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Hamilton Back on Podium in Toblach Sprint; Five Americans in Top 13

The feeling was beyond déjà vu. Simi Hamilton remembered the exact moment so clearly: almost exactly Tour de Ski’s first stage in Val Müstair, Switzerland. After leaving the Tour after Stage 2, Hamilton competed in two OPA Cup races last weekend in Planica, Slovenia. There, he won the skate sprint and finished fifth in the 10 k skate. “That definitely increased my confidence and I felt much better about where I was fitness-wise and speed-wise...

Mäkäräinen in ‘Different League’ in Ruhpolding Sprint; Dunklee 33rd

Kaisa Mäkäräinen skied in a league of her own on Saturday. The five biathletes currently leading the International Biathlon Union (IBU) women’s overall standings also occupied the top five of Saturday’s 7.5-kilometer sprint in Ruhpolding, Germany. But when Mäkäräinen shoots clean in a race, even those fast skiers cannot keep up with “the Finnish flash,” as an announcer for German TV broadcaster ARD dubbed her, as she finished in 20:51.8 minutes for her first World Cup win of the season and...

Saturday Rundown: Hamilton Second in Toblach Skate Sprint (Updated)

FIS Cross-Country World Cup (Toblach, Italy): Freestyle sprints Men | Race report Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen posts a 22-second win for her first victory of the season and first time shooting without a miss in an individual race since the Ruhpolding sprint almost exactly a year ago. Dunklee leads North Americans in 33rd and qualifies for the pursuit, along with Canada’s Rosanna Crawford (55th), Megan Tandy (56th) and Julia Ransom (60th). Ski Classics press release. “It...

Burke Gives It One More Shot for Season-Best 12th; Bailey 18th in Ruhpolding Sprint

This week, Tim Burke reached a serious tipping point. A US Biathlon veteran with six International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup podiums to his name (including a silver medal at 2013 World Championships), Burke third in a sprint in Östersund, Sweden. So far this season, Burke, less than a month out from his 35th birthday, had failed to crack the top 20. His season-best result was men’s 4 x 7.5-kilometer relay in Ruhpolding, Germany, using...

Cockney Leads ‘North of the Border’ U.S. Nats Prologue Podium

MIDWAY, Utah. — Most were swallowed in seconds, the steady stream of snowflakes on Thursday serving a magician-like purpose: a curtain of snow through which the first five starters all appeared, only to disappear once again. All except one. A speck of red bobbing through the Soldier Hollow’s (SoHo) new sprint course, sporting bib 5 and the Canadian national team suit, Jess Cockney did not go unseen. The 27-year-old member of Canada’s World Cup B-team lost nothing to...

Thursday Rundown: Ruhpolding and Soldier Hollow (Updated)

U.S. Cross Country Championships (Soldier Hollow): Freestyle-sprint prologue [UPDATED] One and done. That was the case Thursday for the U.S. Cross Country Championship’s freestyle sprint at Soldier Hollow (SoHo) where only a qualifier was held to determine the final standings — no heats were contested. With just-under-freezing temps and a light snow falling, the men set off at 15-second intervals. The men’s podium was an all-Canadian affair as they swept the top-three positions. Jess Cockney of the Canadian...

Wednesday Rundown: Ruhpolding Relay

View this post on Instagram Your podium for the #RUH17 men's relay! Norway, Russia and Germany! A post shared by IBU Biathlonworld (@ibu_biathlonworld) on Jan 11, 2017 at 7:10am PST IBU World Cup (Ruhpolding, Germany): 4 x 7.5 k men’s relay Norway earned a come-from-behind victory in the first relay of 2017, with Emil Hegle Svendsen anchoring the team and shooting past Russia’s Anton Babikov in the final kilometer. Norway won by 5.1 seconds. Norway had been in just...

Wasting No Time, Holmes Works Hills Hard for 20 k Title

MIDWAY, Utah. — As she headed up Soldier Hollow’s infamous Hermod’s Hill for her fifth and final time, there wasn’t another skier in sight. At least none of the ones she started with. Chelsea Holmes, of Alaska Pacific University (APU), was fine with that. She never liked sprints to the finish, and on Tuesday, Holmes would have it her way. Of course, there was still the possibility that she would slip and skid to a...

Tuesday Rundown: Classic Mass Starts in SoHo

U.S. Cross Country Championships (Soldier Hollow): 20/30 k classic mass starts After a day of rest, racers returned to the Soldier Hollow (SoHo) trails on Tuesday for the men’s 30-kilometer and women’s 20 k classic mass start competitions. Two laps into the the men’s eight-lap event, a front group began to form, with Kris Freeman of Team Freebird, Ben Lustgarten of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP), Scott Patterson of Alaska Pacific University (APU) and his...

Bender Bags Another Classic Sprint Title, ‘What I Really Wanted to Do Here’

MIDWAY, Utah — There was a dampness in the room, and an odor that clung to the walls like plastic. Yet athletes continued to enter, with one after another pulling open the doors to the Soldier Hollow venue (SoHo) volunteer building. Once inside, many made a beeline for the race committee’s makeshift front desk. Race bibs and start lists, however, were not what they sought. Close to an hour had passed since the final female...

TDS Stages 5, 6, 7: Toblach/Val di Fiemme Quotes

That’s a wrap, folks! With the 11th Tour de Ski coming to an end on Sunday with the infamous Alpe Cermis final climb in Val di Fiemme, we wanted to share some of the athlete and coach comments that didn’t make it into the race reports. Below are quotes from the last three stages of the Tour, all in Italy. *** Stage 5 (Toblach, Italy): 5/10 k freestyle Men’s report On pre-race feelings: “I think nerves were...

Sunday Rundown: Alpe Cermis, Oberhof, Lahti, Soldier Hollow (Updated x5)

U.S. Cross Country Championships (Soldier Hollow): Classic sprints Jennie Bender of Bridger Ski Foundation and Kevin Bolger of the University of Utah won national titles in the classic sprints at 2017 U.S. Cross Country Championships at Soldier Hollow earlier Sunday afternoon. They each took narrow – but, for sprinting, relatively uncontested – victories, as each was in the lead coming into the stadium and led through the final 180-degree turn into the finishing straight. In the women’s race, Bender took the...

Koukalová Wins Second Mass Start of Season; Dunklee 9th, Crawford 25th

After twice shooting clean on Sunday, American Susan Dunklee found herself in third place going out on the next loop of the women’s 12.5-kilometer mass start at the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup in Oberhof, Germany, pushing hard to keep up with Czech Republic’s Gabriela Koukalová and Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier. “I was not skiing a sustainable pace,” Dunklee explained in an email to FasterSkier. “Sometimes it makes more sense to keep yourself in the race...

Ustiugov Full of Emotions, Few Words After Winning Tour de Ski: ‘We Did It’; Harvey 7th

Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Noah Hoffman. There were moments in Sunday’s 9-kilometer freestyle climb up Alpe Cermis, the seventh and final stage of the 2017 Tour de Ski, that Norway’s Martin Johnsrud Sundby appeared to be putting some serious time into Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov up front. In the first two kilometers, Sundby as the runner-up entering the day had gained three seconds on Ustiugov, who had won all but...