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World Cup
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.
Nordic Commentary Project. Reuter and Tassava describe their blog as “world cup nordic skiing chatter with a side of analysis, from two skiers and ski-racing fans. In these podcasts, we’ll offer some deconstruction of the last few weeks of developments in the cross-country ski world—and hopefully even make a handful of provocative statements. This week, we started out by discussing the failed plan for a Canadian Tour de Ski in the winter of 2012.
This year’s annual International Ski Federation (FIS) Congress included the selection for the 2015 Nordic World Championships. Held in Turkey, the finalists included Sweden, Finland, Poland and Germany. Sweden was smart. They brought along some of their top athletes to be part of the presentation to bring Worlds to Falun. Nothing like hearing it straight from an athlete’s mouth. It definitely worked, because Sweden beat their key rivals to become the hosts for 2015. Key in that presentation was Olympic...
It is not often that a skier from Great Britain exists, much less turns heads on the international stage, but 20 year old Andrew Musgrave is doing just that. In 2008, Musgrave attended his first World Junior Championships. A year later, he was back, finishing 12th in the 20 k pursuit, and followed that up with a 9th place finish in the 10 k skate. This season (2009-2010) he took the opportunity to show the...
Winning at cards requires both luck and skill. On his fourth day of play at the 2010 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Petter Northug’s luck ran out–but not before he had survived long enough to win more than $20,000. With fewer than 700 players remaining from an original pool of more than 7,000, Northug was eliminated, on a hand that he had less than a 20 percent chance of losing. Late in the...
Norwegian XC skier Kristin Störmer Steira has suffered more than her share of injuries this season, which forced her to sit out the European track and field championships, where she had hoped to compete in the 5,000 meter event.
Petter Northug continued his run at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas on Monday, upping his chip count by 50 percent and advancing to the fourth day of competition. “During the three days he has played, he has not made a single mistake,” said Thorkild Gundersen, a journalist from Northug’s sponsor, Vi Menn Magazine, in an interview with the Norwegian website Nettavisen. After his third day of play at the tournament, Northug checked...
Williams Trades Skis for Running Shoes
Kieran JonesJuly 11, 2010
On July 1st, (otherwise known as Canada Day in the Great White North) Canmore, Alberta hosted its Canada Day Fun Run. Despite the title, it was, in fact, a race, as dozens of local skiers toed the start line. Canmore is home to both Canada’s National Cross Country Ski Team, National Biathlon Team, the Alberta World Cup Academy National Development Center, as well as several powerful Canadian clubs–and the nordic sports were well represented. The 8 k course...
If Petter Northug’s ski career ever goes south, he might have a future in poker. On his second day of play at the 2010 World Series of Poker on Friday, Northug quadrupled his chip count and watched Swedish rival Marcus Hellner exit the tournament—giving Northug a victory in the Las Vegas challenge set up for the two skiers by his sponsor, Vi Menn Magazine. “It was a good table, and I played good poker,” Northug...
With the World Cup of Soccer taking place in South Africa this summer, FasterSkier tracked down Oliver Kraas. The enigmatic South African was eager to talk about his season on the World Cup, the Olympics and the state of cross country skiing in South Africa. FasterSkier: Can you tell us about your South African heritage? And how does a South African get into a sport like cross-country skiing? Oliver Kraas: I was born and raised...
It’s not oil, fish, or aquavit that’s behind the Norwegian sports machine, which delivered the most medals per capita of any nation at the 2010 Olympic Games—at least not entirely. Instead, a healthy portion of the funding for Norway’s sports organizations comes from Norsk-Tipping, the state-owned gambling company. Norsk-Tipping dedicates 45.5 percent of its annual profits to sports—more than $241 million U.S. dollars in 2009 alone. That’s one of the reasons that quadruple Olympic-medalist Petter...
In Las Vegas, the house always wins. And in Tuesday’s head-to-head rollerski race between Marcus Hellner and Petter Northug, Northug was the house. On a course laid out by his Norwegian magazine sponsor—and modified at the last minute to give him a better shot at the win—Northug took the last two heats of a best-of-three series in the parking lot of the Palms Casino, evening the score with Hellner after losing to the Swede in...
11:28 PM: With ten minutes to go in the first day of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, it appears that both Petter Northug and Marcus Hellner have survived, and will head into a second round of play later this week. The two each have comfortable stacks of chips, and will be in decent position as the tournament continues on. 4:50: For once, it looked like Petter Northug was faced with a comeback...
Marcus Hellner one, Petter Northug zero. In an hour-long production worthy of two A-list celebrities, Hellner outlasted Northug in a one-on-one game of Texas Hold’em at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas on Sunday evening. Orchestrated by the Norwegian men’s magazine Vi Menn and the online gambling company PokerStars, the event showcased the kind of status that the two athletes enjoy in Europe. Clad in a crisp white button-down shirt emblazoned with a Norwegian flag...
If Petter Northug and Marcus Hellner had any doubts as to whether they’d be out of their element during the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, the high temperatures in the triple digits over the weekend should serve to quash them. The two may be Olympic gold medalists, but they’re also unseasoned card-players. If they hope to fare well in the tournament, the Scandinavians will have to better old-school pros, new-school math-whizzes, and hundreds...
Jeff Whiting Retires From CCC; Will Continue Work With Paralympic Athletes
Linnaea KershawJuly 2, 2010
At this year’s Cross Country Canada (CCC) annual meeting held in Corner Brook, NF, Jeff Whiting received an award for the years of hard work and dedication he’s put into Para-Nordic skiing as both a volunteer and and staff member. Earlier this month, CCC announced his retirement from the position of Western Para-Nordic Development Coordinator. “Jeff’s athlete-centered approach, dedication, knowledge and experience of the Para-Nordic sport will always be remembered and will still continue to...
Training with Marit Bjoergen and the Norwegian women’s cross-country team might be an intimidating prospect even for some of North America’s elite men. But not for Kikkan Randall. In the middle of a two-week visit to Norway this month, Randall took up an offer to go head-to-head with the country’s women’s squad in a double-pole interval workout. And while the pace was high—“pretty much all out”—Randall wasn’t blown away. “It was pretty cool just to...
The lack of a World Cup 50K race has Soedergren frustrated. “XC skiing is well on its way to lose its identity and its character,” Soedergren said to zsport.se.
Even for a cross country skier, Brent McMurtry spent an obscene amount time this season travelling. His short list of skiing locations in the 2009-2010 season includes New Zealand with the Canadian National Team, World Cup weekends in Estonia, Russia, and Alberta, the Olympic Winter Games, Canadian Nationals in the Yukon and to wrap it all up, US Super Tour finals in Fort Kent, Maine. When the dust settled on his whirlwind season, 24 year-old...
Tim Burke became the first-ever American biathlete to pull on the yellow bib of the overall World Cup leader last winter, but first place still eludes him–he has never won a race outright. This year, he intends to change that. “I would love to win a World Cup, to know that on that day, I was the best biathlete in the world,” Burke said. Burke didn’t get any victories last year, but he came tantalizingly...