in Falun, a handful of U.S. athletes were contesting the same format at OPA Cup Finals in Toblach, Italy. Friday’s 2.5/3.3 k freestyle event was the first in a series of three races in Italy. Holly Brooks (USA) turned in the top performance for the U.S., coming in second place to Slovenia’s Alenk Cebasek, who won by one second. Brooks has gone...
This year, the Haywood Canadian National Championships have been pushed back a week to accommodate a special group – Canada’s World Cup elite, which are returning in force to put on a show for the home crowd in Quebec. With Alex Harvey, Devon Kershaw, Chandra Crawford and all the major Canadian stars slated to participate, the fields will be some of the deepest in North America all season. The Canadian World Cup squad has turned...
All 2012 FIS World Cup Finals coverage is brought to you through the generous support of headlined the North American prologue performances on Friday, but seven other U.S. and Canadian skiers turned in gutsy races on the killer 2.5/3.3 k courses. One of the most impressive outcomes was the fact that Sylvan Ellefson (USA) finished the race at all, despite crashing and injuring his ankle in the middle of the race. He finished last, in 47th,...