Whistler, British Columbia – The US men’s sprint relay team of Torin Koos and Andy Newell finished 9th after advancing out of the semifinals with a strong performance, before falling off the back with a lap and a half to go. Koos and Newell finished 2nd in their semifinal, edging France in a photo finish. The top three automatically advanced so the lunge at the line was not critical. It might have been had not...
The prolonged, brutal physical demands of the team sprint make the event a fickle friend. Just ask Charlotte Kalla and Anna Haag. After blowing the doors off the eight other teams in their semifinal, the Swedish women came into the gold-medal round as an irresistible force. But they ran head on into the immovable object of Claudia Nystad and Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle, a pair of veteran German women without the speed for the first round, but...
The expanded result sheet says it all. At 11.25 kilometers, Kris Freeman was in 23rd place, in the lead pack, 10.9 seconds behind Lukas Bauer (CZE). At the next time check, 1.35 kilometers later, Freeman was 47th, just under three minutes off the pace. Freeman crashed, but not in the usual way. “I went from feeling fine and relaxed to ‘oh this is hard’, to not standing, in three minutes,” Freeman told FasterSkier. And just...
The silver lining is out there somewhere, but time is running out for the Americans to find it in Whistler. Despite a beautiful day of sunny skies and spring-like conditions, the U.S. mood was somber after its third day of dismal results at the 2010 Olympics. Only one American woman, Morgan Arritola, cracked the top-forty in the 15k pursuit Friday, finishing 38th. The other three—Caitlin Compton, Holly Brooks, and Liz Stephen—were far back in 43rd,...
For some people, being stuck in a quarterfinal heat at the Olympics with Emil Joensson (SWE) would be intimidating. Not for Simi Hamilton. “Those days are over,” he said afterwards. The young American sprinter provided a tantalizing glimpse of the future in the sprint yesterday, striding strongly and confidently in the lead of his quarterfinal up the course’s final climb—ahead of Joensson and other World Cup veterans like Kalle Lassila (FIN) and Peeter Kummel (EST)—before...
Whistler, British Columbia – Kikkan Randall (USA) already has made history countless times in her storied ski-career. On Wednesday, at Whistler Olympic Park, she did it again. Randall posted the best Olympic result ever in US women’s cross-country skiing, finishing 8th in the classic sprint. She beat her own mark of 9th, set in 2006. This is just one more notch in her impressive belt of accomplishments. Last year she became the first US woman...
If those pesky NBC producers were still searching for that perfect feel-good story, they sure got it today. After a horrifying crash in her warm-up for the women’s classic sprint at the Vancouver Olympics, Slovenia’s Petra Majdic was in so much pain that she could barely breath. But somehow, she still found the strength and courage to stay with the best skiers in the world, winning a bronze medal behind Norway’s Marit Bjoergen and Poland’s...
Sunny skies and warm temperatures greeted sprinters on their arrival at Whistler Olympic Park this morning for the men’s and women’s sprint. This is a big chance for the Canadians and the U.S.—all six Americans are capable of qualifying for the heats, with three medal hopefuls in Kikkan Randall, Torin Koos, and Andy Newell. The Canadians are set up just as well, with Devon Kershaw, Sarah Renner, Dasha Gaiazova, and Perianne Jones gunning for the...
Kris Freeman performs best when he’s angry, which bodes well for the rest of his Olympic Games. “I’m just really, really pissed,” he said Tuesday about his debacle in the 15k freestyle. Freeman blew by reporters in the finish chute yesterday, leaving fans and media without an explanation for what he called “a horrible result.” But as he wrote on his blog, that was because he didn’t have one himself. 24 hours later, though, things...
The first cross-country races of the 2010 Olympics – the 10/15km individual start freestyle – may represent the best chance for medals – for both the US and Canada. Kris Freeman (USA) has twice finished 4th at the World Championships in this distance, and while he has had more success in classic, he has raised his skating to a similar level in recent years, and should be better positioned in the individual start format. While...
After Johnny Spillane won a silver medal Sunday afternoon—the first of any color in U.S. nordic combined history—his former coach, Tom Steitz, voiced the rhetorical question on every reporter’s mind here. “How do you boil up 86 years of emotion and frustration?” he asked. The answer? Todd Lodwick’s face. Struggling to explain himself and holding back tears after just missing out on the bronze, Lodwick quivered with feeling: fierce pride for his teammate and friend,...
Whistler, British Columbia – The first of two individual Olympic nordic combined competitions will be held today at Whistler Olympic Park. The United States is in the unique position of having three medal hopefuls – Todd Lodwick, Billy Demong, and Johnny Spillane. While unlikely, a US sweep of the podium is not out of the question. The jumping portion of the competition will be held in under an hour at 10:00 at Whistler Olympic Park,...
Editor’s Note: Portions of this article were removed at the request of the US Ski Team, which believed that sensitive information included in the piece could impact its medal chances. FasterSkier does not generally grant such requests and will not do so in the future, and we would not have done so if we believed the material in the article to be of critical import to the skiing community. While we did not agree that...
Whistler Olympic Park, BC – Organizers of the cross country races here have been using a lot of salt recently. And it’s not because they’re hungry. With rain and above-freezing temperatures for the last few days, officials have been experimenting with ways to harden the courses. Today, FIS Cross Country Race Director Jurg Capol said, organizers tested salt on the portions of the courses that will be used for the 10/15k freestyle on Monday. And...
While his Canadian teammates were out marching in front of their home crowd in Vancouver at the opening ceremonies for the 2010 Olympic Games, Devon Kershaw was alone, 60 miles away, watching them on a “fuzzy, little, little screen.” Kershaw got a small consolation prize, according to his Twitter feed—seeing his girlfriend, Chandra Crawford, a few times on that tiny television. But his decision to stay near Whistler was one faced by dozens of athletes...
Canmore, Alberta – Yet another North American World Cup has come and gone, and as has been the case in recent years, it was a mixed bag for the United States. There were some obvious high points – Caitlin Compton’s 14th in the 10km freestyle and Torin Koos qualifying 2nd in the men’s classic sprint – before being eliminated in the semifinal. And one should not overlook Holly Brooks’ 24th in her first World Cup...
In the men’s classic sprint in Canmore on Saturday, there were all kinds of tactics in play. In the women’s version, there was just one: go like hell, and leave everyone else in the dust. That was Justyna Kowalczyk’s M.O. today. Using the massive engine she’s developed by racing every event in her path, the Polish dynamo crushed her competition in every single heat she skied on Saturday. In the final, she had more than...
Canmore, Alberta – Tune-up? Small field? Sure, but it’s still the World Cup. In front of hundreds of fans in Canmore, Sweden’s Charlotte Kalla gave her Olympic hopes a boost by winning the women’s 10k freestyle here on a course tailored to her strengths. She finished ten seconds up on Justyna Kowalczyk of Poland today, with Russia’s Irina Khazova in third. Kalla excels on steep uphills and through transitions, and she said afterwards that she...
With pursuit champion Ingvild Flugstad Oestberg and sprint champion Hanna Brodin anchoring their respective teams, today’s women’s relay race was primed for a showdown. Oestberg, a Norwegian, had proven to be one of the strongest distance skiers here at the World Junior Championships after winning the pursuit, while Brodin, a Swede had dominated the sprint. The 3.3k distance was right in between the two disciplines. They received the tag ten seconds apart, with Oestberg in...
Halfway through the 15k women’s pursuit at the U-23 World Championships, the Russians appeared to have everything under control. Skiing three abreast on their second of four trips up the big climb here, there didn’t seem to be a way for anyone to get around their sea of blue suits. But when they switched to skate skis, the Russians’ grip on the race disappeared as quickly they had taken it, snatched by a pair of...