The US Ski Team unveiled its 2014 Olympic uniforms for nordic and nordic combined on Saturday at the 2014 U.S. Olympic Nordic Combined Trials in Park City, Utah. FS got an exclusive sneak peak. "I am really excited to be racing in the stars and stripes in Sochi," Kikkan Randall says. "The American team looks to really be in the mix for the first time in 40 years and we want to be noticed!”
Mikey Sinnott is the first to admit that his fitness isn't great so far this season. But although his overall goal is to make the Olympics - and his results so far on the World Cup, where he earned starts after winning last year's SuperTour, haven't done that for him - he's staying on the circuit one more week to soak up the competition before prepping for U.S. Nationals.
After spending most of last season away from the World Cup, Jeremy Teela and Lanny Barnes are back in action. Barnes says she is completely recovered from compartment syndrome surgery; Teela loves being a father, but is focusing for this season on one last push for his fourth Olympics. Both held their relay teams in the top 8 this weekend.
Moving on from last season, the Canadians are a calculated bunch and ready to get the World Cup season started -- with a goal of not overemphasizing early results in order to peak for the Olympics. For the entire team, the Tour de Ski is part of the plan.
Four years ago, Tim Burke faced a lot of pressure to become the first American to win an Olympic medal in biathlon. He's in the same situation now, but he says he much better prepared to handle it going into the 2014 World Cup season. We talked to Burke and Susan Dunklee, the top-ranked woman on the U.S. team, about expectations.
Anastasiya Kuzmina has pretty happy memories of Canada: the Slovakian biathlete won gold and silver there at the 2010 Olympics. But she's making plenty more memories with a yearly training camp at Frozen Thunder in Canmore, thanks to Ivan Babikov and Biathlon Canada. “I hope to be back here more," she said.
It's no secret what Team USA will be wearing at the opening and closing ceremonies in Sochi, Russia: lots of red, white and blue, some ugly sweaters, and clunky boots. But what about the race-day suits for the U.S. Ski Team?
JP Le Guellec, Scott Perras, Zina Kocher, and Rosanna Crawford will start the biathlon season on the World Cup - but 11 other Canadians have the chance to fight it out for the remaining World Cup spots, where they can also qualify for the Olympics. The team was chosen after two trials races in Canmore this week.
FS staff member Emily Schwing catches up with the voices and brains of NBC's commentary at the upcoming Sochi Olympics, Chad Salmela and Rob Whitney, who will likely cover nordic, biathlon and nordic combined at the 2014 Winter Games.
In a coincidence of timing, the AP has uncovered illegal dumping of construction debris which threatens half the water supply to Sochi - just as the new Olympic city hosts IOC members for a conference on sport and the environment. As leaders discuss whether the Olympics can have a sustainable legacy, will they address these recent concerns?
USBA picked 11 athletes to send to Europe this fall, based on trials races this summer in Jericho and last week at Soldier Hollow. Some of them will be picked for Sochi - but who? We clarify the qualification process, as well as getting some comments from High Performance Director Bernd Eisenbichler about the performances he saw in Utah last week.
Lowell Bailey swept both Tuesday and Thursday's sprint races at Soldier Hollow, while Susan Dunklee and Hannah Dreissigacker picked up wins for the women. The races are a step in the Olympic qualification pipeline.
You saw what Kikkan Randall could do last season when hampered by a six-week injury that interrupted fall training. This time around, she’s healthy and ready to show the world what she can accomplish. Randall is doing just that in a blitz of media and commercial appointments.
Former Olympic kayaker Julia Rivard decided to use the Kickstarter model and her own tech smarts to make a fundraising website only for athletes. A year later 20 Canadians, including three biathletes, have started campaigns on the site and more than half surpassed their goals. Rosanna Crawford has raised $18,000 with partner Brendan Green: "It feels like a weight has been lifted."
There's just one season separating Jean Philippe Le Guellec from retirement, but the recent World Cup winner is hardly complacent about his form as a biathlete. Instead, he's aggressively making changes to his technique, shooting, and strength as part of a resurgent Canadian men's squad - and finding extra motivation for Sochi in the process.
Timed with the sunrise in Ancient Olympia, Greece, the Olympic flame-lighting ceremony on Sunday marked the start of a four-month countdown to the 2014 Winter Games exactly 132 days away in Sochi, Russia.
The Olympics are a premier sporting event, but there are times when it is hard to separate politics and human rights from the glitz and glamour of the Games. There are many world issues on the table as we head toward Sochi, but the new Russian anti-gay laws have are currently front and center.
A staple on the World Cup and the U.S. relay team, biathlete Leif Nordgren feels "more set" for the Olympics than last time around, when he was still a junior but trying the qualification process anyway. He told us about a good summer of training, changes in shooting, and navigating ski testing, boredom, and mashed-potato snow in the Oberhof ski tunnel.
Dario Cologna finally won World Championships gold in February. But his craving for medals has hardly been satisfied, and he has one goal on his mind: the Olympics in Sochi. Even his beloved Tour de Ski is falling by the wayside. We dropped in on a training session in Davos and chatted with Cologna about the upcoming winter.
Switzerland has a population just a bit smaller than the state of Virginia, and despite the Alps and Jura mountains faces some of the same challenges in developing World Cup skiers that you might find in North America. We chatted with Swiss U24 coach Christian Flury, formerly of Alberta World Cup Academy, about how his squad represents his country's future, and how he manages it.