Norway’s expectations for the World Championships on home turf are sky high. No less than being the best nation overall for the seventh time and earning Norway’s 100th World Championship gold.
Gearing up, getting ready and talking smack. Norway’s sprint teams are kings of the hill. But their competitors are on their mind, and the Americans are in that mix.
As the Norwegian and Swedish teams offered their insight to what might happen in the opening event at the 2011 World Championships, both athletes and coaches admitted that Kikkan Randall was a big concern.
The American and Canadian teams have been off to a good start in Ridnaun, Italy, collecting three top-20 finishes in the opening individual-format races at IBU Under-26/Open European Championships. On Monday, the men kicked things off in the 20 k individual race, a format where each missed shot represents a one-minute time penalty. Tyson Smith of Canada missed only two of his twenty shots and finished 19th, just under four minutes behind Artem Pryma of...
FasterSkier grabbed a quick chat with former Norwegian national team racer Odd-Bjørn Hjelmeset, now working as an expert commentator for the national TV station NRK.
Pete Phillips has a coaching resume that is one of the best in North America. He is currently the Head Nordic Coach at
The men’s turn. FasterSkier’s Topher Sabot was able to capture much of the action during them men’s 15km classic at the World Cup in Drammen, Norway this past weekend. Here is a small sampling of what he saw through his lens.
It was not the best day for the North American women in the 10km classical race this past weekend at the World Cup in Drammen, Norway, but hopefully things will go a little smoother at the World Championships. Here is some of the action that FasterSkier’s Topher Sabot caught with his camera.
Newton North High School in Newtonville, Massachuessetts. He WOJB. The official race station is 88.9 WOJB. It’s a community station broadcasting off the local reservation. It has eclectic and quirky programming. Starting on Friday, they broadcast wax tips and Birkie-themed music (it’s very corny). It will either get you in the mood for the race or drive you batty. • Bib pick-up. Get your materials before the race, if possible. If you’re in the tenth wave, you’ll...
In the second day of racing on Sunday at the Gatineau Loppet in Gatineau, Quebec, skiers tackled a 49 k freestyle course, and with some top local talent in the field, the fast, icy day was set to be exciting. In a hectic finishing flurry, home town boy Aidan Lennie of Ottawa, Ontario emerged victorious in a time of 2:07:52.1. Lennie was part of a close five-man finishing group, and crossed the line ahead of...
The International Competition Committee of the U.S. Biathlon Association has announced which athletes will be competing at World Championships in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia, in early March. The men’s team is led by Lowell Bailey (Lake Placid, NY), who has been on a tear in recent World Cup competitions. He finished ninth in the mass start in Fort Kent, Maine last weekend – a career-best result for himself, and the only top-10 finish for any American...
If the directors at the International Ski Federation had gone to Canadian Len Valjas and asked him to lay out a 1.6-kilometer course, it would have looked a lot like the one used for the World Cup skate sprint in Drammen on Sunday. Mostly flat, with a ton of V2, the 6’6” Valjas described it as “the best course for me.” “I don’t have to offset,” he said, referring to the technique Americans call V1....
Sweden’s star skier Emil Joensson refused to fly to the Norway for the World Cup last weekend and the following World Championships – opted for the Interstate.
Four weeks training at home without a race did not slow Kikkan Randall. The defending World Championship silver medalist in the freestyle sprint picked up where she left off a month ago, and found herself in the same spot – standing on the top of the podium. Randall scored her third career World Cup victory, and second in a row when she powered to the front on the tough finishing stretch in the Konnerud Ski...
For Canada’s Alex Harvey, the bad news is that at next week’s World Ski Championships in Oslo, he’s not likely to improve much on his finish in his final tune-up race. The good news is why: in Sunday’s World Cup skate sprint in Drammen, Norway, he was a stunning second place, surging on the homestretch to top Olympic medalists Petter Northug (NOR) and Marcus Hellner (SWE), and falling just a few feet short of catching...
Bend-based XC Oregon skier and 2010 Pole Pedal Paddle champion Stephanie Howe won the 49km Gatineau Loppet cross-country ski marathon held near Ottawa, Canada on Saturday.
It was a cold and blustery day for the skate sprint relays on the second day of the Middlebury Carnival. The races were held on an open field across from the Rikert Touring Center, the terrain rolling and the track wide. New snow and windblown drifts covered a rock-solid base and made for conditions that matched the difficulty of the format. Each team had three racers that completed three, one kilometer loops, whose tag and...
Icy trails and strong winds greeted the competitors in the 2011 Gatineau Loppet in Gatineau, Quebec, Saturday. A thaw in the previous two days reduced the snow pack significantly, forcing a few changes in the course. The race was rerouted to the widest and flattest sections of the Gatineau Park, the large area of park land where the race is held. In the 49 k classic event, Juergen Uhl of Burlington, Vermont, took the win...
The fans came out in force, with flags, lawn chairs, and beer. And they wouldn’t have settled for anything less than a win. Norway’s Marit Bjoergen gave them what they came for, skiing to yet another victory in Saturday’s 10 k classic in Drammen—her ninth in 12 World Cup races this season—in front of a home crowd estimated at 15,000. With five days to go before her first race at the 2011 World Championships in...
Just a month into his tenure as governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker made a bold political move: he proposed a bill which would limit the rights of union workers to use collective bargaining. With a strong Republican majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the bill appeared poised to pass. On Thursday, Senate Democrats boycotted: they didn’t come in to work, meaning that the Republicans didn’t have a quorum to hold a...