After Northug reported respiratory issues following the team relay on Wednesday, he had an entire nation worried about the relay on Friday.
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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.
When Canadian Head Coach Justin Wadsworth first got his hands on a start list for Wednesday’s World Championships team sprint, he liked what he saw. His athletes Devon Kershaw and Alex Harvey were going up against some of the biggest names in the sport: Sweden’s Emil Joensson, Russia’s Alexander Panzhinskiy and Nikita Kriukov, and Norway’s Ola Vigen Hattestad and Petter Northug. But when he took a look at the running order, Wadsworth thought he saw...
Devon Kershaw’s day could not have changed more drastically over the course of two hours than it did on Wednesday in Oslo. While he ended the day atop the podium with teammate Alex Harvey, there was a moment when becoming one of Canada’s first World Champions seemed next to impossible. On the first uphill in Canada’s semifinal in the World Championships team sprint, Kershaw, the leadoff skier, lost a ski. “I had a small heart...
Norwegians Petter Northug and Marit Bjoergen have now both sat out a race at World Championships – not Charlotte Kalla though, and the Swedish star has no plans to take a day off. In another day at the office, Kalla teamed with Ida Ingemarsdotter to win the women’s World Championship classic team sprint in Oslo, Norway, skiing away from Finland and Norway in the last lap. The team sprint features pairs of athletes, alternating laps,...
After just missing the medals in the first two competitions at the 2011 World Championships, an American-born athlete was back on top of the nordic combined podium on Wednesday. Billy Demong? Nope. Todd Lodwick? Guess again. Maybe Johnny Spillane? Or the two flying Fletcher brothers, Bryan and Taylor? No, no, and no. Instead, it was Jason Lamy Chappuis, a French citizen born in Montana, who took the win in the individual large hill competition in...
The Canadian men might have won gold in today’s World Championship team sprint, but they weren’t the only ones walking away from Holmenkollen Stadium in Oslo with smiles on their faces. Another Canadian team was excited about its results, too: Canadians Perianne Jones and Dasha Gaiazova, who finished sixth in the women’s final. After the semifinal, in which the pair was forced to ski mostly alone after Slovenia, Norway, and Sweden went off the front,...
If you took a hard look at the start list for Tuesday’s 15 k classic at the 2011 World Championships, you might have noticed a few names conspicuously absent from the start list. Foremost among them was Norway’s Petter Northug—the winner of Sunday’s 30 k pursuit in Oslo, and silver medalist in last week’s individual sprint. Norway’s coaches sat Northug to keep him fresh for Wednesday’s classic team sprint, in which he and Ola Vigen...
When Matti Heikkinen caught Kris Freeman just three kilometers into Tuesday’s 15 k classic race at World Championships, Freeman was surprised. “I was thinking, holy God, what is going on,” Freeman told FasterSkier. “Turns out he was having the race of his life.” The Finn has just one World Cup victory to his name this season, and came into the individual start race more favored than Freeman, but only barely. So when he had made...
At the 2009 World Championships in the Czech Republic, Finland’s Matti Heikkinen combined a well-timed peak with a great pair of skis to take bronze in the 15 k classic, on a challenging wax day. That medal was Heikkinen’s first time on the podium in an international race. Since then, he’d finished in the top three a few times more—twice on the World Cup, and also in a couple of stages of the Tour de...
While most had expected Hanna Falk to be the number-one pick along with Ida Ingemarsdotter for the Swedish sprint relay team, Charlotte Kalla showed up at the press conference Tuesday morning.
Emil Joensson made a beeline for the border after his sprint race last Thursday. He needed to get away to refocus for the team sprint, and make the days go by faster.
Bjoergen Skis to Third World Championships Gold as Norway, Finland Pack Top Ten
Chelsea LittleFebruary 28, 2011
Early on in Monday’s 10 k classic individual start race, it looked like Marit Bjoergen was on track to lose her first gold medal of the 2011 World Championships. On the first steep hill of the tough course in Oslo, the Norwegian was slipping – and not long after, she began to get splits telling her that Justyna Kowalcyk of Poland, who had started one spot behind her, was catching up. “Today was a very...
“Comfy,” was how American Sadie Bjornsen described the leader’s chair, the seat occupied by the finishers with the best times after they cross the line in individual start races. The young American continued a strong World Championships showing, notching her second top-30 in two starts in the 10 k classic in Oslo. Starting at bib 36, Bjornsen was not unseated as race leader for nearly five minutes, when Sweden’s Sara Lindborg took over. Bjornsen, who...
Americans Fourth in First Team Comp. in Oslo; Austria Wins
Nathaniel HerzFebruary 28, 2011
Five years ago, a fourth place finish for the Americans in a nordic combined team event at World Championships would have been tough to swallow, since U.S. medals at major competitions had been few and far between. But in the season following the 2010 Olympics, which saw U.S. athletes take three silvers and a gold, collecting the “wooden medal” in their first of two team events in Oslo was merely a mild letdown. “Considering I’m...
Biathlete Emil Hegle Svendsen had long been considered a shoe-in for the third leg of the 4x10 kilometer relay at the 2011 World Championships in Oslo on Friday. But after the 30K pursuit, Svendsen is shipped off to Siberia stat.
When the world’s best cross-country skiers stand on the start line for the men’s 50-kilometer freestyle, the final race of the 2011 World Ski Championships in Oslo, they will do so alongside Sergey Shiriaev, a Russian athlete who served a two-year doping ban between 2007 and 2009 and continues to work with controversial coach Anatoly Tchepalov. Tchepalov is currently serving a ban of his own for connections with athletes involved with doping: a four-year sanction...
When asked whom he designed the Oslo courses for, the renowned Hermod Björkestöl, responsible for the layouts at the last three Olympics, responded simply “for entertainment.” And entertainment, in the form of drama and excitement, was provided in spades as Petter Northug (NOR) overcame a shocking early attack by Alex Harvey, and an impressive late challenge by the Russians to achieve his primary goal for the 2011 World Championships – an individual gold medal. Northug...
Freeman Top-30, Promising Signs from Hoffman in Oslo
Nathaniel HerzFebruary 27, 2011
The American men were overshadowed in Sunday’s 30 k pursuit by the performances of their Canadian counterparts, but there were still some promising signs from a pair of U.S. starters. Kris Freeman (USA) skied three quarters of the race with the lead pack of men, before losing contact and trailing in for 29th, two minutes behind the winner—while by no means Freeman’s best, an improvement on some subpar races over the past week. He said...
Two-thirds of the way through Sunday’s World Championships pursuit, Alex Harvey was taking a page out of Johan Olsson’s book. Harvey, the 22-year-old Canadian, had launched a surprise, solo attack reminiscent of the move made by Olsson, a Swede, in the same race at the Vancouver Olympics last year. The Swedes took two medals in that event, with Olsson getting bronze. And for a while, it looked like the Canadians were on their way to...
Monday features a team competition on the normal hill, and the US Nordic Combined team is looking to improve on their first race at the 2011 World Championships.