CRAFTSBURY, Vt. – In shades of red, blue, green and white, six highly competitive women stood at the start line at the SuperTour Finals on Tuesday waiting for their signal to get after the 1.6-kilometer classic loop one more time. On one end of the A-final lineup stood World Cup sprint champion Kikkan Randall, who flew in from Europe on Sunday. On the other, her World Cup teammate and distance specialist, Liz Stephen soaked up...
MONT SAINT-ANNE, Québec – To say that Devon Kershaw and Alex Harvey are close would be a massive understatement. When Kershaw decided to pack it in for the season, Harvey and some of his other teammates on the Canadian National Ski Team convinced him to reconsider. They found Kershaw on the start line Saturday as fired up as ever for the 50-kilometer classic mass start at Canadian Ski Nationals. After skiing together with a lead...
MONT SAINT-ANNE, Québec – If there was a date circled on Chandra Crawford’s calendar, this was it. Well, it may have been one of many, but she at least took a mental note and had plenty of ambitions for Saturday’s 30-kilometer classic mass start at Canadian Ski Nationals. A Canadian National Team member and 2006 Olympic gold medalist in the skate sprint, Crawford had been thinking about the 30 k since last June. Third in...
A day after flying into Finland, Brian McKeever and Erik Carleton of Canada nabbed gold in the first race of the IPC World Cup finals in Vuokatti on Thursday, the 1.2 k visually impaired sprint. On Tuesday, McKeever and Carleton drove straight to the airport after competing in the 15 k freestyle event at the Canadian Ski Championships. Carleton placed second on Monday in the 10 k classic and eighth on Tuesday. McKeever was 15th...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec — Alex Harvey had a lot going for him on Thursday. The hometown course and its accompanying fans, the helicopter and a little luck were just a few of the things in the 23-year-old’s favor in the 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint final at Canadian Ski Nationals. Heck, organizers even pushed the weeklong event back in March to accommodate Harvey and his national team’s return. When Harvey nearly missed his quarterfinal on Thursday, they gave...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec — Whipping along the first of two downhills on a chemically enhanced sprint course at Canadian Ski Nationals on Thursday, Chandra Crawford could feel the vibrations in the stadium. Everyone there could. A helicopter soared directly ahead, swaying above one end of the 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint loop to the other for an unrivaled viewpoint of the nation’s cross-country skiing finale. Spectators buzzed that the mayor of Québec was inside. In fact, it...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec — While Alex Harvey was the man of the day at Canadian Ski Nationals on Tuesday, Devon Kershaw, Lenny Valjas and the remaining World Cup crew (including Chandra Crawford, Dasha Gaiazova, Alysson Marshall and Kevin Sandau) also met a strong welcome after flying into Québec late Monday night and racing the next day. Cross-country ski fans, friends, family and media outlets came out to Mont Sainte-Anne to catch a glimpse of the...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec –Anyone trying to follow the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle individual start at Canadian Ski Nationals on Tuesday might have found the live splits a little confusing. Emily Nishikawa led at 5 k. No wait, Perianne Jones did. Ragnhild Haga sat in second, but Alysson Marshall later bumped her from that spot. Randomized seeding put some of the closest competitors considerably far apart on the start list, making it difficult to determine where athletes...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec – Alex Harvey had no idea what he was in for. Or maybe he did. Fourteen hours after he and several other Canadian National Team members stepped off a plane in Québec City and concluded a 32-hour trip back from the World Cup Finals in Sweden, Harvey was back in his native Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges, Québec, preparing to race again. If it had been up to Harvey, he would have slept in a little...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec – Four days after flying home from Europe, Ivan Babikov was back in action at Canadian Ski Nationals on Monday. The 31-year-old national team member was also back to his winning ways, hitting his stride as usual at the domestic championships and claiming his seventh Canadian title. Out of nearly 160 men in the 10-kilometer classic individual start, Babikov was the fastest, completing the two loops in 28:38.6. Runner-up Erik Carleton (Rocky...
MONT SAINTE-ANNE, Québec – After a whirlwind tour of Europe, in which Ida Sargent of the U.S. Ski Team/Craftsbury Green Racing Project came home just once for U.S. Nationals in January, the 24-year-old took on relatively simple task in Canada on Monday. She needed to pass one person and push hard in a 5-kilometer classic individual start. With soft conditions and temperatures upwards of 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) at Canadian Ski Nationals, that...
All 2012 FIS World Cup Finals coverage is brought to you through the generous support of Men’s results. Matthew Voisin contributed reporting.
QUEBEC CITY – Two tiny specks charging toward the finish, Graham Nishikawa and Jesse Cockney appeared to merge into a single lane, and then suddenly jolted in opposite directions. Whatever made them move must have been significant, and it could have explained why Nishikawa lost his lead and ultimately the classic team sprint at the Canadian Ski National Championships on Saturday. Turns out it was just water in the tracks on a balmy afternoon at...
QUEBEC CITY – As Alana Thomas stood in the finish pen on the Plains of Abraham and looked back beyond the line, she smiled as Perianne Jones cruised down the final stretch. The Canadian National Team member was going to win by a mile – or maybe a kilometer, figuratively speaking in Canadian terms. While Jones didn’t quite have a full lap on the 11 other teams in the open classic relay at the Canadian...
This year, the Haywood Canadian National Championships have been pushed back a week to accommodate a special group – Canada’s World Cup elite, which are returning in force to put on a show for the home crowd in Quebec. With Alex Harvey, Devon Kershaw, Chandra Crawford and all the major Canadian stars slated to participate, the fields will be some of the deepest in North America all season. The Canadian World Cup squad has turned...
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Devon Kershaw (CAN) followed by Alex Harvey (CAN). Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus. After cleaning up in the bonus sprints, and finishing 10th overall in the Holmenkollen 50k classic, Devon Kershaw (CAN) moved into second in the World Cup standings, and is now 15 points ahead of Petter Northug (NOR). Kershaw was in the mix at each intermediate sprint, and won the final two, but that was never the plan. “I decided out there to just grab...
Devon Kershaw and Alex Harvey have been setting an impressive standard on the Canadian team of late, regularly battling at the front of races, and making frequent podium appearances. But even the best have off days, and as an indication of the depth of Canadian squad, Dasha Gaiazova and Lenny Valjas picked up the slack when Kershaw and Harvey failed to advance to the heats in the classic sprint in Lahti, Finland. Gaiazova and Valjas...
Expectations of the Canadian team are at the highest point since Beckie Scott’s heyday, what with Devon Kershaw winning races, Alex Harvey and Chandra Crawford on the podium, team sprint medals, Ivan Babikov showing off classic chops and regular appearances in the points by a strong group of up-and-comers. So a day with a top result of 15th may have once been cause for celebration, but is now just ho-hum, especially coming off of Kershaw’s...
Alex Harvey (CAN), back in action after a cramping back caused him to drop out of the 30k last weekend, crashed out of the quarterfinals in Szklarska Poreba, Poland. Harvey qualified in 20th in the skate sprint, but his day came to an early end when he went down on the tight left turn above the stadium “I was feeling pretty good in my quarter, the pace felt pretty easy,” Harvey wrote in an email...