After the quarters and semifinals of Friday’s classic sprint in Sun Valley, it looked like there would be two separate races in the men’s final. The first would be for Andy Newell (USST/SMS), who had dominated his first two heats and looked to be in a class by himself. The second would be between Lars Flora (APU) and Mike Sinnott (SVSEF), who were locked in a battle for first place in the overall SuperTour sprint...
At the top of the results sheet for Friday’s classic sprint qualifier in Sun Valley, there weren’t any surprises: Kikkan Randall, Ida Sargent, and Chandra Crawford were the top three women, and Andy Newell, Simi Hamilton, and Skyler Davis were the top three men. But scanning down and looking through the rest of the top 30, one name was conspicuously absent: that of Kris Freeman, who was the overall leader of the SuperTour Finals mini-tour...
If practice makes perfect, it makes sense that there were a lot of hurting units in Tuesday’s skate prologue in the Sun Valley, which was the first stage of the 2011 SuperTour Finals. The prologue format has only been raced a couple of times on the domestic circuit, and while a number of teams and athletes have tested the distance in time trials, there’s only so much you can simulate it without a bib on....
Off days are good for any number of things: big breakfasts, easy ski sessions, and watching NASCAR on TV. (Yeah, it’s been a slow afternoon at the FasterSkier regional headquarters). But they’re also good for catching up on all the things we missed from the last few days. Below is a brief selection. –Simi Hamilton’s dominating performance in the men’s prologue on Tuesday was a demonstration of what a well-trained athlete can do in a...
Kikkan Randall was supposed to be the one to ski away from the field in Wednesday’s mass start classic race. In the women’s 10 k, she did. But so did her fellow U.S. Ski Team member Kris Freeman in the men’s 15 k—and in even more impressive fashion. After a mid-race cash sprint at the five kilometer-mark began splintering the field, Freeman flat-out broke it with a counterattack, distancing a five-strong chase group that included,...
The U.S. Ski Team’s Liz Stephen was in Sun Valley for the last few days, attending the national championship in the 30 k classic and the SuperTour Finals. But she wasn’t racing: instead, she was limited by a foot injury to cheering from the side of the trail. For the past month and a half, Stephen has been enduring severe pain while training and racing, stemming from inflammation in her heels near a bony enlargement...
The way Kikkan Randall skied in Sun Valley on Wednesday, she still wasn’t beatable. But at the very least, she showed that she’s human. Randall had won Tuesday’s prologue, the opening stage of the 2011 SuperTour Finals, with a thoroughly dominating performance, putting more than 15 seconds into her nearest competitors in a seven-minute race. In Wednesday’s 10 k mass-start classic, Randall (APU/USST) was again impressive—at least, for nine kilometers. Heading out on her last...
Kikkan Randall isn’t particularly professorial, what with her pink hair and her affable demeanor. But since arriving back in the U.S. last week, fresh off the World Cup circuit in Europe, Randall (APU/USST) has been teaching lessons, all right, with the trails of Sun Valley as her classroom, and the North American women’s field as her pupils. After Sunday’s unit on distance classic skiing, Tuesday’s session was on how to ski a skate prologue. In...
In Tuesday’s 3.3 k prologue in Sun Valley, the top-seeded men started last. So it wasn’t that much of a surprise when Simi Hamilton finished his race with a big lead—there were 42 of the continent’s strongest skiers still to come. The surprising thing was what happened next. One by one, each of those 42 men came to the finish line and failed to touch Hamilton’s time. Andy Newell: 18 seconds down. Leif Zimmermann and...
The cross-country ski season’s last stand begins on Tuesday, when the final domestic races of the year kick off in Sun Valley, ID. The mini-tour known as the SuperTour Finals will start with a 3.3/2.8 k freestyle prologue on a stout course, followed by three more races in four more days. The winner of both the men’s and women’s overall will be the first competitor to arrive atop a ridge on Dollar Mountain, a local...
In the U.S. National Championship in the 30 k last year, Kikkan Randall (USST) somehow pulled off a win in northern Maine just 72 hours removed from racing in Europe. This year, with a full week to recover from World Cup Finals, at least Randall’s biological clock was set to the right time. But Sunday’s classic race presented its own challenges: the Alaskan had to overcome a brutal course, the strength-sapping effects of altitude, and,...
The 38 women that aren’t wearing bib one in today’s U.S. National Championship in the 30 k classic have a tough task ahead of them: figuring out a way to beat Kikkan Randall. The 28-year-old Alaskan is in the midst of the best season of her life, having collected four sprint podiums, two wins, and a career-best 11th place in a distance race. She’ll be the favorite in Sunday’s 30 k in Sun Valley, and...
When a race lasts for more than two-and-a-half hours, there’s bound to be a little more material than can fit inside a single race report. Below, some extra tidbits that didn’t make the first cut: –The conditions for the race could have ended up being a lot more challenging for waxers, had the temperature warmed more than it did—in the end, hard wax did the trick. While most of the lead men ended up with...
Three quarters of the way through Saturday’s U.S. national championship in the 50 k classic, when the men’s pack began the process of whittling itself down, an unfamiliar figure emerged from the mix into the lead group. Tucked into a sea of U.S. Ski Team and club uniforms, it was easy to miss the tiny form of Yuma Yoshida, who can’t stand much taller than five-and-a-half feet. But by the time the race wound down,...
No, he probably didn’t have what it takes to beat Petter Northug—nor even Marcus Hellner, for that matter. But on Saturday in Sun Valley, Kris Freeman (USST) wasn’t racing those guys. Instead, he was pitted against the North American domestic field in the U.S. National Championship in the 50 k, with a race plan that could perhaps be best described as “don’t mess it up.” He didn’t, despite tricky waxing conditions, and one gambit that...
The SuperTour Final is turning into an international affair. With a group of Norwegians already confirmed, as well as Swedish and Japanese skiers, the Canadians are bringing some artillery as well. No fewer than four Canadian groups are headed to the United States for a final shot at high-level racing this season. Cross Country Canada (CCC) has a trip heading to Idaho. The Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA) is sending a variety of athletes, both...
Lars Flora’s 2011 European campaign didn’t go the way he wanted, but at least it went out with a bang. After some disappointing races at the World Championships in Oslo, and at the World Cup Final in Falun, Sweden, Flora finally put it together on Sunday, just in time for his last start before heading back to the U.S. In the 15 k handicap start in Falun, Flora was 30th, less than two minutes behind...
Andy Newell has a title to defend. Having edged out Canadian Ivan Babikov at the finish of last year’s SuperTour Finals in northern Maine, the American sprinter will come into this season’s edition as the defending champion. But with the rest of the U.S. Ski Team in attendance, Newell will have his hands full this time around, in Sun Valley, ID. The full American squad will be in attendance at SuperTour Finals, which start next...
The OPA Cup series is supposedly to be skiing’s equivalent of baseball’s minor leagues. But last weekend’s racing in Ramsau was about as far from a dingy Southern ballpark as you can get. Surrounded by jagged, snowy peaks on a plateau in the Austrian Alps, Ramsau was the last stop on this year’s OPA circuit, which a contingent of U.S. athletes has been following for the last two weeks. Nearly a dozen Americans took part...
The USSA SuperTour event scheduled for March 18th, 2011 at Northstar-at-Tahoe Resort has been canceled. Statement from the organizer: “Regrettably Northstar-at-Tahoe Resort is canceling the Nordic SuperTour Sprint which was to be held on March 18, 2011. The registration numbers did not meet the minimum requirements to execute the race. We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused interested participants and teams. We appreciate all support for our events and hope to put on...