It’s hard to fly under the radar when you’re 6’2” and one of the best sprinters in the world. But Torin Koos is giving it his best shot. Koos, who was dropped from the U.S. Ski Team (USST) this spring, has been quietly reloading for the upcoming season with the Methow Olympic Development Project (MODP), a two-person team based in central Washington. He has been off the grid, living in a cabin 15 miles from...
Before last year, Ida Sargent had had a handful of strong results, but the only way you wouldn’t have heard her name by the end of the 2009-2010 season is if you’d been buried in a snowbank. Sargent, who split her winter competing for the Craftsbury Green Racing Project and the Dartmouth Ski Team, started out with some top-10s in the early season SuperTours, then really heated up at the national championships in Anchorage, where...
When James Southam lined up for the start of a 30 k pursuit race at the Olympics in Whistler in February, it was the first time he’d done so all year. At the 2009 World Championships in the Czech Republic, Southam faced a similar challenge: the pursuit race there was only his second of the season, following a World Cup in Whistler earlier that year. Of the 24 SuperTour races scheduled by the U.S. Ski...
Midway through the U.S. 50 k Championship race on Wednesday, Ivan Babikov was a nation of one. The lone Canadian in a group of five Americans, he was ineligible for the U.S. title. But that didn’t stop him from skiing away with the win, and the $1,200 check that goes with it. Nearing the end of the last of five ten kilometer laps, Babikov put the hammer down, dropping CXC’s Tad Elliot and APU’s Lars...
After four races and flying across half a dozen different time zones in the last week, Kikkan Randall probably had a tough time telling up from down and left from right on Wednesday. But in the U.S. 30 k National Championship, she could still do the one thing she does best: ski fast, and win. “My body really doesn’t know what to think,” she said. “But it’s in good shape, so we’ll just keep rolling.”...
Juergen Uhl (South Burlington, VT) and Audrey Weber (St. Louis Park, MN) may have graduated from college last spring, but they haven’t left their racing days behind. The UVM and Dartmouth ’09s captured the 54K Birkie Classic titles in February this year and will make their way to Maine to race at Spring Series this week. FasterSkier caught up with Juergen and Audrey on winning the Birkie Classic and life after EISA racing. Juergen Uhl...
Fort Kent, ME—Spring has come early to Aroostook County, but the snow has stayed with us. Daytime highs in the 40s and 50s with cold, clear nights well below freezing have made for excellent crust skiing, fast early morning conditions and softening snow in the afternoons. Currently, our extended forecast calls for similar conditions with chances of freezing precipitation and snow on Thursday night and next Monday. While the snowpack is well below normal for...
There are very few athletes in the U.S. brimming with potential like Simi Hamilton. With a national championship in the skate sprint, a win in the qualifying round of the same event at the U-23 World Championships (punctuated by an
When it’s -15 F outside, most lower-48 skiers resign themselves to an afternoon in the weight room or even on the couch. But temperatures like those don’t faze Reese Hanneman and David Norris, two members of the Fairbanks Alaska Ski Team who contend with bone-chilling cold for much of the winter. With readings hovering around the -25 mark, FasterSkier met Norris and Hanneman last week for an interview inside the lodge at their home venue,...
Another US Nationals has come and gone – and as usual the week featured big fields, great battles, enthusiastic crowds, and lots of hard work by organizers and volunteers. It seems that every year that there is a burst of optimism around this event. Racing is intense, people are going for it, and the competition is high level. Whomever does well is looked at as the next potential World Cup star or Olympic hopeful. But...
FasterSkier’s Rob Whitney captured some of the action during Friday’s US Nationals Classical Sprint Championships heats.
The conditions made for some great skiing conditions. It was fast and the snow was easy to kick on. Wax selection was not so important today as pretty much every product out there performed well. Far more important (as very often is the case when classic waxing) was how well the wax was applied and with what strategy. Glide was at a premium especially as the last 1/2 of the sprint course was pretty much...
One by one, the favorites crumbled in the men’s classic sprint. The first to go was Garrott Kuzzy, who went down coming into the backstretch in his quarterfinal. Illness quashed Simi Hamilton’s hopes. And as he led his semifinal heat, Chris Cook took himself out on a downhill corner. When the snow finally settled, it was a Swede, Erik Soederstrom, who remained standing. A sophomore at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF) hailing from Ostersund,...
Four races, four wins, and $4,800. Not a bad week for Kikkan Randall. The Alaskan capped off U.S. Nationals in her hometown by taking the victory in the classic sprint today. In another dominating performance, Randall won qualifying by four seconds, then led each of her heats from start to finish. Laura Valaas and Ida Sargent followed for second and third. “Kikkan sets a phenomenal example of how to be an elite skier,” Valaas said...
After a disappointing first two races here at Nationals, Garrott Kuzzy scratched from the classic distance event on Wednesday to prepare for today’s classic sprint. It’s looking like that was a pretty good idea. In the qualifier this morning, Kuzzy topped the men’s field by almost two seconds, besting a pair of top domestic sprinters Mike Hinckley and Chris Cook, who were 1.73 and 2.31 seconds down, respectively. Using his lanky technique to stride all...
It’s business as usual for the women at Kincaid Park, as Kikkan Randall again skied her way to a sizable victory in the classic sprint qualifier. 21-year-old Ida Sargent had a spectacular morning as the only woman to get within four seconds of Randall’s time, and Anchorage’s Holly Brooks slotted into third, just under six seconds back. The other frontrunners for women’s Olympic berths, Rebecca Dussault and Caitlin Compton, finished sixth and 13th, respectively, 11...
Photos from the Men's 30km Classic Mass Start at the US National Championships. All photos are by the official event photographer James Brady.
FasterSkier’s Rob Whitney was again out on course today. A selection of his photos is below, and more will be posted tomorrow.
It was 27-28F and snowing during both events. Shortly before the finish of the men’s race, it stopped. The snow was pretty dry for Anchorage at this temperature and the tracks were not glazing. Our waxes of the day were for glide: LF Moly followed by HF Red covered by JetStream Red. For kick: a thin coat of BaseWax Green covered by Carbon Grip Red. In these non abrasive conditions, ironed in Carbon Grip Blue...
