The U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association released its final ranking lists used to select the teams for the J1 Scando trip (J1S) and World Junior Championships (WJC) teams. World Junior Championships will be held in Erzurum, Turkey from February 20 – 26, with an optional pre-camp of Scandinavian Cup races in Madona, Latvia and Elbu, Estonia. The J1 Scando Cup trip is in Mammaste, Estonia from February 13 – 27 with an optional pre-camp in...
RUMFORD, Maine — After an exciting morning of mass start racing, the junior men and women had their chance to shine at U.S. Cross Country Championships on Friday. With the morning’s snow flurries behind them, the athletes found themselves on a well-skied loop at Black Mountain. The junior men’s race consisted of three laps around the 3.26 k course for approximately 10 k, while the junior women raced two laps, one of which was on...
The format and qualification procedure for the World Youth/Junior Biathlon Championships Team Trials were introduced in Thursday’s race reports. In any qualifying series, it all comes down to the last day of racing – when bubble athletes make or break it, when a single amazing performance can catapult a racer upwards in the standings, when men and women go home either elated or heartbroken. In Anchorage, Alaska, Friday was that day for junior biathletes as...
The format and selection procedures at World Youth/Junior Biathlon Championships Team Trials were explained in Wednesday’s Full results (Excel spreadsheet)
Today in Anchorage, World Youth/Junior Biathlon Championships Team Trials kicked off with a bang – or lots of bangs, as rifles knocked down target after target at Kincaid Park’s Sean Doherty of Saratoga Biathlon and Full results (Excel spreadsheet)
How fast is Maya MacIsaac-Jones? At a recent NorAm sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, the Albertan had the fastest qualifying time of any junior, covering the course more than eight seconds faster than any of her competitors. She went on to win the junior race, despite the fact that she’s only sixteen – three years younger than the other podium finishers. And if that isn’t impressive enough, MacIsaac-Jones’ time in the qualifier would have put...
With only one boy and one girl representing each country in cross-country skiing at the upcoming Youth Olympic Games, it can be tough to decide which single individual deserves that opportunity. Nobody’s consistently dominant all the time, right? In Canada, however, the decision of which boy to send was easy: Matt Saurette had been the age-group national champion for two years running. The 16-year-old, who grew up in Edmonton, Alberta and lists Alex Harvey as...
Canada’s hopes for a biathlon medal at the Youth Olympic Games are probably riding on no single athlete more than Calgary’s Stuart Harden. Harden is one of those athletes who seems to be a junior forever, simply because they find success at such a young age. Last season, he competed in his first World Junior Championships – mostly because before then, he had been too young to qualify. As it was, the then-16-year-old was still...
Janice Sibilia waited nearly two years for this. Most of the New England Nordic Ski Association had. Upon hearing the good word that the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) approved NENSA as a Community Olympic Development Program about two weeks ago, Sibilia wasn’t sure where to start. The competitive programs director will find out more at a phone-update meeting with USOC representatives on Tuesday. In the meantime, Sibilia could revisit all the ideas she came up...
Heather Mooney has been turning heads for years, but in the last few she’s brought a whole new meaning to the word “fast”. In 2010, the Stratton Mountain School made the A-Final of the SuperTour Finals sprint as a J2. Last season, in her first year as a J1, she racked up top-20 finishes in each of the three senior races at U.S. Nationals, including eighth place in the classic sprint. Then she flew to...
When Cliff Field met his parents for dinner in Steamboat Springs, Colo., last weekend, the family of three knew the discussion wouldn’t be easy. A few days earlier, Field had stumbled on his mother’s quotes in a Drive for 25,” urging skiers to donate $25 to the sport on Nov. 15, the NNF was happy to create a similar donation link online for nordic combined. A few weeks after U.S. Nordic Combined launched NNF website...
Canmore’s Aidan Millar might be the only Canadian biathlete headed to the Youth Olympic Games who doesn’t have international racing experience, but that doesn’t mean that he’s unprepared for the world stage. For one thing, training in Canmore has meant that he can keep an eye on the competition: Canadian teammates Danielle Vrielink and Stuart Harden are also members of different clubs based out of the 1988 Olympic venue. The plethora of talented youngsters makes...
(Note: This is the fourth in a series of interviews with athletes who will be competing at the first-ever winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria this winter. The second with Anna Kubek, the third with Aleksandra Zakrzewska, all U.S. biathletes. The last was with John competed in the 1952 Games, and his father Tim competed in four more. When Caldwell was selected as America’s sole male nordic skier for the Youth Olympic Games in...
Anchorage has long been home to many of the country’s best nordic skiers. With elite teams like APU, Alaska Winter Stars, the University of Alaska Anchorage, several strong high school programs, and a thriving recreational and masters race scene, skiers couldn’t ask for a more supportive community. But biathletes? That was another story. “I started biathlon in 2003, back when the Kincaid [shooting] range was at its old location,” 2011 World Junior Championships team member...
(Note: This is the fourth in a series of interviews with athletes who will be competing at the first-ever winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria this winter. The second with Anna Kubek, the third with Aleksandra Zakrzewska, all U.S. biathletes.) 2011 was a big year for Canadian biathlete Danielle Vrielink. Perhaps the most obvious accomplishment for the Calgary native was a trip to the World Youth Championships in the Czech Republic, her first international...
Pete Phillips is currently the head coach of Burke Mountain Academy. Phillips has decades of experience coaching juniors at many of the top clubs in the country. In addition to his scholastic coaching duties, Philips leads annual spring trips to Norway and Sweden. Sensible goals are powerful motivating factors for any serious athlete. They are tools in the kit. To get the most use from goals they need to become a conscious part of training,...
The U.S. biathlon community may be small, but one benefit of its size is that almost everyone can gather each year in October for a training camp at Soldier Hollow. This year, the senior national team is joined in Utah by the junior national team as well as biathletes from the Maine Winter Sports Center, Durango and as far as Canada. Inviting everyone brings training quality up, said national team women’s coach Jonne Kahkonen, who...
The way 16-year-old Amelia Hennessy throws the word “tachycardia” around, you would think she was talking about an annoying homework assignment. But when the high school runner and nordic skier felt her heart beating abnormally hard to the point of severe dizziness, she knew her reoccurring problem – supraventricular tachycardia – was worse than the average teenager’s. The issue came frighteningly front and center in August, when Hennessy collapsed at the finish line of the...
(Note: This is the fourth in a series of interviews with athletes who will be competing at the first-ever winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria this winter. The first interview was with Sean Doherty, the Nick Proell.) When the Youth Olympic Games kick off in Innsbruck, Austria this January, one American biathlete will have a lot of experience on her side. It’s not her own experience: neither of the two girls named to the...
