At 22, Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt hasn't taken the most conventional road as an up-and-coming Canadian skier, but she's developed training smarts through experience and is now working toward U23 World Championships, Canada's 2016 World Cups and the 2018 Olympics with Rocky Mountain Racers in Canmore.
Retirements were expected after an Olympic season - but the women's biathlon field will be shaken up even more, as several top competitors are taking the season off for babies or injuries. Plus, Darya Domracheva has switched her coach and Ukraine stars face a funding crisis. All the updates inside - the World Cup is on in less than two months!
While the three medals U.S. Paralympics Nordic won in Sochi are still fresh, the team's moving on and doing everything it can with the money it has to be a leading force in Paralympic cross-country skiing and biathlon. "Medals are good, but they’re not critical," director John Farra explains. "I think they’re going to be more critical in Pyeongchang.”
A former top World Junior Championships competitor from Vermont, Kevin Cutts now coaches a ski gymnasium in Sweden. He chatted with FasterSkier about how he sees U.S. skiing, now that he's living abroad - and concludes that North America isn't as far behind as we think we are.
Last week, the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Team toyed with a new kind of training at the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center: technique on a rollerski treadmill using live-video feedback. Oksana Masters was nervous before, but ramped it up to 10 mph at a 10-percent incline before the workout was over.
A new study assessed the exposure to airborne particles by 45 different World Cup wax techs across three disciplines - cross country, biathlon, and nordic combined. The results are scary, but the team also demonstrated that a custom-built ventilation system can reduce exposure by 95%.
You might say the CXC Team is rebuilding, but that wouldn't sum up what's entirely going on. "All the coaches agreed, the team needs to get back to the roots of developing athletes," executive director Yuriy Gusev said. A new head coach, Andy Keller, has been tasked with leading that effort.
Jason Lemieux was happy living in Oregon. But he took what he considered the opportunity of a lifetime and came East to coach his alma mater, Williams College. Traditions remain in place but Lemieux has added variety to the Williams program, which he hopes will help the Ephs rise to new heights.
Heads turned when the first American across the line in the women’s 5-kilometer classic race at the 2014 NCAA Championships in March was an 18-year-old freshmen from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This year, Nichole Bathe has her sights set on even better results at NCAAs and qualifying for another Junior World Championships.
Despite being diagnosed as a diabetic when he was a kid, Robin Bryntesson is still one of the top skiers in the world. And one of the busiest: in the summer he runs a camp for children with diabetes, he's constantly producing funny videos, and his downloadable technique app just went live.
“You know we do other workouts,” Tim Burke says with a laugh more than halfway up the 4,867-foot Whiteface Mountain. Minutes before, the U.S. biathlete completed Tuesday's big effort in 13 minutes, 21 seconds, finishing about 1,300 feet higher than he started for a new record in the hill climb named after him.
U.S. Biathlon's Max Cobb also chaired the IBU Technical Committee for the past several years - and he just passed rule changes at the IBU Congress that include a system-wide qualification points system and added Wild Card entries to major events. "People voted in favor of a more fair, open, and sporting system – I was really gratified," Cobb said.
In her second year of biathlon, Clare Egan is a member of U.S. Biathlon's development group and already seeing strides this season. In August, she placed third at North American Rollerski Championships for her best-ever biathlon result. "My skiing’s just going to keep getting better ... and with the shooting, I have to just put in the time," she says.
In between workouts at the 2014 U.S. Ski Team Lake Placid Training Camp, the U.S. Ski Team took some time to give back to the Lake Placid community. With Fast and Female for the girls and Speed Camp for the boys, the September 5th events hosted smiles all around.
CXC elite head coach Bill Pierce announced Thursday that he was leaving Wisconsin for Colorado, where he'll serve as nordic director at the Snow Mountain Ranch YMCA near Winter Park. "The hard part is leaving the relationships," he says.
Between the Canadian NorAm and U.S. SuperTour circuits, here's a rundown of what you have to look forward to this winter, highlighting dates, places and big races.
James Upham had a good run in Sochi: his Paralympic skiers won three medals - the first by U.S. women in 20 years - and before that at the Olympics Susan Dunklee, a college skier he had recruited to be a biathlete, turned in the best performance ever by a U.S. woman. Now he's returning to his home of Maine as an assistant coach at Bates College.
Emma Lunder placed 30th in her World Cup debut last season. The Canadian biathlete has since gained funding, training partners, and motivation: "Anytime I'm doing a really brutal workout, I just think to myself, if you can get through this, you're one step closer to racing in Pokljuka again!"
Peter Hale didn't just sell skis: he gave them out, discounted them, and made sure that enthusiastic young skiers had them if they needed them. Madshus is offering a scholarship to do the same thing, based not on a young skier's speed but also on their involvement in the ski community.
Almost three years ago now, Reid Lutter and Piotr Bednarski decided that rather than watching their two Twin Cities training programs compete for skiers and resources, they should join forces. The results are a lesson in what city-based ski clubs can accomplish: in 2014 Loppet Nordic Racing was the most successful junior team in the country.