Early season skiing is always tough. A lucky few end up on glaciers or live in locations that benefit from early snowfalls, but the majority must make do on rollerskis. However, Canmore, the epicenter of Canadian cross country skiing, has hit on a new way to get on snow early. Beginning this weekend, staff at the Canmore Nordic Center (CNC) in Alberta will roll snow into a loop in an operation nicknamed ‘Frozen Thunder.’ The...
The days of the world championships of interval training may be numbered. That’s the moniker that some Europeans use for the team sprint, which appears on the schedule for every Olympics and World Championships—but rarely on the World Cup. According to U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) Nordic Director John Farra, the International Ski Federation (FIS) has convened a working group that will investigate the potential for doing away with the team sprint and replacing...
The U.S. Ski Team is offering two coaching positions for the 2011 J1 Scandinavian Cup Race Series. Both positions are fully funded by NCCSEF. Coaches looking to apply for these positions should have experience working with athletes aged 15-20, a strong background in waxing and testing skis, and be willing to work hard for two weeks. Successful applicants will also be positive role models for high school aged athletes and have a willingness to share their experiences and love...
The U.S. Ski Team is offering four coaching positions for the 2011 World Junior and U23 World Championships. All four positions are fully funded by NCCSEF. Coaches looking to apply for these positions should have experience working with athletes aged 16-22, a strong background in waxing and testing skis, and be willing to work hard for two weeks and seven races. That said, we are looking to develop coaches and welcome all applications from coaches wishing to gain...
OSLO, NORWAY – The Norwegian skiers have complained about the sprint course for the 2011 World Championships in Holmenkollen. Now the Swedes are joining the debate as well.
The leader of the French cross-country skiing looks back at his excellent 2010 season. He also speaks about his coaches and teammates. Vincent is fully focused at future goals and refuses to talk about his retirement from professional sports. Q: Vincent, you will soon begin in a few weeks your 16th season in the World Cup. What are the secrets of your life at the highest level?Q Vincent Vittoz: I am above all, passionate. I’m...
With 53 entries in the FasterSkier Climb to the Castle pick the podium contest, the competition for the top spot was hotly contested. And when two dark horses cracked the podiums, no one succeeded in picking the top 3 men or women correctly. In fact only four people picked women’s winner Laura Spector to reach the podium and six had men’s 3rd place finisher, Ben Sim (AUS NoCo), listed. Men’s winner Kris Freeman (USST) was...
It took him four tries, but the U.S. Ski Team’s Kris Freeman can add a victory at the Whiteface Climb to the Castle to his list of accomplishments. “I finally won the Climb to the Castle!” Freeman said. Stymied in three previous attempts by inferior competition with superior rollerskis, Freeman left his teammate Noah Hoffman behind at halfway mark of this year’s edition of the five-mile race, skiing unchallenged to a 39-second victory. Ben Sim, the...
Chalk one up for the biathletes. Just over halfway through Friday’s Climb to the Castle race on Whiteface Mountain, U.S. National Biathlon Team member Laura Spector went to the front of a five-strong women’s pack and left behind four of the country’s best cross-country skiers. Churning her way through fierce gusts of wind—which staff at the summit estimated at 60 miles per hour—the diminutive Spector crossed the line with a big gap on U.S. Ski...
Ivan Babikov is going to Wipeout in Argentina. No, he’s not competing in an early-season World Cup—the 30-year-old Canadian departed yesterday for a week-long stint in South America to compete on the TV show of that name, in which participants navigate a series of obstacles in the hopes of winning the $50,000 winner’s prize. Hazards in the American version of the show include a wall that punches athletes as they climb along it, and spinning...
So much for Justyna Kowalczyk’s home-field advantage. For the first time in her career, the International Ski Federation (FIS) has scheduled World Cup races in Kowalczyk’s native Poland, in February of 2012. But if officials at FIS have their way, Kowalczyk, a notoriously poor descender, will have to successfully navigate five kilometers of technical downhill before she can step onto the podium there. According to FIS Cross-Country Race Director Jürg Capol, a federation committee discussed...
OSLO, Norway – Olympic champion Dario Cologna (SUI) is in Oslo to check out the courses that will be used for the upcoming World Championships in Holmenkollen.
In North American cross-country skiing, there are few bigger names than Chandra Crawford. The 27-year-old Canadian National Ski Team (CNST) member has an Olympic gold from Turin, Italy in 2006, multiple World Cup medals, is the brains and face for her own organization, Fast and Female, and was featured on an episode of MTV’s Cribs. Yet despite her high profile, at the recent CNST camp in Quebec City, Chandra Crawford was generous enough to allow...
Usually when athletes go for a rollerski, they deal with a variety of challenges. Crappy pavement, angry drivers, and constant “where’s the snow” heckling is pretty standard no matter where you pick for a ski. But this past Saturday in Gatineau, Quebec, the greatest hazard was a rare one: other rollerskiers. The 257 rollerskiers who gathered together in the Gatineau Park signed in, posed for a picture, and then skied en masse for about 2...
50 days before the World Cup opener, Polish skier Justyna Kowalczyk is completing a monster training camp in Belarus: Three workouts per day for the girl who logs the most hours of any female skiers in the world.
Bananas an hour prior to every race. Granola bars afterwards. Pasta the night before. As much as for any other aspect of the sport of cross-country skiing, there are dozens of beliefs, strategies, and misconceptions when it comes to food and nutrition. To clear a few of them up–but by no means all of them–we spoke with recently-appointed U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) Sports Dietician Adam Korzun. A native of Alabama, Korzun has worked...
This article is the third in a series looking at the use of cross-country ski venues left behind by the Winter Olympics. The first two were on New York’s Lake Placid. After a Winter Olympics where nordic skiing took center stage, Whistler Olympic Park (WOP), 77 miles north of Vancouver, British Columbia, faces the future with optimism, but with plans that are still murky. Cleaning up the detritus of the 2010 Games, including grandstands, transformers,...
If you’re planning on racing in Europe this winter on any of the trips supported by the National Cross-Country Ski Education Foundation (NCCSEF), you can thank Jerry Gilbert. Gilbert, a retired electrical engineer and avid master skier, died of lymphoma in 2008, and in his will, he left some $80,000 for NCCSEF. The money took nearly two years to find its way to the organization, but now that it has, that donation should be supporting...
Russian 2008 World Champion is warning of her comeback to biathlon.
