Megan Tandy, a two-time Olympian who hails from British Columbia but lives in Germany, has been working with Canadian national team coach Roddy Ward - her closest off-season collaboration with the team in eight years. She hopes to regain the form that handed her four top-15s on the World Cup in 2015.
Between a rafting trip on the Snake River and working on his jumps with a new coach from Austria, Ben Berend also got in lots of nordic combined competition this summer: he podiumed at U.S. Nationals and competed in Europe in the Grand Prix. Bernend will start the season on the World Cup for the first time this year.
Need to train hills, but you don't live in the mountains? Caitlin Gregg and Loppet Nordic Racing are here to show you how to get a killer interval workout off just 175 feet of vertical.
After a month of sending emails and sifting through footage, Hannah Halvorsen produced a five-minute video seeking to bring awareness about body image and disordered eating among cross-country skiers. Since she published it last Friday, it's accumulated more than 3,000 views.
"Normally, if she is guilty, it is very clear that she should receive a 4-year ban," FIS President Gian Franco Kasper said in an interview with Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, while admitting that he had seen no evidence from the case.
In 2016, Maya MacIsaac-Jones got her first World Cup top-30 in the Gatineau sprint stage of the Ski Tour Canada. She'll start this season on the World Cup, but is shooting for excellence at U23 World Championships in Utah later in the year - fueled by pre-race Harry Potter reading.
After her first SuperTour podium and junior national titles last season, Sugar Bowl Academy's Hannah Halvorsen snagged a U.S. Ski Team nomination. Now she's making the most of her first training season without school.
An eight-year member of the Norwegian national team, Øystein Pettersen insists: "There are sides of Norwegian cross-country skiing that are not so positive. Eating disorders, overtraining, stress, pressure, the equipment arms race and much more. But doping, this is not part of the Norwegian cross-country sport."
Canada's famous Frozen Thunder officially opened Saturday after the Canmore Nordic Centre dumped an estimated 400 truckloads of snow onto its 1.3-kilometer loop in Canmore, Alberta. By Sunday's end, the loop should be roughly 2 k.
After scoring his first World Cup points last season, Whitehorse native Knute Johnsgaard is enjoying training more with Canada's senior national team. But he particularly appreciated a trip back home to the Yukon to chase wild sheep around on mountain ranges.
U.S. Ski Team and Alaska Pacific University skier Sadie Bjornsen has seen a few changes this summer including an increase in monthly training hours and the number of those sessions with her teammate Kikkan Randall. "It was definitely a new level of training for me, but I felt like I was able to absorb it, so that was cool," Bjornsen said.
Colorado biathlete Joanne Reid will join Susan Dunklee and Clare Egan to make up the U.S. women's World Cup team for the first period of racing. Meanwhile, Russell Currier (Outdoor Sports Institute) and Paul Schommer (USBA) are short-listed for the men's squad and will join a national team training camp in Canmore, Alberta, before one is ultimately selected.
Carsen Campbell, a stalwart on Canada's youth and junior biathlon squads, has moved into the senior ranks and got his first World Cup start last season. What's the first thing he packs for a European race tour? "My Hammock! Never know when you'll have to sleep in an airport."
In the days following the news of Therese Johaug's positive drug test, several members of the U.S. women's ski team react along with coach Matt Whitcomb. While most agree "this is any athlete’s worst nightmare", Finnish World Cup skier Aino-Kaisa Saarinen sympathizes while pushing for fair play.
Norway's Therese Johaug has been served a two-month provisional suspension while a hearing panel by the Norwegian Olympic Committee decides her fate: a much longer suspension could be in store. The star was caught using the banned steroid clostebol.
This week, Boulder Nordic Junior Racing (BNJR) Team Head Coach Adam St.Pierre shares a progressive track workout. “If you look at how many juniors in particular just go out at the start of a 5 k race and are just cooked within the first k, by putting them on a track and teaching them how small the changes in effort are to achieve different paces is a pretty powerful tool,” St.Pierre says.
Nordic has upstaged tubing in North Creek, N.Y., where a state-operated alpine area has made FIS-homologated, cross-country ski trails a priority. Along with 2.5 k and 3.3 k race loops, the Ski Bowl also has snowmaking, lights, and coming soon, Wi-Fi.
What's one thing Canadian senior national team member Cendrine Browne would change about skiing? "I'd take back the [FIS] rule on double poling!"
2016 was just his second year of biathlon, but Max Durtschi made his World Cup debut in Candmore. Balancing training with the national team and studying neuroscience at Dartmouth College takes a motivation: Durtschi relies on music from the spaghetti western "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" to get him out of bed in the morning.
A contrite and devastated Therese Johaug announced that she had tested positive for clostebol, an anabolic steroid. It was an ingredient in a lip cream she used after getting a severe sunburn at a high-altitude training camp. Her team doctor had told her that the cream contained no prohibited substances.