Top Norwegians Think Cheaper Sport Goggles Are Better Many Norwegian skiers are switching from expensive sport goggles to a cheaper but better Swedish brand. — Choosing cheap, but good goggles is sending a (important) signal to young skiers as well, says national team skier Tord Asle Gjerdalen
The United States Ski and Snowboard Association recently announced the Cross-country National Team selection for 2006 – 2007. Season preparation for the new Team is well under way and training opportunities have been extended to athletes outside the Team as well. We have observed a number of comments from the skiing community about the Team selection on this web site. The large batch of those comments deserves no further discussion; what they lack in substance...
Editor's Note: This is a reprint of one of our most popular articles last fall. We want our new FasterSkier.com readers to be as prepared as our old ones for those less-than-stellar race days. As you prepare for the new season, you should brush up on your excuses as well. Not that you'll ever need them, of course…. “I need to re-string my racquet, “I was tired from football practiceâ€, “I couldn’t concentrateâ€, I’m new...
Representatives of XC Ottawa made their yearly pilgrimage to visit Zach Caldwell of Caldwell Sport Specialties and Engineered Tuning in West Townshend Vermont about a month ago. As usual, the trip proved to be both fun and very informative. I thought it might be worthwhile describing a few of the things we learned from Zach who, as many of you know already, is incredibly familiar with anything having to do with cross-country ski technology. The...
Norwegian skistar Frode Estil decided to change ski brand last week, and it didn’t take long before Petter Northug knocked on his door to pick up his best skis. – He (Petter Northug) knocked on the door very quickly after the decision to switch was made and took off with lots of skis, said Frode Estil. Northug, the rising star of the Norwegian men's team, is on Fischer, which is what Estil raced on until...
Swedish skiers will test up their new speedskating style ski suits in this weekend’s World Cup races in Davos. See link with photo Source: VG Newspaper
Rottefella, the Norwegian ski bindings manufacturer, has secured a new contract with Fischer, the world’s largest ski manufacturer. Fischer has for a long time been a cross country skiing partner with Salomon of France and the SNS-system. According to Fischer, the contract with Salomon will be terminated after the winter season 2006/2007. “Fischer has a dominant position as the world leading cross country ski producer. Innovation is a key element in their success. The Fischer...
Don’t mess with a winning formula. Rode ski wax is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this winter. The classic Rossa klister has had the same formula and name since 1956 and is still frequently used by top skiers Worldwide. Rossa can be used in changing conditions like crusty, granular snow and some ice around cero Celsius (-2 to +4 C). It’s often mixed with universal when it’s a little colder and with Rossa (red) special when...
Last weekend we saw the first ever North American World Cup win since Pierre Harvey won in 1987. It was also the first time ever two North Americans were on the podium together in the same race. It was also the first time ever a North American captured first and second place during the same weekend’s World Cup event. In addition to Beckie Scott and Sara Renner’s podiums, Sandra Crawford was 10th in the sprint....
Last week we posted an article on FasterSkier.com called Historical Statistics: Top North American Male World Cup Skiers
Fasterskier.com Guest Editorial by Mike Trecker Fast, furious and freezing. What an amazing couple of weeks it has been in Alaska following the trials and tribulations of those competing for a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team. For most of those trying out, it is just an accomplishment getting to this point. They have trained diligently through the summer months while scrambling to put together something that resembles sponsorship, scraped enough funding together to secure...
Most nations have an all-time best list of their retired cross country skiers. In Sweden and Norway they call them skikings. Here is the first attempt to create a North American top-ten of all times list based upon top-20 World Cup results. We are starting with men. Rule #1: Active skiers will be eligible for the list when they retire. It’s hard to find complete statistics, so bear with us and help correct errors since...
We want to see US and Canadian Cross Country skiers live on television from the Olympics in Turin, Italy! Cross country skiers, stand up for your sport, email all your cross skiing friends and have them vote for xc skiing. It only takes two seconds. Cross country skiing had only 3% and less than 300 votes last week when Fasterskier.com posted the article
Gunde Svan Raced On 'Bluff' Skis Swedish ski star Gunde Svan won 37 World Cup victories on Kneissl skis in the eighties. Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten is now revealing that most of the victories were captured on bluff skis. Source: Skidsport.com/Glid Gunde Svan was loyal to Kneissl during all his years as an elite skier. But Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten is now revealing that most of his big victories, that also included two Olympic and five World...
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending some time with Zach Caldwell of Engineered Tuning and Caldwell Sport Specialties at his home and headquarters in West Townshend, Vermont. For those of you that don’t know, Zach operates a top notch stonegrinding and ski selection business. My visit more than confirmed my earlier impression that he is absolutely one of the best at what he does. To begin, he took me through the...
FasterSkier readers enjoyed and added a large number of past and present ski, wax and rollerski companies to our Test Your Cross Country Skiing Knowledge: Specials questions posted on July 28, 2005 Just like old times: Photos from the Wooden Ski Classic in Anchorage, AK, Nov 2004
Here's a link to an interesting article in the Anchorage Daily News, written by Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center head coach Jim Galanes. The article is written in response to a previous ADN article about the fact that no Alaskans were named to the US Ski Team for 2005. The article touches on many issues of development that apply to all cross country ski communities. Flat futures of local skiers can be turned around...
I recently acquired a pair of Pro-Ski Roadline Tech classic rollerskis. These skis are interesting from a number of perspectives. Notably, the ratchet is located in the front wheel, which is smaller than the back wheel. The back wheel could be described as typical for a classic rollerski. www.torbjornsport.com.
Dear FasterSkier.com readers, FasterSkier.com fully supports and recommends the use of helmets while rollerskiing. We have, over the years, posted a number of safety related articles encouraging helmet use and other safety precautions while training and especially while rollerskiing. As coaches, we normally require that the athletes we are working with wear helmets while rollerskiing. However, we sometimes use photos where the athletes have choosen to not use helmets. These athletes are adults and they...