Watching her husband in the West Yellowstone SuperTour 15 k skate on Saturday, Caitlin Gregg (Madshus/Team Gregg) had a sense it was going to be another good day. Brian Gregg placed second and Caitlin went on to win the women's 10 k individual race by more than a minute and 20 seconds. “It's incredible,” she said. “It’s so fun when this stuff happens.”
The highlight of Caitlin Gregg’s day was seeing all her Midwest fans, her Loppet Nordic Racing buddies, at the finish of each heat on Friday during the first SuperTour sprint of the season. That gave her reason to celebrate and smile every time she won, which Gregg did all morning and early afternoon in the West Yellowstone 1.3 k skate sprint.
A lot of people might not know who Emil Johansson is. To SuperTour spectators and most of the 200-plus racers in West Yellowstone on Friday, he was an unknown: a Swede racing in the green suit of his home club IK Jarl Rättvik. An exchange student at the University of Colorado in Boulder, he's not part of the team. It was hard to know what he was capable of.
While Caitlin Gregg and Sweden's Emil Johansson took the cake in Friday's West Yellowstone SuperTour freestyle sprint, who you is up for a victory in the women's and men's 10- and 15-kilometer freestyle individual starts on Saturday? Vote now!
Some of the most competitive skiers in the U.S. SuperTour circuit give thanks and express appreciation for friends and family before, during and after their Thanksgiving ski sessions in West Yellowstone, Mont., one day before the SuperTour opens there on Friday.
Now's your chance to make predictions! Who do you think will win Friday's SuperTour opener, a 1.3 k skate sprint on the Rendezvous Ski Trails? Last year, West Yellowstone held a point-to-point prologue; Friday's race will be all-out rounds.
The 2014 race season has arrived, and with it, the start of SuperTour racing. In an Olympic year, the elite domestic race series becomes even more important to aspiring skiers. Expect intense and highly competitive racing from the get-go!
You don't have to be a ski nerd or history buff to think this stuff is interesting. A century ago, West Yellowstone was just getting its starts as a tourist town -- one that had to deal with excessive cold and ever-piling snow. What to do? Ski!
Visitor numbers are up for the West Yellowstone Ski Festival and the Rendezvous Ski Trails are open in their entirety, but the snow is a little denser than usual. "It's definitely a little odd for here," groomer Doug Edgerton said of the manmade-like conditions that are 100-percent natural. "Historically, we’re cold and dry."
With almost the same number of athletes as last year, the AWCA in Canmore, Alberta, has fewer women this season, but coach Chris Jeffries is pleased with the team's training quality despite some injuries. "The group is very focused this year and more mature," he says.
With nearly 90 percent of its senior team still eligible for U23 World Championships, NDC Thunder Bay is hungry for some international starts, and new head coach Timo Puiras has a feeling it's going to be a good season.
At 22, Heidi Widmer's suffered three concussions in the last four years, with her most recent resulting from a rollerski crash this fall. "I’m super lucky,” the Canadian NST member says. “There’s no internal bleeding, I’m functioning, I’m fine, but I just have to be able to take care of this and come out of it with some lessons learned for sure.”
Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess knows as well as anybody that falls is the time to up the intensity. "For the first time since the training year started in May, I get to play in the area of threshold - and threshold plus," he explains. "Wednesdays we hit the trails: pole bounding in mixed terrain."
On Thursday, a classic-sprint showdown among some of the top Canadian and U.S. nordic skiers took place on Frozen Thunder. "Let’s be honest," men's winner Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess says. "Winning a race against [Andy Newell and Simi Hamilton], even in a tune up event, even with a relatively small field, even in October, it still makes a good time even better."
The Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre has expanded this season with more women than men on its senior roster. Alex Harvey and Dasha Gaiazova are back from the World Cup team, and CNEPH has big goals for its younger athletes.
It's here! The first preview in our series on Canadian training centres, appropriately dubbed, "The Four." This time around, we tell you what's going on in Callaghan Valley four years after the team was born and the 2010 Olympics graced Whistler, B.C.
Noah Hoffman didn't check the elevation on the Stelvio Pass glacier in the Italian Alps while packing for a two week training camp with Kris Freeman and the Maine Winter Sports Center Olympic Development Team. It turned out to be just shy of 11,000 feet, the highest Hoffman and Freeman have ever lived and trained.
Liz Stephen and Tim Burke make skiing uphill for five miles look like a piece of cake. That's because there was nobody within about three minutes of either of them in their Climb to the Castle wins on Sunday.
She might make it to the Olympics this year, four years from now, or never in her career. But Caitlin Patterson of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project is enjoying the process of her development as a skier, wherever it may take her.
Last, but certainly not least. We wrap up our preview of the 12 U.S. elite racing squads, profiling the Far West Elite Team.