To kick off this World Cup season, Cross Country Canada (CCC) had planned to send four women for Period 1. After its men’s team has gathered most of the attention in recent years, the Canadian women are now in a position to develop depth at the top level of the sport. In her third full World Cup season, Emily Nishikawa, of Canada’s World Cup B-team, will be joined for Period 1 by national U25 Team members Dahria Beatty...
The opening World Cup races came to a close this Sunday, with Finland's Iivo Niskanen taking the overall win in the men's 15-kilometer classic race for the second time in a row. The Finnish skier held off the likes of Norway's Martin Johnsrud Sundby in order to secure the victory. "This was a really important victory, because last year was so difficult," Niskanen said during a T.V. interview.
The two men who landed on the first and third steps of the podium in Saturday’s World Cup opener in Kuusamo, Finland, weren’t even slated to start as of a week ago. But 20-year-old Johannes Høsflot Klæbo’s chose to skip the opening World Cup weekend because his energy wasn’t where he wanted it to be. “It’s just so competitive [this] time of year,” Canadian Alex Harvey observed in a post-race phone interview. “The Norwegians that were first and...
Welcome to The Rundown, your quick primer of need-to-know information about the day’s racing. We’ll be updating this digest as the day goes on with additional results, photos and quotes. The Rundown is NOT a race report; stay tuned for complete race reports later today with interviews from the day’s top racers. *** West Yellowstone FIS Races: 5/10 k classic Scott Patterson of Alaska Pacific University (APU) continued his winning streak on Saturday, topping the 10-kilometer classic FIS race...
Alex Harvey had a bone to pick with Davos, and he made strides in resolving it on Friday and Saturday at the Swiss World Cup venue. Top-15 World Cup distance results have eluded him there, but not in Saturday's preseason tuneup. "It's always rough for me to race at altitude, so I was very pleased with the result and the way the body worked,” he explained.
Canadian World Cup Team member Alex Harvey is no stranger to success. Always lurking near the top end of the World Cup overall, Harvey has his sights set on more World Championships hardware -- specifically a second skiathlon medal -- and the season-culminating Crystal Globe.
Devon Kershaw was the lone Canadian with the option to compete last Sunday in Gällivare, Sweden, after the race dates were rescheduled. While the field was small, he explained it was a great opportunity "to put a bib on and blow out the cobwebs."
"Imagine sprinting up twenty flights of stairs and then trying to thread a needle.” That's how Biathlon Canada veteran Rosanna Crawford describes the art of skiing, then shooting, repeatedly. Here, we learn about biathlon: how athletes prep on race day, and how Crawford approached her shooting on a personal-best day at 2016 World Championships.
It's not easy picking a World Cup team. Ask Cross Country Canada's High Performance Director Tom Holland, who recently spoke to FS about this season's goals and how they selected their best athletes to achieve them.
Quotes, observations and photos from the Frozen Thunder freestyle distance, classic sprint and skate-sprint qualifier last week in Canmore, Alberta. “Frozen Thunder is definitely a huge asset to western North America. There is no doubt that it helps get you into ski shape long before the season starts,” local skier Russell Kennedy states.
More volume, double-poling, and a strong female training posse: Nakkertok and Thunder Bay's Katherine Stewart-Jones is feeling fast and looking forward to racing U23 World Championships Utah this winter.
Just six-hundredths of a second shy of Len Valjas's winning qualifying time on Thursday, Bob Thompson of NDC Thunder Bay is headed to Europe for his first international World Cup experience. He clinched the final men's spot on Canada's World Cup Period 1 team.
Jesse Cockney just earned World Cup starts for period I with the Canadian national team. After a stint in Quebec City, Cockney moved back to Canmore - where he has lived since age seven - and says he has felt a big improvement in his fitness.
Update: Early Thursday, Cross Country Canada (CCC) announced that Jess Cockney has been selected for World Cup Period 1, referencing both his Olympic history and last season's World Cup top-10 result.
After a junior and U23 career spent skiing for Rossland, BC's Black Jack ski team, Julien Locke earned a national team nod in May and has relocated to Canmore, Alberta. He's aiming to impress at the World Cup sprint selection races at Frozen Thunder this week.
Kershaw tackled our "17 Questions" from a training camp in Utah. After training around Oslo this season, he thinks that Martin Johnsrud Sundby will still be the man to beat when the World Cup starts: "he's a beast."
In Canada's first unofficial on-snow race of the 2016/2017 season -- which most of nearly 100 competitors viewed as a training effort -- American Chelsea Holmes and Canadian national-team biathlete Brendan Green topped their respective fields in the 7.5 and 12 k freestyle races.
In 2016, Maya MacIsaac-Jones got her first World Cup top-30 in the Gatineau sprint stage of the Ski Tour Canada. She'll start this season on the World Cup, but is shooting for excellence at U23 World Championships in Utah later in the year - fueled by pre-race Harry Potter reading.
Canada's famous Frozen Thunder officially opened Saturday after the Canmore Nordic Centre dumped an estimated 400 truckloads of snow onto its 1.3-kilometer loop in Canmore, Alberta. By Sunday's end, the loop should be roughly 2 k.
After scoring his first World Cup points last season, Whitehorse native Knute Johnsgaard is enjoying training more with Canada's senior national team. But he particularly appreciated a trip back home to the Yukon to chase wild sheep around on mountain ranges.