A junior world champion in ski orienteering, Barbro Kvåle added a U23 World Championships title to her list of accomplishments on Thursday with a victory in the women's 10 k freestyle. Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt of Rocky Mountain Racers tallied 17th, Cendrine Browne (CNEPH) was 23rd, and Joanne Reid was the top American woman in 25th.
With a young daughter, Randy Gibbs decided to leave the World Cup circuit and his ski tech position with the U.S. Ski Team for more family time. But when the Australians offered him coaching work on a few trips a year, he was thrilled to say yes. He just returned from World University Games in Slovakia, where Australia notched best-ever results.
In this revived Pro Workout, Caitlin Gregg (formerly Caitlin Compton) explains how to deal with challenging and unexpected circumstances, especially before race day. “You need to have the ability to be flexible and to understand that there are some things you can’t control,” she said back in 2010. “But there are tons of options. The beauty of cross-country skiing is that we do lots of cross-training in the offseason.”
Last year in his Junior World Championships debut, Thomas O’Harra placed 54th in the freestyle sprint. The 18-year-old APU skier placed 14th on Tuesday in the opening race of 2015 Junior Worlds in Almaty, Kazakhstan -- the 1.3-kilometer classic sprint -- and three Canadian women made the quarterfinals as well.
After individual racing was completed at their national championships - you can find the results inside - Norway named a 23-member team for World Championships in Falun, Sweden. It includes season-long favorites as well as Kristin Størmer Steira and Astrid Jacobsen, who only just returned to the World Cup.
Anti-doping scientists used "data triangulation" to gather many different types of evidence about doping, and concluded that between 14 and 39 percent of elite athletes dope. The number is impressive - in part because estimates of doping are rarely published. But, the authors note, "tools to evaluate the prevalence of doping use in sports are readily available; they only need to be used more often." So why are we only talking about it?
On Monday, the U.S. Ski Team (USST) announced its much-anticipated cross country selections for the 2015 FIS Nordic World Championships.
Russian Yulia Tchekaleva won the women’s 15-kilometer skiathlon Sunday by 15.6 seconds, earning her first-ever World Cup victory and delivering her best result of the season on home turf in Rybinsk, Russia.
Susan Dunklee had her best shooting of the year to move from eighth up to sixth in the World Cup pursuit in Antholz, Italy, on Saturday, the best U.S. result of the year. Canada put two women in the top 30, and American Hannah Dreissigacker moved from 60th up to 42nd - beating former star Miriam Goessner on her final loop.
Twenty-eighth in the jump was good enough for Taylor Fletcher, as the 24-year-old U.S. Nordic Combined skier rocketed to an individual podium for the second time in his World Cup career. His older brother Bryan Fletcher placed eighth for his third-straight top 10.
Darya Domracheva of Belarus won her 21st IBU World Cup race on Friday by nearly 27 seconds over Finland's Kaisa Mäkäräinen in second, and Germany's Laura Dahlmeier tallied her first podium in third in the 7.5 k sprint. Susan Dunklee executed her plan to place eighth for a season best.
Brendan Green couldn't say for sure what's brought him so much success lately -- could be the venues or the minor cues he's been working on -- but his coaches have a hunch. The Canadian biathlete became the first man on the circuit in the last two seasons to shoot 50-for-50 in four-straight IBU World Cup races.
In her second-ever team sprint (and first one since 2009), Rosie Brennan teamed up with Ida Sargent to advance to the final, where they placed sixth of 10 teams. The U.S. women's first team, Sadie Bjornsen and Sophie Caldwell placed 11th, as did the U.S. men's second team (Erik Bjornsen/Matt Gelso), and Andy Newell and Simi Hamilton ended up 19th after a late semifinal crash.
Simon Schempp lives and trains in Ruhpolding, Germany, and now he can say he has won a biathlon World Cup there too - by just 8 centimeters in a three-man photo finish and one of the most exciting races of the season. Brendan Green of Canada completed a perfect 40-shot weekend to snag his second top 20.
Missing the wax meant that Susan Dunklee's good feelings about Friday's sprint didn't show up on the results sheet. But the U.S. biathlete turned it around in the mass start, taking her now-fast skis all the way up to third before falling to 16th place, still a season best. Megan Heinicke, in the first mass start of her career, finished 23rd for Canada.
Sweden's Stina Nilsson surged past Norway's Ingvild Flugstad Østberg to win the World Cup women's 6 x 1.2 k freestyle team sprint in Otepää with the same crew that won the Olympic bronze medal at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Three Americans made the quarterfinals on Saturday in the second World Cup classic sprint of the season: Sadie Bjornsen, Simi Hamilton and Andy Newell. None of them advanced to the semifinals, and while it wasn't a bad day, most were left wanting more.
If he hadn’t been a Northug, one might have wondered what that 24-year-old Norwegian was doing in the men's 1.5 k classic-sprint final on Saturday.
Kikkan Randall's been home for just over a week, and in a phone interview on Tuesday, she said she was ready for the break. "It wasn’t an easy decision to leave the racing circuit ... but with Falun being my big goals, I wanted to really try to make a drastic change," she says.
A German transplant, Megan Heinicke went into Friday's IBU World Cup sprint seeking a top 30, like always, but more specifically to maintain her focus. She did just that, finishing a career-best 11th as a result, 52.3 seconds behind a new Norwegian winner: Fanny Welle-Strand Horn.