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The cream of the crop. The best in the world compete all winter long on the World Cup. We follow them at every stop with article and results. We also post occasional reports from North America’s best as they travel the globe.
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Interview: For Diggins, Big Changes While Trying to Keep Everything Else the Same

Chelsea LittleMay 23, 2012

BEND, Ore. – Jessie Diggins had a big year in 2012. After thoroughly dominating the domestic racing scene in the fall and early winter, the CXC and U.S. Ski Team athlete headed to Europe, where she immediately made a splash on the World Cup. In her first race there, in Milan, she finished 18th in the freestyle sprint, then followed it up with a second-place finish in the team sprint with Kikkan Randall. Diggins went...

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Canadian National Ski TeamGeneralNewsRacingWorld Cup

Surrounded by Changes, Jones Keeps Her Cool

Alex KochonMay 17, 20121

Perianne Jones knows how to take advantage of time off when she can. With her wedding coming up in July, the Canadian World Cup team member recently spent a couple of weeks in France with her soon-to-be hubby Joel Jaques. One of the team’s year-round wax technicians, Jaques is pretty busy himself. The two spent the first half of their vacation visiting someone they saw all winter, head technician Yves Bilodeau, before heading south to...

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Canadian National Team, World Cup Academy on Same Track
Canadian National Ski TeamGeneralNewsRacingWorld Cup

Canadian National Team, World Cup Academy on Same Track

Alex KochonMay 11, 20121

Looking out at his athletes plugging along during a workout last fall, Mike Cavaliere of the Alberta World Cup Academy sat inside the team van and listened to his coaches. A few years ago when Cavaliere started the Canadian national training centre in Canmore, Alberta, he and his staff recognized the lack of high-level female skiers. Back then, they resolved to work toward producing more, but at a training camp in Whistler, British Columbia, all...

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World CupXCFeeds

Career Retrospective: Emilie Vina

JoranMay 9, 2012

A few other athletes that I was less familiar with are also retiring, according to FIS, beginning with France’s Emilie Vina. Naturally, I head over to Wikipedia and discover that apparently she’s a non-commissioned officer? Huh. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she were a biathlete, I suppose, but that’s not a combination you see [...] Related posts:

  1. Career Retrospective: Rene Sommerfeldt
  2. Career Retrospective: Sara Renner
  3. Career Retrospective: Virpi Kuitunen

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Freeman Retools Mass-Start Strategy, Considers CamelBak
GeneralNewsRacingTestingTrainingUS Ski TeamWorld Cup

Freeman Retools Mass-Start Strategy, Considers CamelBak

Alex KochonMay 7, 20128

Tell Kris Freeman something he doesn’t know about racing with diabetes. Better yet, give him hope that he can ski faster. That’s exactly how Dr. Jim Stray-Gundersen piqued Freeman’s interest two months ago in Norway. Without having seen him race, Stray-Gundersen got right to the point in Oslo. Forget about what happened in the past; let’s look to the future. How do you feel about racing with a CamelBak? For Freeman and his personal coach...

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World CupXCFeeds

Career Retrospective: Ivan Batory

JoranMay 4, 2012

Woo hoo! Another classic specialist! Ivan Batory has been around the block a few times. The first WC race I have for him is all the way back in the 1994 season. Let’s see, I think I was a freshmen in high school that year. Among Batory’s top 30 results, 63 were classic, 31 freestyle [...] Related posts:

  1. Career Retrospective: Rene Sommerfeldt
  2. Career Retrospective: Laurence Rochat
  3. Career Retrospective: Tore Ruud Hofstad

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World CupXCFeeds

Career Retrospective: Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset

JoranMay 2, 2012

A skier after my own heart, he was! Skating? Bah! That’s for losers! Hjelmeset was the quintessential classic specialist: If you’re basically only going to do classic races, you’d better be pretty good at them, and Hjelmeset certainly was. His World Cup career included 119 classic starts, only 26 freestyle starts and another 9 pursuits [...] Related posts:

  1. Career Retrospective: Rene Sommerfeldt
  2. Career Retrospective: Tore Ruud Hofstad
  3. Career Retrospective: Petra Majdic

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World CupXCFeeds

Brief Season Assessment For North America

JoranApril 30, 2012

This is by no means a comprehensive look at how we fared this year, just one perspective based on a single graph. One of the things that I pay closest attention to is depth: how many different skiers do we have performing at a particular level. The reason for this is that for relatively “small” [...] Related posts:

  1. Mid-Season Recap: North American Distance
  2. Mid-Season Review: North American Sprint
  3. North American WSC Assessment

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World CupXCFeeds

Fredrik Karlsson

JoranApril 27, 2012

Hopefully there won’t be any more posts like this for a long while. Fredrik Karlsson died recently, I guess in a snowmobile accident. I didn’t know much about him, but I guess he was on Sweden’s development team. As you might expect for someone on Sweden’s development team, he hadn’t quite made a huge splash [...] Related posts:

  1. NOW Is It Panic Time For The Norwegian Men’s Distance Team?
  2. Drammen 10/15km Classic Recap
  3. Lahti Pursuit Recap

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US Ski TeamWorld Cup

With USST Nominations Looming, Grover Discusses Strategy, Discretion

Chelsea LittleApril 25, 20124

While U.S. Ski Team (USST) coaches have nominated athletes for the 2012-2013 team, the names have not been approved by higher-ups in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA). Until they are, athletes and coaches alike are unable to reveal the makeup of next year’s team. They can, however, discuss the U.S. program in general, as Head Coach Chris Grover did with FasterSkier on Tuesday, when he addressed, among other things, the coaches’ understanding of...

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World CupXCFeeds

Jenny Olsson

JoranApril 25, 2012

    Unfortunately, we have a distinct theme for this week’s posts. Jenny Olsson also passed away recently, apparently from breast cancer. She raced, quite successfully, for Sweden for much of the mid-00′s: These are just her WC level distance results (she didn’t sprint much). As you can see, 2002-2003 was her best effort, but [...] Related posts:

  1. Career Retrospective: Anna Olsson
  2. Most Un-Improved: Distance 2011
  3. Career Retrospective: Petra Majdic

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World CupXCFeeds

Inge Braten

JoranApril 23, 2012

In some very sad news, we learned recently that Inge Braten passed away rather suddenly. It is difficult (and probably slightly foolish) to try to quantify a coach’s impact on skiing results, so let’s consider this post a rememberance, rather than an analysis. Perhaps most famously, Braten coached the Norwegian men during their “Golden Era”: (My [...] Related posts:

  1. Is It Panic Time For The Norwegian Men’s Distance Skiers?
  2. NOW Is It Panic Time For The Norwegian Men’s Distance Team?
  3. Sweden’s Men’s Sprinting

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World CupXCFeeds

Most Unimproved: Women’s Sprinters

JoranApril 20, 2012

Last in the series of most improved/unimproved we finally turn to the women’s sprinters: Alena Prochazkova took a major tumble this season in sprints. She had been a fairly reliable presence in the semifinals until this season, when she appeared to often have trouble qualifying. Celine Brun-Lie also saw a major drop-off, but the much [...] Related posts:

  1. Most Unimproved Women: Distance
  2. Most Unimproved: Men’s Sprint
  3. Most Unimproved: Women’s Sprint

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Canadian National Ski TeamGeneralInterviewsNewsRacingWorld Cup

Kershaw on Bråten: “He Had a Real Way of Instilling Belief”

Nathaniel HerzApril 16, 2012

What do Vegard Ulvang, Bjørn Dæhlie, Marcus Hellner, Charlotte Kalla, Alex Harvey, and Devon Kershaw have in common? Aside from gold medals from the Olympic Games or World Championships? All of them, at one point or another, were coached by Inge Bråten, a fixture on the World Cup circuit who died last week at the age of 63. Bråten led his country’s national team from 1990 to 1994—a period in which Norway collected no fewer...

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