Lake Placid-based biathletes are excited about the extension of their rollerski loop at the Olympic Jumping Complex, which cost $500,000 and took about 14 weeks to complete this fall.
When Peru’s first Winter Olympian asks you to help him out, you say yes. At least that’s how Leif Zimmermann reacted last year. The two were acquaintances when Roberto Carcelén, a Peruvian cross-country skier who made the Vancouver Games at the age of 39, told Zimmermann – a Bridger Ski Foundation (BSF) skier and 2006 Olympian – about his Inca Runners company. Still racing the occasional SuperTour, NorAm and national championship at the age of...
Thirty-six men in the Spray Drag running race didn’t end up chasing Devon Kershaw up Spray Lakes Road in Canmore, Alberta, on Saturday, but they had one heck of a battle from the start. According to American Sylvan Ellefson (Ski & Snowboard Club Vail/Team HomeGrown), the pace was fast for a bunch of nordic skiers early on. “Any road runner could have pulled away, but it was a quick pace,” he wrote in an email....
It’s 3.6 miles long. It’s a hill climb, but one of the more benign trails in the region. The course record is 35:16—just under 10 minute miles. Think you can beat that? Well, you’d have to beat out every Dartmouth skier in the past 25-plus years and a bunch of others who show up to the twice-yearly jaunt. And you’d also have to beat the time of some guy named Kris Freeman. The runs are...
Annie Hart has been hanging out with the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team for a couple months now, but don’t get it wrong, she’s still a Dartmouth skier. A 20-year-old junior, Hart spent most of the summer studying and training at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. That way, come late August, she could take the fall off. In an email from Park City, Utah, where she’s been training with the U.S. Ski Team (USST)...
It’s safe to say the Canadian cross-country teams enjoyed their stay in Park City, Utah. Between their tweets and Instagrams of bluebird days and college football games, it’s not hard to see why. While the Canadian women headed south on Saturday for a Noah Hoffman the only one that hopped in some workouts? JW: Yeah. We would’ve enjoyed having the other guys around, but he was the one that was in town and ready to...
When Kikkan Randall talks about being injured, her tone matches the description of any other day: the sun is shining; life is good. For more than two months, the 29-year-old U.S. Ski Team (USST) veteran has been
By all accounts, Canada’s Zina Kocher had a great season on biathlon’s World Cup in 2012. After a disappointing Olympics in Vancouver and then a dismal 2011, she joined the newly-formed Biathlon Alberta Training Center, skated through trials races, and rejoined the World Cup, where she had three top-ten finishes and landed 19th in the overall standings, her best-ever ranking in nine seasons on the circuit. This year she’s training to more consistently hit the...
2ND ANNUAL SPRAY DRAG RUNNING RACE October 20th, 2012 Alberta World Cup Academy in a running race up the Spray Lakes road! All proceeds go to helping support the team for their upcoming season… According to AWCA coach and race organizer Stefan Kuhn, “It’s basically all up hill … Starts on the river and we run all the way up then past the nordic center and up to the Spray dam, which looks over Canmore.” ...
The U.S. Nordic Ski Team’s final dryland camp of the season starts in earnest on Monday, but many of its athletes are already getting after it in Park City, Utah. Liz Stephen, Noah Hoffman and Tad Elliott generally live in the high-altitude training mecca when they’re not traveling, and Jessie Diggins arrived almost a week ago. According to U.S. Ski Team (USST) head coach Chris Grover, the Alaska Pacific University (APU) athletes rolled into town...
It downpoured across much of the Northeast on Wednesday. Those at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in northern Vermont hardly noticed. Owner Judy Geer called it “drizzle.” That morning, about 20 Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) athletes and coaches participated in the second annual Roll-Run-Row race, which pitted the some of the nation’s best nordic skiers against top-tier rowers. All belonged to the same program, but the idea was to have some competitive fun while pushing...
After nearly two weeks of dryland training in Park City, Utah, the Canadian women’s cross-country team will pack up and head to St. George on Saturday. Saint what? One of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., St. George is tucked in the southwest corner of the state about 300 miles (483 kilometers) from Park City. It requires about a five-hour drive south, and the group is going to the 75,000-population metropolis to train through...
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — As they hammered out loops at the Mt. Van Hoevenberg biathlon center, several athletes on sit-ski mountain boards put their heads down. Everything they were doing — five or so laps lasting a few minutes each on pavement and grassy trails — required upper-body strength. At the end of each interval, they reentered the stadium for shooting practice, where the adaptive skiers rolled onto their stomachs and aimed at their targets....
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — Exactly a week ago, 40 elite skiers threw down some solid efforts at a U.S. Ski Team (USST) classic rollerski time trial, with the fastest men and women moving on to their respective quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. Sophie Caldwell and Andy Newell of the Stratton Mountain School T2 Team topped the women’s and men’s fields in the sprint workout. For more about the races,
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. – Friday morning’s U.S. Ski Team workout at the Mt. Van Hoevenberg nordic trails wasn’t designed to be too hard. According to men’s coach Jason Cork, the idea was to run with poles and ski bound for 45 minutes at Level 3 – a sort of tempo pace. Once a couple dozen athletes between the U.S. Ski Team (USST) and National Elite Group (NEG) got going around the designated loop, most realized...
In late May, weeks after Nina Silitch finished her last race of the season, loads of her ski-mountaineering equipment still occupied more than half the space in her bedroom. Her husband, Michael, couldn’t understand why, after six months on the World Cup and international circuit, she wasn’t ready put it away. At 39, Silitch was coming off a career-best season in most respects – she became the first American to earn World Cup gold in...
FasterSkier would like to thank the last summer when he nearly bested Canadian National Team Biathlete Marc-Andre Bedard in the grueling Spartan Beast Race in Killington, Vt. — though Bedard got the win when Dorais doubled back on the course to tackle several missed obstacles. However, one should not expect Dorais to round out a World Championship relay team any time soon. While his performance is still impressive impressive, the 34-year-old was aided by quick rolling...
FasterSkier would like to thank the Official Results: NYSEF Climb to the Castle Women — Matt Voisin contributed reporting
WILMINGTON, N.Y. — The view from partially up Whiteface Mountain on Wednesday morning was about as picturesque as they get. From the trail, one could see that the leaves had started to turn shades of red and yellow — just in time for the U.S. Ski Team’s fall training camp in Lake Placid, N.Y. Way down below, a few small dots proceeded up the dirt access road: first to warm up, then to get after...
Last week in Anchorage, a freak windstorm rolled through that would have devastated most mainland Americans. Gusts estimated at 130 miles per hour spewed trees across Alaska’s largest city, leaving at least a thousand residents without power through Saturday – almost four days after the storm hit Tuesday night. In a phone interview, U.S. Ski Team member Kikkan Randall said the electricity and all the lights at her home came on at 2:15 a.m. Saturday....