Natalia Baranova-Masolkina of Russian is back on the racing scene after having been banned from racing for two years following a doping violation. She won Saturday's FIS skate race in Finland by .9 seconds ahead of Kirsi Vaeliman of Finland. Wendy Wegner, USA was 38th .
Dave Wood from the Canadian National Team sent us the results from their time trial in Camrose this past weekend. The conditions were fast, granular snow, and track was 2-4 laps of 2.6 km. Dave's Comments: "This will be the wind up of the camp in Camrose as we will now have good skiing closer to Canmore. Many thanks to the Camrose ski club for their hospitality and cooperation. "Devon Kershaw did...
A Classic sprint race took place between Swedens best skiers. The Oktobersprinten this past weekend in Mora, Sweden was won by World Cup sprinter Bjoern Lind from Hudiksvall. He solidly beat the 2004 World Cup Sprint Champion, Tobias Fredricksson of Ostersund. Both men, racing on the new Fischer Centrix Classic boots, and Fischer skis, dominated the competition through the qualifiers and heats to come out on top. Snow was sloppy, and dirty, but these guys...
The race season was coming to end in Australia. It had been a great season in terms of the amount of snow but sometimes only the tough and focused survived as blizzards and high winds affected the racing at times. The last race of the season in the Snowy Mountains — the Kosciuzsko Tour was to suffer a similar fate. The traditional 18km course is the highest athletic pursuit in the country. It starts off...
Sometimes the best laid plans can go to waste. With the big snowfalls that have hit Australia this season, areas which are often marginal in normal seasons have suddenly become fit to groom. So organisers started to eye off the Prussian Flat area at Perisher Valley to run the Australian Distance Championships around. Normally it has only a light cover but this year it has been thick white blanket all season and it presented beautiful...
Kris Freeman won the men’s classic 15-kilometer mass-start race at the New Zealand national championship last week. The race was held as mass-start and it was snowing, windy and foggy and around 0 degrees Celsius during the event. Andrew Johnson was second, 47 seconds behind. Rebecca Dussault beat Wendy Wagner in the women’s race Results Men 15K Classic 1. Kris Freeman 40:51 2. Andrew Johnson 41:38 3. Dave Chamberlain 42:07 4. Justin Freeman 42:11 5....
I was feeling pretty smug with myself. Whilst everyone was fretting about what kick wax could be used to deal with the variable conditions, I had read the Toko Wax Manual that was put on the web by Ian Harvey and it had exalted the amazing abilities of a couple of thick layers of Toko Base Green kick wax for variable conditions around zero degrees. That is what we get in Australia, wet snow and...
On Tuesday, June 8th Madison Nordic Ski Club and Tyrol Basin Ski Area will hold a x-c ski race. www.tyrolbasin.com) and well be spread on the area around 600 feet long and 60 feet wide. The race is promising to be very challenging with climbs, sharp turns, fast down hills, professionally groomed snow, sun and T-shirts. Race will start at 7.00pm and will have two person start format in different age groups. Fastest will advance...
The Norwegian men’s national team just finished the second training camp of the season. The first camp was dryland training while this camp was on-snow at Sognefjellet. The weather varied from nice, warm and beautiful to snowing. The camp program included two daily workouts consisting of easy distance training, one one-snow skate threshold session, one classic 6 x 5 minutes rollerski interval workout and one on-snow 10 kilometer skate time-trial in fast, hard packed conditions....
Cross-country skiing in June at 85 degrees is an exotic and challenging event not only for the athletes but for event organizers as well. Last March huge piles of snow were covered with a giant tarp and saved for the Summer Ski Fest at Tyrol Basin Ski Area, Mount Horeb, WI just 25 mile west of Madison. Originally the length of the race course was planned to be around 550 to 600 meters with short...
Summer cross-country skiing brought over 100 people to Tyrol Basin Ski Area. Top U.S. sprinters came to challenge each other in the summer sprint racing. First in qualification round was Steve Scott from the Main Winter Sport Center (former Junior World Team member) with the time 1 min 41.15 sec and second was Chris Cook from the U.S. Ski Team with the time 1min 41.44 sec. Later in the final heat Chris Cook out sprint...
Pirjo Manninen was fastest in both the qualification rounds and the finale in the 300 meter long classic on-snow sprint race in Rovaniemi, Finland this weekend. There were two skiers in the finale and Sanna Soudunsaari made it easy for Pirjo in the finale by falling halfway. Junior World Champion Mona-Liisa Malvalehto was third. Jari Poikela won the men’s race ahead of Ari Palolathi in second and Nordic Combined skier Hannu Manninen in third.
We discovered a large number of “even better” additional great photos from the 2003 race in Kragero. These are photos featuring top international skiers in a downtown, on-snow race on the coast of Norway in 80 degrees Fahrenheit temperature in the middle of the summer with 10,000 spectators. See photos of the building of the course, the regular race, the sprint, the kayak race, children’s race and the awards. The link is
**Ski to Sea web site: http://www.winisp.net/sergiva/racepics/sts04/
Krister Skjeldal is getting married on May 22. His wedding guests asked for a time-trial in the morning of the wedding day. We have to add that a large number of the guests are not the average hobby skiers or joggers, but include dozens of international elite racers from the past 15 years. One champion after another will be on the starting line: Vegard Ulvang, Bjorn Daehlie, Pal Gunnar Mikkelsplass, Erling Jevne, Sture Sivertsen, Odd...
The specialists beat the biathlon skiers Langrenn.com — Norwegian Newspaper VG Reports: Krister Skjeldal won the men’s race while Elin Nilsen won the women’s race in Saturday’s Skarverennet. This was the season’s last race in Norway. This is a skate race and approximately 11000 skiers participated Lots of excitement had been built up around the duel between some of the World’s best biathlon skiers and Norway’s best specialists. Biathlon skier Frode Andresen won last years...
This spring, instead of concluding the ski season in the traditional klister, slush, and ‘I’d rather be running’ mentality, the Green Mountain Valley School’s Nordic Team headed across the Atlantic for a change of scenery to test the tracks in northern Italy’s Alps. For nineteen days the team toured Südtirol, training and racing at six beautiful mountain venues. Graciously supported by GMVS’ sister school Sportoberschule, seven athletes and coach Jon Arne Enevoldsen set up base...
Olympic and World Champion Thomas Alsgaard of Norway participated in The Island Cross County Championship during the Easter week. The competitions were held in Isafjordur in North-West Island. Alsgaard participate in the Championship's first three events, which were sprint, 15 kilometer classic and 10-k skating.
This is my first-hand account of sprint-racing against some of the fastest skiers in the world. The race I describe herein was the final Swedish Cup (similar to our Nor/Am SuperTour) sprint of the season, held in Ostersund, Sweden — on the home trails of Anders Soedergren and the Fredriksson brothers. After World Cup sprints, Norwegian Nationals, and Swedish Nationals, this field is likely the most competitive in the world. I started my day with...
A few pictures from the Spring Series Sprint Relay. All pictures courtesy of Eli Brown of Fischer. Women's Sprint Start Women's Podium