In a busy day outside of Minsk, Belarus, Sean Doherty finished 11th for the U.S. in the junior men's pursuit, followed by Canada's Aidan Millar in 14th; Millar's teammate Pearce Hanna placed 13th in the youth men's race. We caught up with nine different North American competitors, plus have a gallery of photos by Jake Ellingson and Jane Robertson to share.
Finn Hågen Krogh and Petter Northug teamed up for Northug's second gold in three races at 2015 World Championships, winning Sunday's team sprint by more than five seconds over the Russian defending champs and Italy. Northug now has gold in every World Championships discipline.
The Canadians placed seventh in the second men's semifinal at 2015 World Championships on Sunday, missing out on a spot in the final and placing 13th overall. “Everything worked to plan, it was just we were a little bit too far back, a second or two," anchor Lenny Valjas said.
Longtime friends and teammates Ingvild Flugstad Østberg and Maiken Caspersen Falla, of Norway, were out for some redemption after their fourth-place finish in the 2013 World Championships team sprint, and they got it with a sizeable win over Sweden's Ida Ingemarsdotter and Stina Nilsson, while Poland's Justyna Kowalczyk and Sylwia Jaśkowiec were thrilled with bronze.
Alex Harvey approached Saturday's 30 k skiathlon with a winning mindset and came out with bronze, his second medal in as many races so far at 2015 World Championships. "A medal today is as good as gold," Canadian National Team Coach Justin Wadsworth says, "We couldn’t want anything more." Russia's Maxim Vylegzhanin outlasted Switzerland's Dario Cologna for his first world title.
Erik Bjornsen of the U.S. Ski Team and Alaska Pacific University notched his best-distance result of the season on Saturday in his first race of 2015 World Championships. He led the U.S. men in 28th in the skiathlon, while Noah Hoffman placed 44th, Kris Freeman was 48th and Matt Gelso finished 54th.
FasterSkier’s coverage of the 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Falun, Sweden, is brought to you by the generous support of Kikkan Randall training wear. Norway’s Didrik Tønseth was looking at a podium finish in his very first FIS Nordic World Ski Championships event. Now he’s looking at doing more pushups. Twenty-three-year-old rookie Tønseth was leading for part of the way in the men’s 30-kilometer skiathlon on Saturday. “I was thinking that, ‘This is it. I’m...
The start lists are out and it's official: Sophie Caldwell and Jessie Diggins will be representing the U.S. women in Sunday's freestyle team sprint at World Championships. While it was a tough decision to leave Kikkan Randall off the team, U.S. head coach Chris Grover explains the reasoning behind it.
Conway, New Hampshire, might not be surprised that yet again, Sean Doherty is bringing home a medal in his luggage from a major international competition. But after two years of winning at the youth level, making the podium as a junior is still a big accomplishment. Doherty starts Sunday's pursuit ten seconds out of first place.
Stepping up from youth to junior racing is supposed to be hard - but in doing so, Canmore's Aidan Millar turned in his best result ever in international championship racing. "I’m finding it hard to believe that I was actually able to get that result," he wrote of finishing 8th in the 10 k sprint in Belarus.
A day after Alex Harvey rose to silver in the men's classic sprint on the first official day of 2015 World Championships in Falun, Sweden, Cross Country Canada Athlete Director Colin Abbott caught up with high-performance director Tom Holland about the significance of silver.
In the first nordic-combined competition of World Championships, Germany's Johannes Rydzek had some of the best timing all day, attacking late to drop his lone rival before the finish: Italy's Alessandro Pittin. The U.S. saw top-20 jumps from Billy Demong and Ben Berend, and Taylor Fletcher skied up from 25th to 19th.
There will be several things to keep an eye on during this year's 42nd American Birkebeiner, including top competitors, like two-time U.S. Olympian Holly Brooks, and a brand-new bridge just a few kilometers from the finish. Watch it live and follow our post-race coverage.
Marit Bjørgen overcame the spectator roars for Sweden's Stina Nilsson to hold off the home-crowd favorite by 0.42 seconds in the women's classic-sprint final on the first official day of 2015 World Championships in Falun, Sweden. Bjørgen captured her 13th World Championships gold, Nilsson notched silver and Norway's Maiken Caspersen Falla took bronze.
Four North American women advanced to the heats on the first day of medal competition at the 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, with American Sophie Caldwell leading the crew in 21st in Thursday’s classic-sprint qualifier. Poland's Justyna Kowalczyk won the qualifier by 0.24 seconds, and Kikkan Randall missed advancing by 3.22 seconds in 36th.
The buzz is building at the 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships with the completion of the first races in Falun. Wednesday saw the individual-start distance qualification races take place with 45 women and 69 men and women skiing 5 kilometers and 10 k, respectively.
Born in Argentina, Carlos Lannes took advantage of every opportunity he could to get on snow before moving to Spain after his teenage years to pursue an international career of competitive racing. He went on to compete at the 2010 Olympics and is entering his fourth-and-final World Championships.
Anchorage's Matt Pauli served as the FIS Technical Delegate for Junior and U23 World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in early February. He reports back that though the local committee was hardworking and accommodating of challenges with snowpack, the venue was brand new - and not, he believes, ideal to host an Olympic Games. Luckily, the Soldatskoe venue where he worked at Asian Winter Games in 2011 is a good alternative.
Benjamin Churchill of Alberta took a "wildly unexpected" win in the 15 k individual, while Leilani Tam Von Burg of Ontario won the 12.5 k in the first day of biathlon competition in Prince George, British Columbia.
Two men left the range for the final time within half a second's time, and they played a cat-and-mouse game over the final kilometers of Sunday's biathlon World Cup relay in Oslo, Norway. Russia's Anton Shipulin proved the smarter racer, gaining his team a 0.2-second win.