Craftsbury, VT – Cool temperatures, a light covering of new snow, and the deep base of artificial snow on the race trail at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center today made it feel like winter for the over three hundred competitors at the TD Bank Eastern Cup Opener here today. The day featured two events, both in the classic technique. The racers who travelled from Quebec, Ottawa, New York and the New England states brought with them a...
(Note: this preview doesn’t include college or junior skiers, although many will be competing in the opening SuperTours. College racing will have its own preview at a later date.) With one week until the opening SuperTour races in West Yellowstone, it’s time to start remembering what the domestic race circuit looks like. A number of top athletes retired after last season, but their spots have been filled by recent college graduates. Here’s what you need...
When the parade of brightly-colored spandex suits heats up the domestic circuit this year, competitors and spectators will see a new squad: Stella Racing. And while America’s first elite women-only team in more than a decade might be small, it will definitely be fast. Morgan Smyth, Evelyn Dong, and Zoe Roy decided to start a team based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, and have spent the spring and summer making it happen. Their rationale...
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...
A guide to hosting Zamboni Snow XC Ski Sprints World Smallest Velodrome. We decdided to do the event to get people excited for winter, and have a good time. It was great exposure last year, and the second annual this year was a smashing success. We started plans for Nordic Fest a few months ahead. Scheduling and planning with the rink, and getting local Michigan Cup. We were lucky enough to add our race to the official calendar and...
The Mt. Greylock Roller Ski and Roller Blade races are back. The event, a benefit for the Northern Berkshire Special Olympics, will be held on Sunday, October 16th, at 10:00 A.M. beginning at the Mt. Greylock Visitors’ Center in Lanesboro, MA. Brought to you by Berkshire Outfitters and FasterSkier.com the race will prove to be a great fall workout and a blast… after all there is just one hill, it just happens to be 8...
When John Koons was growing up in Waterville, Maine forty years ago, skiing was the thing to do. “When I was a youngster we had a ski hill,” Koons told FasterSkier. “It was sponsored and run by Colby College. It was an alpine slope, and we had snowmaking and we had lights, and it was really a wonderful place for kids to go.” But like so many small hills around New England and the rest...
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. – In theory, moving up the annual U.S. Ski Team camp in Lake Placid from October to mid-September made sense. It allowed space for a final dryland camp in Park City, Utah, where the USST athletes could train at higher elevations and follow up on tests taken earlier in the year. Also, September usually brings better weather than October in Lake Placid. In nearly 10 years of training in upstate New York,...
Complete Results A gallery of photos is available here: An excellent video of the event can be found here.
Holding elite level events, whether World Cup races, National Championships or just FIS points competitions, pose numerous challenges for organizers and National Governing Bodies in the US and Canada. Over the course of the summer FasterSkier will examine the various issues at hand. Today we start with a piece on homologation, with future topics to include snowmaking and prize money, among others. Until this year, the U.S. and Canada have had reprieve from the International...
Over and over, Christina Kouros has told coaches, administrators, and journalists that she just wants to be part of the team. The sophomore from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, started out by joining her high school’s outdoor track team, and this winter she joined the ski team, too. Why is this impressive? Kouros was born without a right leg. But that hasn’t slowed her down. In the last two years she has represented her school using a...
News about Japan hasn’t been hard to come by for the past two weeks. Viewers around the world have been able to watch live on television as the damage unfolded from a massive earthquake and tsunami that hit the country; an ensuing nuclear catastrophe has played out on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. We’d heard little, though, about any impacts of the natural disaster on skiing in the country. Masako Ishida was the...
With over two feet of snow falling last week on an already superb spring base, the trails at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center are in perfect shape for the upcoming Spring Tour on March 18-20. The weekend kicks off with a classic prologue on Friday afternoon, followed by a continuous pursuit on Saturday and handicap start freestyle races on Sunday. Saturday night will feature short 100m out and back sprints and a BBQ with live music. ...
Last year, the Birkie Elite Sprints, held on Main Street in Hayward, Wisconsin, two days before the Birkie, were a mostly American affair. Morten Pedersen of Norway won the men’s race, but most of the other top finishers were natives – including Audrey Weber, then skiing for CXC, who won the women’s heats. This year, things changed. The men’s final on Tuesday came down to a battle between Norwegian teammates Vetle Thyli and Martin Andersen....
Recent thaws and frozen nights in the Northeast created icy fast conditions for the final weekend of Eastern Cup racing. The Eastern Cup racing series is the highest level of competition hosted by New England Nordic Skiing Association (NENSA) that allows serious racers and citizens to race against each other in first class settings. The series is used as the seeding basis for the naming of the New England Junior Olympic team that will fly...
January 30, 2011- In a pair of firsts, the second weekend of Eastern Cup racing was held at Weston Ski Track. Never before in New England has racing had the high-level series come to Massachusetts nor have two races in one day, yet Weston Ski Track and hosting club Cambridge Sports Union (CSU) did an excellent job in setting the bar. Weston Ski Track- largely situated on a golf course- used its snow-making facilities and...
As the SuperTour heads to Lake Placid, the ski community can learn a lot if it just takes a minute to look around. Two-time winter Olympic venue? Check. A love of sports bordering on the insane? Check. More snow than Rumford? Check. But one of the best lessons might be about giving back to the community. Olympic biathlete Haley Johnson, who was born and raised in the Lake Placid area, returned to her hometown after...
While snow is sparse throughout most of New England, the guns at Gunstock Nordic Association worked overtime to create a small loop for the NHNCA Coaches’ Series, one of two weekend races that every high school- private and public- compete in. Combined results from both races are used to determine the New Hampshire teams at the J2 National Invitational Championships at Gunstock and the Eastern High School Championship in Rumford, ME. Each weekend typically has...
Twenty-two years after the 1988 Winter Olympics, the Canmore Nordic Centre remains a model of legacy planning for Olympic cross-country venues. When it was built in 1986, Canmore set a new standard for nordic facilities, and when it was refurbished in 2005, the ski area redefined that standard. In his masters’ thesis, John-Christopher Reid called the 1988 Winter Olympics “…the single most significant precedent in terms of structuring Winter Olympic legacies in North America.” Canmore...
