Day two of the Toppidrettsveka rollerski races began in Aure, Norway with a 25-kilometer skate race. U.S. Ski Team (USST) athlete Sadie Bjornsen won the women’s race in 1:10:12.4 hours. Katie Feldman of the SVSEF Gold Team finshed in 25th (+8:08.8). Thirty-one women finished the race. According to a translated article from Norway’s NRK, several athletes used faulty rollerskis. As a result, race favorite Fridda Karlsson crashed and did not finish. Full men’s results buy chantix...
Before we begin, if you have not heard of the course record holder. In 2016 he bested the time of world renowned mountain athlete Killian Jornet. Norris chose to sit out this year’s event due to the smoke-induced poor air quality. Norris also won the Cirque Series Alyeska race in 2017 and 2019 and took third in between. In 2018, Yeaton won the Cirque Series race and both members of the duo won Mount Marathon —...
This is the third story following Kris Freeman as he prepped for his first Ironman triathlon. You can read part 1 here, and part two here. *** The half is now full. In an often over-corporatized scene blazed with the Ironman logo, thirty-eight-year-old Kris Freeman added a deeply human element as a finisher in the 2019 Lake Placid Ironman. Among the 2042 finishers of the July 28 Lake Placid event, there are 2042 unique stories....
Regional air quality and higher than normal temperatures have been the story during the run-up to the 2019 Mt. Marathon race. According to a NYT’s piece, Anchorage has never recorded an official temperature 90 degrees or above. That may change soon. Today, in Seward, Alaska, home of the Mt. Marathon race, temperatures were in the mid-60s. However, the indices that mattered was the air quality index (AQI). According to an Anchorage Daily News article, the AQI...
In a place like Norway, where the pool of cross-country athletes appears eternally deep, when you see competitors raise the bar, there’s nothing else to do but jump. On Saturday in Beitostølen, Norway the known knowns were self-evident: Maiken Caspersen Falla and Johannes Høsflot Klæbo took the freestyle sprint wins during the second day of FIS race competitions. As both athletes were overall World Cup sprint champions last season, there are no shockers there....
After an 18 month suspension for a positive out of competition positive doping test, during which Norway’s thirty-year-old Therese Johaug could build hour upon hour of base fitness and fine tune the engine with no race-stress, she arrived in Beitostølen, Norway on Friday and didn’t skip a beat. In temperatures hovering around 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and low-level clouds descending on the course, Johaug established herself as the early season favorite amongst a deep Norwegian National Team...
Welcome to The Rundown, your quick primer of need-to-know information about the day’s racing. We’ll be updating this digest as the day goes on with additional results, photos and quotes. The Rundown is NOT a race report; stay tuned for complete race reports later today with interviews from the day’s top racers. *** FIS cross-country Beitostølen, Norway: 10 k/15 k classic The race results are in from today’s 10-kilometer individual start classic FIS race in Beitostølen, Norway....
Frozen Thunder (Canmore, Alberta) 7.5k/10k Freestyle On Tuesday, Frozen Thunder at the Canmore Nordic Centre in Canmore, Alberta hosted women’s and men’s individual start freestyle races. The women raced 7.5 kilometers, the men 10 k. Canada’s Emily Nishikawa (AIAWCA/CNST) won the women’s 7.5 k skate race in a time of 21:05.9 minutes. Nishikawa’s pacing was peerless as she skied the fastest splits at every checkpoint. Dahria Beatty (AIAWCA/CNST) placed second, stopping the clock 24.0 seconds...
Day 1 Frozen Thunder (Canmore, Canada) Classic Sprint The first day of race season at Canmore Nordic Centre’s Frozen Thunder began with a classic sprint. Frozen Thunder is an annual on-snow event at the Canmore Nordic Centre run on a ski loop crafted from last season’s stored snow. The tracks are open to both high-performance athletes and the general public depending on training and race schedules. In the senior men’s category, Russell Kennedy (Team...
The 2018 Blink Ski Festival continued in full force on Friday and Saturday, with cross-country and biathlon prologues, 10- and 15-kilometer cross-country races and biathlon mass starts all taking place on Friday, followed by sprints on Saturday. Results: Men’s cross-country prologue After the elite men’s prologue, athletes geared up for a men’s and women’s biathlon prologues. Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø took the men’s biathlon prologue win in a time of 10:30.2 after two misses (1+1)....
The Blink Ski Festival’s famed Lysebotn Opp hill climb returned on Thursday, and with it, a familiar name landed at the top of the results. After serving last year’s Lysebotn Opp in 33:18.3, telling NRK at the time that “it’s been long since I’ve been in this good a shape in July.” Kalla’s 2017/2018 season went on to be one of her best. She racked up 10 individual wins, including a gold medal in the Olympic...
A predictor for the winter ski season ahead? Could be. Either way, Norway’s Blink Ski Festival, or as it’s called in Norway, Blinkfestivalen, remains the ultimate in rollerski racing and returned for the 12th year in a row on Wednesday. The festival opened with elite men’s and women’s distance rollerski races, known as the currently training with the British national team in Norway. Following the Blink Classics on Wednesday, the Blink Ski Festival will turn to the...
Perhaps you have heard of them. Or at least seen them. At 6 feet and 6 feet 2 inches tall, respectively, the Mooney sisters, Heather and Brooke, are hard to miss. But their height is not the only reason the two women stand out. The sisterly pair also share a talent for the sports they pursue. At one point, for both of them, that sport was skiing. And at one point, for both of them,...
The 91st annual Mount Marathon Race, one of the oldest footraces in the country, once more descended on the small town of Seward, Alaska, on July 4. Crowds estimated at up to 30,000 perennially throng to the waterfront community, population less than 3,000, to watch racers push themselves up a steep mountain and hurl themselves back down. At the end of the day, a pair of Alaska Pacific University (APU) skiers, Jessica Yeaton and David...
The last time Rosie Brennan was focused on competitive running, she was sporting a red, white and black singlet as a senior at Park City High School in Utah. In the 11 years since, the former U.S. Ski Team member’s running has shifted from a seasonal sport to supplemental training for her true passion: cross-country skiing. Yet earlier this month, on June 9, Brennan surged to the front of the Alaska Run for Women in...
Canada’s Dahria Beatty closed out her World Cup season with the rest of her international-racing peers on March 18 in Falun, Sweden. After three straight days of races, the 24-year-old Whitehorse, Yukon, native finished World Cup Finals in 54th overall. Five days later, she endured a three-day 160-kilometer classic race in Greenland, 65 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. And Beatty didn’t just survive the 22nd-annual epic adventure, she won it. In her first Arctic...
Ski orienteering — it’s a real-deal, fast-paced sport. Don’t believe it, check out these photos. Earlier this month from March 5-10, the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Craftsbury, Vermont, hosted the 2018 Ski Orienteering World Cup and World Masters Championship. Photographer John Lazenby captured some high-action moments at the races. Check out his Complete results See also: When the World Comes to Craftsbury Videos: World Cup Sprint Interview with Sara Mae Berman and Larry Berman, oldest IOF...
The following was submitted by Kevin Brooker, who attended the 2018 Ski Orienteering World Cup and Ski Orienteering World Masters Championships last week in Craftsbury, Vermont. Brooker, who wrote Alex Jospe interview on Vermont Public Radio *** About the Author: Kevin began nordic skiing to keep in shape for bicycle racing at the dawn of the skating revolution. He lives in Vermont with his wife and two kids, who are fortunate enough to have great skiing right...
CRAFTSBURY, Vermont — This week, the Craftsbury Outdoor Center is hosting the final three races of the 2018 Ski Orienteering World Cup as well as Ski Orienteering World Masters Championships. In addition to flocking from all over the United States, athletes have traveled from Bulgaria, Canada, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Romania, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland for this event. For those FasterSkier readers worried about cross-country skiing being unknown here in the U.S., it...
In an effort to showcase the North Americans who competed at last week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2018 Nordic Junior/U23 World Championships in Goms, Switzerland, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 21-year-old Thomas O’Harra, of Alaska Pacific University, who represented the U.S. at his first U23 Worlds (after competing at three Junior Worlds). Last week in Goms, O’Harra placed 43rd in...