After spending last summer training in the U.S. with the Craftsbury Outdoor Center’s U23/collegiate summer training group, this year Johanna Talihärm decided to go home to Estonia. The FIS Cross-County World Cup swings by Otepää periodically (as does the Continental Cup circuit and biathlon’s IBU Cup series), but Talihärm is originally from Tallinn, Estonia’s capital and a World Heritage Site. That’s the atmosphere she moved back to for the summer — which she said had both pros...
Earlier this month, a group of leaders from World Taekwondo stood smiling before flashing cameras and their newly unveiled organization logo. Since 1973, the sport’s governing body was known as the World Taekwondo Federation, using the acronym WTF to represent its globally recognized organization and mission. But recent mas organizational mark (the master mark accompanied by the words “Ski & Snowboard”), and the launched on June 18. (Article continues below) The idea to change the logo emerged during...
Note: This is the first of a multiple-part series on the 2018 Winter Olympic selection criteria for the U.S. cross-country ski team. A selection criteria and procedures for nomination to the U.S. Olympic team. Briefly put, what does it take to get to PyeongChang? And what factors will U.S. Ski Team (USST) coaches and (Lahti in 2017. First comes objective qualification via performance on the World Cup. Second comes the potential use of discretionary picks....
Note: This is part of a series on the 2018 Winter Olympic selection criteria for the U.S. cross-country ski team. Read this cross-country athletes will be selected for the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, it’s useful to know some context about how selections are made in other sports. As described in a on the NBC Olympic site. That means that cross-country skiing was the very last set of 2018 U.S. Winter Olympic team criteria to...
The US Biathlon Association (USBA) has already qualified two World Championships medalists for their 2018 Olympic team, but four more men and four more women will still be selected – and those spots could go to almost anyone. USBA has a multi-stage athlete selection process. One or two more athletes of each gender will be selected based on the first period of World Cup results. For both men and women, part of that World Cup...
Following the Women’s Ski Jumping USA national team. In order to train for nordic combined, Armstrong jumps during her scheduled practice times and joins the NYSEF cross-country skiers whenever she can. One workout she likes when she’s not with the NYSEF nordic team is aqua jogging with her sister and cousin, an endurance athlete who also holds the unofficial aqua jogging record at Stanford University. “She really knows what she’s doing,” Armstrong said of her cousin with a laugh....
Locked in the heart of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on an arm of land stretching into Lake Superior is the small city of Houghton. Locals there are intimate with lake-effect snow, long winters and a strong sense of community. Houghton is also home to Michigan Technological University (MTU) and the school’s nordic ski team, which officially named MTU’s newest nordic head coach and cross-country running assistant coach. He’ll be joined by his partner and MTU alumna, Kristen Monahan,...
About a year and a half after Colin Rodgers. GMVS went through some transitions. I am staying in the Mad River Valley, which is amazing; another great part of the job is that I get to stay where I am and sort of create some of that vision and move it in a way. It’s a pretty cool job, it’s a very cool lifestyle, it’s something that I am so passionate about. I was just...
You name it and Joe Howdyshell, director and founder of U.S. Ski Mountaineering national team. An average workweek for Howdyshell entails 40-60 hours for the SEA and another four to five hours for his national team coaching duties. His introduction to the U.S. Ski Mountaineering position and sport itself was in large part due to his background in cross-country skiing: he’s been nordic skiing since the age of 12, and he was previously head coach of the Summit Nordic Ski Club prior to...
Just over 24 hours before race day, Caitlin Patterson’s mind was made. The pre-registration deadline for the 2017 USA Track & Field (USATF) Mountain Running Championships in North Conway, N.H., was up and she was going to spontaneously do it. Written down in her summer plan was to enter few footraces, and this one promised both a challenging field and relatively short, two-hour drive from her training base in Craftsbury, Vt. The competition also offered an opportunity to...
Kikkan Randall leading the 2017 Alaska Run for Women with a smile on June 10. (Photo: Scott Broadwell)A little U.S.-based news to get your Tuesday going: — Watch out, World Cup, Kikkan Randall is feeling good. The longtime U.S. Ski Team (USST) and Alaska Pacific University (APU) skier took first place in the 25th annual Alaska Run for Women road race, held over Anchorage streets and bike trails this past Saturday. Randall led the field of several thousand...
For Tara Geraghty-Moats, nothing compares to the sense of weightlessness she feels and the way spectators appear to sink into the ground when she soars off a ski jump — except maybe the feeling of pushing her physical limits during a cross-country ski race. The two sports have been a part of the 24-year-old New England native’s life since her grammar-school days — she picked up both at the age of 9 and in both, she excelled. By the time she...
*Note: This article has been updated to include email comments from Laura McCabe as of Wednesday. Don’t let the name “Old Lady Intervals” (designated by Leslie Hall) fool you. The interval ladder she and Laura McCabe complete every Wednesday and submitted to FasterSkier is one that takes experience and willpower. Hall doesn’t recommend the workout for juniors, but more for masters and those with limited time for harder training efforts. *** If their houses were any...
In part of the media storm following the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s response to an appeal by six Russian cross-country skiers, Russian Ski Federation President Elena Valbe announcing the suspensions on Dec. 22, 2016. In cases without a positive drug test, sports federations are allowed to implement an “optional provisional suspension”. This is what FIS put in place on the six Russian skiers, whose samples were allegedly tampered with at the 2014 Olympics. Fussek said...
A Mainer for most of his life, Tim Whiton jumped on the chance to take his first college head coaching job back in his home state. It wasn’t just the chance to move back to New England that snagged his attention. As Whiton heads to the University of Maine Presque Isle (UMPI), he is also excited about trying to build up a program that has seen four other head coaches come and go in the...
What a year for Cross Country Canada (CCC). For the first time in history, its men’s team stood on a World Cup gold and its women’s team pulled off its Canada’s 2017/2018 national-team nominations earlier this month, FasterSkier caught up with CCC’s High Performance Director Thomas Holland and the World Cup co-coach Ivan Babikov to discuss the program moving forward. What’s changed since last year? Not much. With a strong season behind them, an Olympic season ahead and a solid coach...
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) did one thing that the Russian skiers wanted: they issued a decision of some sort quickly, far more quickly than is typical in doping appeals. Alexander Legkov, Maxim Vylegzhanin, Alexey Petukhov, Evgenia Shapovalova, Julia Ivanova, and Evgeniy Belov han independent investigation commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. In the six months since the provisional suspensions were enacted, FIS has not formally brought Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ARDV’s) against the six...
On Sunday, the International Ski Federation (FIS) approved its2019 World Championships), all in Period 2. Next comes the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, from Feb. 9-25. The season wraps up with Period 4 in Finland, Norway and Sweden, with World Cup Finals in Falun, Sweden. Full calendar below or for original PDF,
If you are from New England, you’ve probably heard of Will Sweetser. Originally from Auburn, Maine, Sweetser, 47, has been coaching nordic for the last 25 years. He skied for Dartmouth and coached at Bates College, the Jackson Hole Ski Club, Carrabassett Valley Academy, and Rangeley Lakes Ski Club before spendingOutdoor Sports Institute and expanded its mission to four seasons of outdoor sports in Maine. With a baby on the way, Sweetser and his wife, Sarah Dominick,...
For a few days at the end of January, a sea of stringed kites fills the skies of many cities in South Korea. The normally crowded streets of downtown Seoul — the country’s capital — empty and become almost devoid of people. Many of the residents are indoors with their families, or en route to the hometowns of relatives, all in order to celebrate Seollal, one of the nation’s greatest Korean holidays. Generally spanning a...