With only one NCAA qualifying race in the EISA weekend, the question was: who would step up their game? The answer came from two Dartmouth juniors that were tired of taking second: Erika Flowers and Eric Packer. Out of five podium finishes this season, Packer has not only taken second place in four races (two each of skate and classic) without clinching a win, but is also ranked second overall on the EISA points list....
A World Cup race in Norway is always a big deal, but with the start of World Championships less than seven days away, this weekend’s two-race stop in Drammen serves as both a tune-up, and an indicator of who will be contending for medals in Oslo. FasterSkier arrived in Oslo on Friday morning, and will be reporting live from the event! With many skiers skipping the Rybinsk World Cups two weeks ago, it has been...
February 18, 2011 USA Ski Jumping (USASJ) and Lagunitas Brewing Co. have announced that the California-based brewery will become the official malt beverage of USA Ski Jumping, beginning immediately and continuing through the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. The four-year, six figure agreement gives Lagunitas the rights to domestic event presence, co-branded apparel and product, and use of the USASJ logo in digital and social media outlets. Lagunitas, a Sonoma County, CA brewery,...
The anti-doping crew announces that nightly doping raids are on tap for the Oslo World Championships.
Emil Joensson (SWE) wasn’t allowed to train on the sprint course in Holmenkollen. So the Swede came up with his own solution: He built his own replica in Sweden.
February 17, 2011 – The Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity (CAAWS) announced the 12 recipients of the WISE Fund grants, each valued at $900. The Women in Sport Encouragement (WISE) Fund was created to help finance sport initiatives and assist members of the sport community in Canada. The annual grant is primarily to support women leaders develop and organizations that are currently offering or creating sport programs targeted...
News and information from the northern hemisphere over the Australian summer Four Australian athletes will compete in the World Cup in Drammen in Norway this weekend February 19-20. Ben Sim, Callum Watson and Mark van der Ploeg will compete in the 15km Classic on Saturday and the Sprint Freestyle on Sunday, while Esther Bottomley will race only the Sprint. In the last World Cup competition that Sim contested in Norway he took World Cup points, however in...
While many international biathletes have successfully competed in cross-country skiing events over the past few years, North America has seen little intermixing. While there is talk of biathletes chipping in for cross country events, most recently American Tim Burke pinch-hitting for the USST at a major championship relay, it rarely seems to happen. Enter Aaron Gillmor, a 19-year-old Canadian who just wrapped up his first World Junior Championships (WJC) in cross-country in Otepaa, Estonia. Gillmor,...
Those who have been around North American racing for a while will recall Glenn Bond, who raced full-time with the Canadian team from 1992 to 2002. Well, Bond is back. This serves as your warning.
If you want to know about how biathlon travels from the trails onto television, the first thing you need to know about is cable. In Fort Kent, the site of Maine’s second biathlon World Cup in as many weeks, the stuff is everywhere. It’s mostly black, but also orange, blue, white, red, green, and yellow. It snakes along the sides of the trails, hangs neatly coiled from racks, and explodes into massive, spaghetti-like snarls when...
“I have to see how my motivation is,” Kristin Størmer Steira (NOR) said to Norwegian news agency NTB.
Magdalena Neuner is among the fastest skiers on the biathlon circuit—but that’s never been her problem. In the past, it has been her shooting that held her back. So when Neuner puts together a good performance on the range, she’s tough to beat. She did just that in Sunday’s 12.5 k mass start in Fort Kent, hitting 19 of 20 targets to capture a dominating 24-second win over her teammate Andrea Henkel. Belarus’s Darya Domracheva...
Lowell Bailey (USA) was so sure that he wouldn’t be racing in Sunday’s mass start in Fort Kent that he told his family to go home. His sister still stuck around. But when Bailey did luck into a start, skiing and shooting his way to a career-best ninth place, his mother wasn’t around to see it—she was driving back to New York. “I owe my mom a little bit of an apology, I guess,” he...
Joanne Reid (CU) wins the USSA SuperTour 5K classic in Aspen, Colo., while local favorite Sylvan Ellefsson (Vail, Colo.) takes the men’s 10K classic.
The weekend was Dartmouth’s. It was not only their home carnival, but it was the school’s century celebration: the 100th Dartmouth Winter Carnival. And for a school steeped in tradition, this was not an event to take lightly. After giving up the team win last weekend to UVM at their rival’s host carnival, Dartmouth found the fire this weekend to not only post the overall nordic score for the weekend, but to win team scores...
Germany’s Andrea Henkel skied to her second straight World Cup win on Saturday in Fort Kent, besting her teammate Magdalena Neuner by 25 seconds in the 10 k pursuit. Neuner and Henkel came into the final shooting stage together, and Neuner, a stronger skier, looked to have the race wrapped up when she hit her first four targets. But her last round went awry, and she couldn’t overcome the 25-second deficit she accumulated in the...
A real crowd finally showed up on Saturday in Fort Kent, for the first time in three days of World Cup racing. They got exactly what they came for in the men’s 12.5 k pursuit: an exhilarating, back-and-forth battle culminating in a finishing sprint that was decided by inches—leaving fans and athletes alike unsure of who was the victor. Five minutes after he lunged with Frenchman Martin Fourcade, Norwegian Emil Hegle Svendsen finally learned that...
After some strong results in last weekend’s races in Presque Isle, Lowell Bailey appeared to be on his way to another solid finish in Fort Kent. Through two of four shooting stages in Saturday’s 12.5 k pursuit, the American had just one penalty, and had moved up substantially from his starting bib of 31. As he skied into the range for the third time, he unslung his rifle, and looked down for his next clip....
The temperatures were bitter cold in Hanover, New Hampshire this morning – when the first racer started it was a slight 5 degrees Fahrenheit – but the tracks around Oak Hill were hard pack and fast. Despite the hype around their home carnival – slated as the 100th annual – the Dartmouth team kept their focus and showed their home town crowd how a ski race is won. Sam Tarling led the team to victory...
Northern Maine is best known for its ties to Scandinavia—both New Sweden and Stockhom are within striking distance of the biathlon venues in Fort Kent and Presque Isle. But in the raw conditions for Friday’s 7.5 k World Cup sprint, it was the German women who felt more at home in Fort Kent. Battling through frigid temperatures and a swirling breeze, Andrea Henkel led her country to a sweep of the top three, with Miriam...