Success to failure. Failure to success. Two trends of two extremes on the performance metrics on the international cross-country skiing spectrum. There are many in-betweens: scoring World Cup points with a top 30, top 10’s, any spot on the podium. There are the Olympic and Paralympic quads featuring a four-year buildup to North America’s singular focus on bronze, silver and gold hardware. When considering how to develop talent, placing athletes on snow with the absolute...
With the 2017/2018 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is excited to unveil its annual award winners for this past winter. Votes stem from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they are intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This set of honors goes to outstanding college athletes in cross-country skiing. *** Katharine Ogden, Dartmouth College Katharine Ogden skiing fast doesn’t exactly surprise anyone....
With the 2017/2018 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is excited to unveil its annual award winners for this past winter. Votes stem from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they are intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This set of honors goes to outstanding North American junior athletes across all nordic disciplines. *** Ben Loomis, U.S. Nordic Combined Team In late January,...
When Andy Newell took to social media about a week and a half ago to announce that he was parting ways with the U.S. Ski Team (USST) after 16 years, some people might have assumed that he was leaving the sport. They would be wrong. Newell, a 34-year-old Shaftsbury, Vermont, native and USST A-team member for the last 12 seasons, was quick to clarify that he’s not retiring from racing. After four Olympics and 16...
2018 USBA Junior/Senior Nationals American biathletes officially wrapped up their race seasons at the 2018 US Biathlon Association (USBA) nationals last Thursday through Saturday at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. The event kicked off with Lowell Bailey edging his teammate and longtime training partner Tim Burke by 5 seconds in the men’s 10-kilometer sprint on Thursday, March 29. Bailey started 15th out of 17 men and skied a single penalty lap after his prone shooting...
With an incredibly elaborate hoax from the Chinese now in full swing, winter athletes from all over the world continue to struggle with our planet’s changing climate. Snow sports have been particularly hard hit, as rising temperatures and increasingly erratic weather patterns have resulted in less predictable snowfall, mid-winter rain storms, rapidly abating trail conditions, and thusly greatly shortened training and racing seasons. This fallout from these changing climactic conditions is far-reaching and appears to...
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): 50 k classic mass start In the final race of the U.S. racing season, Erik Bjornsen of Alaska Pacific University (APU) and U.S. Ski Team (USST) won his second individual race of the week at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, with a victory in the men’s 50-kilometer classic mass start on Wednesday for the U.S. Distance Nationals title. He previously Live timing
2018 U.S. Distance Nationals (Craftsbury, Vermont): 30 k classic mass start Jessie Diggins swept SuperTour Finals once again, after doing so 2016 SuperTour Finals the year before in Craftsbury, Vt. Back in Craftsbury on Tuesday, and coming off three-straight victories in the classic sprint, 10-kilometer freestyle mass start and mixed relay with her Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team teammates, Diggins, 26, pulled out her fourth-straight win in her last race of the season: the...
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): Mixed relays For the second-straight year at the SuperTour’s season-ending Spring Series, the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team won the mixed relay, with three of the four athletes who raced on last year’s 4 x 5-kilometer mixed relay squad. Simi Hamilton, Sophie Caldwell, Paddy Caldwell, and Jessie Diggins combined for the win on Sunday in Craftsbury, tagging off in that order, with Diggins crossing the finish line first...
Martin Fourcade didn’t have to do much at the final IBU World Cup weekend in Tyumen, Russia, in order to lock up the overall crystal globe. But the French biathlete came in guns blazing, so to speak, winning Thursday’s sprint by 33.2 seconds and claiming the Total Score title. His only close(ish) challenger in the overall score, Johannes Thingnes Bø of Norway, had finished just 14th in the sprint. He raced up to second in...
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): 10/15 k freestyle mass starts Jessie Diggins won her second-straight race in as many days at 2018 SuperTour Finals and Erik Bjornsen pulled out a victory in the men’s 15-kilometer freestyle mass start on Saturday in Craftsbury. Diggins, of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team and U.S. Ski Team (USST), won the women’s 10 k freestyle mass start in 25:56.0 minutes, just 1.2 seconds ahead of her USST...
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): Classic sprints The end of the racing season is just around the corner. The U.S. SuperTour Finals (a.k.a. Spring Series) kicked off Friday with 1.3-kilometer classic sprints at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, and four other days of racing are set to follow on Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The U.S. Ski Team (USST) made the trek from Europe less than a week after racing at World Cup Finals in...
(Note: This article has been corrected to reflect that Evan Palmer-Charrette won his second national title last weekend.) 2018 Canadian Ski Nationals (Thunder Bay, Ontario): 30/50 k classic mass starts On the final day of racing at Canadian Ski Nationals in Thunder Bay, two National Team Development Centre (NTDC) Thunder Bay athletes topped the podium on their local trails at the Lappe Nordic Centre on Saturday. Katherine Stewart-Jones and Evan Palmer-Charrette won national titles in...
FALUN, Sweden — NOR. USA. USA. Looking at the results monitor, those were the tri-letter country codes that popped into the top three at the end of the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle pursuit at World Cup Finals on Sunday. The “NOR” belonged to Marit Bjørgen of Norway, who ended her 2017/2018 World Cup season with yet another win. In Sunday’s pursuit, the 37 year old led from start to finish and ended where she started, in...
OSLO, Norway — In some ways, Sunday’s 4 x 7.5-kilometer men’s relay was very special for the U.S. biathlon team. Two stalwart members – World Championships gold medalist Lowell Bailey and silver medalist Tim Burke – were retiring. It would be the last race of their long international careers. In other ways, though, the team wanted it to just be a normal race. Their goal was to put together a good relay and a good...
2018 Winter Paralympics (PyeongChang, South Korea): Mixed and open relays On the final day of the PyeongChang Paralympic Games, Canada was the only country to medal in both the mixed and open cross-country relays, and its mixed relay anchor, Mark Arendz, became the most decorated Canadian at a single Winter Paralympics with his sixth medal of the week. In the 4 x 2.5-kilometer mixed relay on Sunday, Natalie Wilkie, Emily Young, Chris Klebl, and Arendz...
OSLO, Norway—Eight World Cup weekends, a swing by Open European Championships, two weeks at the Olympics, and it all came down to this: Susan Dunklee’s last international race of the season was also her first podium of the season, and she’s heading back to the United States with a third-place finish in the 10 k pursuit. “I’m super happy,” Dunklee said. “I often start feeling stronger and stronger as the season goes on, and this...
OSLO, Norway—Julia Ransom had been mulling over retirement from elite sport for at least two years. That’s even though the Canadian is just 25 years old. She collected two top-ten results this year, in the 15 k individual in Östersund, Sweden, and the 7.5 k sprint in Oberhof, Germany. “I definitely played with the idea for the last year or two — to end with the Olympics,” she explained after today’s pursuit in Oslo. “I’d...
FIS Cross Country World Cup Finals (Falun, Sweden): 10/15 k freestyle pursuits Time of day | Final Distance World Cup rankings Men: Pursuit | Final Overall World Cup rankings | Women’s pursuit report | Men’s relay report In her last race of the season, Susan Dunklee returned to the podium. The American started fourth in Sunday’s 10-kilometer pursuit at the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup in Oslo, then made her way into third by the final...
