Pro Workout: Shooting Combos with Tracy and Lanny Barnes
Chelsea LittleSeptember 6, 2011
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The Men’s XC ski team is inviting athletes from all around the country to join them for a virtual training camp. Men, Women, and athletes of all ages are encouraged to join in on one of the US Ski Teams toughest training weeks of the year. Starting now everyone can go to the US Ski Team XC Men facebook page for constantly updated information. Athletes, Coaches, and clubs are encouraged to ‘like’ the page and show their...
(Note: This story has been updated to include the Rikert Ski Touring Center in Middlebury, Vt.) Mike Miller, the owner of Mountain Meadows Cross Country and Snowshoe Area in Killington, Vt., hadn’t heard about Tropical Storm Irene until Thursday. He had been trekking through the wilderness near Jackson Hole, Wyo., when the storm hit the East Coast and ripped across Vermont. After two weeks away from civilization, Miller and his wife turned on their cell...
U.S. Biathletes Shine in European Training Camp; Women’s Team Attends for the First Time
Chelsea LittleAugust 31, 2011
Last year, the U.S. Biathlon Association (USBA) took eight men to Europe for a summer training camp, leaving the women’s team to train by themselves in Lake Placid. Since then, a dedicated women’s coach (Jonne Kahkonen) has been hired, so the women are in some ways more than ever their own team. But this summer three of them were invited to the camp in Germany and are training alongside the men. “For us, it’s definitely...
From Skiing to Ultras: Callahan’s New Obsession
Alex KochonAugust 31, 2011
A creature of team sports – first baseball, then soccer – Duncan Callahan remembered his reaction when his older brother started nordic skiing at Glens Falls High School in northeastern New York. “I thought he was the biggest nerd in the world,” he said. A year later, Callahan’s brother, Bill, convinced him to try it. In darkness, the two set out on the city’s illuminated trail system. Afterward, Bill suggested his little brother come out...
How does a high school student from Massachussetts end up skiing on a glacier with the best athletes from the United States and Canada in the middle of the summer? The answer is a program, and a promise for other young skiers. Corey Stock, a 17-year-old racer who usually represents the Cambridge Sports Union, was nominated this year to be a member of the National Training Group (NTG), a program of the U.S. Ski Team....
The International Ski Federation (FIS) Doping Panel came to a final decision on Monday in Andrus Veerpalu’s case. The Estonian champion’s positive drug test from this winter, which came just before World Championships in Oslo and his abrupt retirement, still stands. His two-year ban from competition was extended to three; the end of the sentence in 2014 falls precisely on the closing ceremonies in Sochi. In February, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) found Veerpalu to...
In early July, Marc-André Bédard’s brother called him up, urging him to try a Spartan Race. Simon Bédard, of Montreal, had just finished one the 5 k trail challenges in Ottawa. He had heard of a $20,000 reward for outrunning the series’ reigning champ, Hobie Call, and figured his brother, Biathlon Canada’s 2008 athlete of the year, could beat him. While training with the national team in Canmore, Alberta, the 2010 Olympian looked into it....
With Inclusion of Nordic Combined, NCCSEF Becomes National Nordic Foundation
Audrey ManganAugust 18, 2011
Last week, the National Cross Country Ski Education Foundation (NCCSEF) announced on its website that it is now calling itself the National Nordic Foundation (NNF). But changes at the foundation are more than just in name only. Nordic Combined now falls under their auspices, and over the next few weeks NNF will be testing out a new marketing and fundraising strategy. The non-profit foundation was set up as NCCSEF in 1997 to help elite developing...
(Author’s Note: While some of the athletes and coaches contacted by FasterSkier for this story were willing to openly discuss birth control, many wished to remain anonymous rather than allow the public to make assumptions about their sexual choices, a desire that FasterSkier respected. For these sources, pseudonyms will be marked with an asterisk (*) the first time they appear, and they will subsequently be referred to by first name, rather than last name like...
Retired Ukrainian Biathlete Oksana Khvostenko Handed One-Year Ban for Accidental Ephedrine Violation
Chelsea LittleAugust 15, 2011
wrote in June, the Ukranian biathlete Oksana Khvostenko, who anchored her country’s relay team to silver at World Championships this winter, tested positive for the banned substance ephedrine. Khvostenko’s hearing with the International Biathlon Union (IBU) took place on June 1st, but it took them until last week to issue their verdict on the embattled veteran. With both the A- and B-samples testing positive for greater than ten micrograms per milliliter of ephedrine, they had...
With summer in full swing in North America, many cross country skiers have opted for the winter conditions of the Southern Hemisphere, including the Canadian National Ski Team (CNST). While the women of the CNST recently spent time in Alaska with a large crowd of American women, the men have travelled to the traditional summer hang-out spot: the Snow Farm, in Wanaka, New Zealand. The World Cup team of Devon Kershaw, Alex Harvey, Ivan Babikov...
Before flying to Estonia last January, I didn’t know much about that nation’s cross-country skiers aside from their names—and their medal records. Jaak Mae, Andrus Veerpalu, and Kristina Smigun-Vaehi—between the three of them, seven Olympic and 10 World Championship medals. Not a bad record for a country with a population of 1.3 million, or the same as the state of Maine. But while Scandinavian stars like Petter Northug and Marit Björgen blend a certain appeal,...
Eileen Carey is a busy lady. In 2010, while working as the Vice President for the Maine Winter Sports Center, she oversaw three huge events in Aroostock County: Junior Olympics, biathlon national championships, and spring series. Since then she’s switched jobs, and is now overseeing adaptive skiing for the New England Nordic Ski Association. Along with all of her other responsibilities, Carey is a member of the Ladies’ Cross-Country Subcommittee for the International Ski Federation...
president@kanatanordic.ca and visit
HAYWARD, Wis. — One of three skiers to have raced every American Birkebeiner since its inception in 1973, David Landgraf, 62, died Monday in the hospital after being hit by a motorist while bicycling Friday evening. According to a press release from the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation, Landgraf, of Bloomer, Wis., was hit by a car on Highway 27 in Hayward, the town where he finished 38 consecutive Birkebeiner ski races, a 50-plus kilometer trek...
Bailey Wins Twice at North American Rollerski Biathlon Championships (updated)
Chelsea LittleAugust 8, 2011
The United States Biathlon Association (USBA) held their biggest summer event in Jericho, Vermont this weekend: the North American Rollerski Biathlon Championships, which crowned men’s and women’s champions in four different age categories as well as the masters men’s division. “Things went wonderfully,” said John Madigan, president of the Ethan Allen Biathlon Club, which hosted the races. “It is such a close and fabulous community in biathlon and it is always special when we can...
About 15 women and their coaches from the U.S. Ski Team (USST), the Canadian National Ski Team (CNST), Alaska Pacific University (APU), and select elite juniors and U23s recently finished up two weeks of training in Anchorage, AK for the first ever “North American Women’s Training Alliance” camp. FasterSkier caught up with former Dartmouth College teammates Rosie Brennan, now at APU, and Sophie Caldwell, a U23 in her senior year, in the days following their...
With both Olympic and World Championships gold under her belt, Charlotte Kalla of Sweden was looking for a way to spice up her summer schedule. Considering that she describes herself as someone who doesn’t “know how to use a map and compass very well,” her choice of orienteering definitely fit the bill for a challenge. In early July, Kalla announced that she could be competing in O-Ringen, a five-day orienteering festival, at the end of...
I Believe In Kick Wax
FasterSkierAugust 2, 2011
Holdernsess School skier Haley Mahar wrote and recorded an essay for a composition class. Titled “I Believe in Kickwax,” Haley’s piece details a skier’s relationship with her wax. Audio Recording: [podcast]http://images.fasterskier.com/2011/08/This-I-Believe.mp3[/podcast] Written Essay: I believe in kick wax. Any Nordic skier who has ever skied competitively will tell you that classic skiing without kick wax gives you four times the workout, ten times the frustration, and a few dirty looks and a suggestion to clean...