This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. When it comes to World Cup cross-country ski racing, season-long progress can be difficult for spectators and commentators to assess. It’s always hard to tell: are skiers getting faster? Are they fading?...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. By the time the stadium lights fully took over in Oberhof, the snow had begun to change its mind. What started as a pliable winter surface—the kind that both softens and creates...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. Some day, Norway won’t be the only force in Men’s World Cup cross-country skiing. Some day, the participation of other nations will truly matter. Other nations will hear their anthems played, other...
Dear Cross Country Community, We are pleased to announce the Team for Period 3 of the 2025-26 World Cup season: Oberhof Sprint F Men Zach Jayne Objective 25-26 Overall SuperTour Leader Ben Ogden Objective 4th 25-26 Sprint World Cup Jack Young Objective 21st 25-26 Sprint World Cup Gus Schumacher Objective 27th 25-26 Sprint World Cup JC Schoonmaker Objective 36th 25-26 Sprint World Cup Kevin Bolger Objective 40th 25-26 Sprint World Cup Zak Ketterson ...
This coverage is made possible, in part, through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. There are days in this sport when the numbers feel like the whole story: a time, a place, a gap. But every so often, cross-country skiing produces a day that...
World Cup skiers get a holiday break from the grind of the World Cup tour . . . but it’s up for debate just how much rest they get during that break. It’s gotta be tough to relax when the horizon is clouded by the impending approach of the Tour de Ski, possibly the most daunting challenge that skiers will face all season. As a ski-fan, I just adore the Tour de Ski—day after day of racing...
Russian and Belarusian cross-country skiers are back in the mix to qualify for the Olympic Winter Games in 2026. Does anyone else sense an elephant in the room? And are we all talking about the same elephant? The recently overturned FIS ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes was about Russia’s war on Ukraine. Not every sport in the athletic world banned the involvement of those athletes, but the International Ski Federation (FIS) was quick and...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. Many world-class athletes spend season after season diligently training, preparing, imagining, rehearsing for opportunities that never come. Advancing in World Cup standings is extraordinarily difficult: training is not enough, technical refinement is not...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. Davos doesn’t reward urgency. It tolerates it, sometimes — lets it flirt with the clock through the opening kilometers — but it never forgets. Like a mysterious, wispy cloud, the altitude sits quietly...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. The lights come on early in Davos, not because they are needed, but because Davos wants them on. By mid-afternoon, the valley is already sliding toward dusk, the alpine light thinning and flattening,...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. The night sprint in Davos has a way of making the sport feel louder than it usually allows itself to be. The course is short, the laps repeat, the crowd sees the same...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. “I’ll tell you; I never get no respect.” That was the lament of the immensely popular comedian Rodney Dangerfield, the loveable schlub who became an American icon by continually reminding everyone how unloved...
The Hill That Got Easier On an ordinary winter afternoon in Fairbanks, before NCAA titles and World Cup bibs and FIS profiles, there was just a loop—eight hundred meters of snow and one long, unforgiving hill. Middle-school Kendall Kramer skied it after class, day after day, with her dad. Birch Hill. Blue Loop. One big climb, same as yesterday, same as tomorrow. What changed was how it felt. “We would just go for, like, 30...
On most race weekends, I take my job seriously — up at 3:00 am EST, fresh coffee made, woodstove loaded, notebook out, logged on to coverage early to make sure I don’t have a technical issue. Then once the race starts, I begin looking for subtle, important moments to describe in greater detail in the race report. But there are also weekends, like this past one, when I toss my journalism hat onto the mantle...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. He doesn’t even call himself a skier. After two World Cup podium performances in as many weeks—and a victory in today’s 10 k Freestyle Interval Start—Einar Hedegart (NOR) continues to refer to...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. There are winter mornings when a World Cup feels like a World Cup, and there are winter mornings when the sport seems to slip into its future tense. Today, in Trondheim, was the...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. If this is what a farewell tour looks like, then it’s a truly spectacular thing to behold. In Trondheim on Saturday, Jessie Diggins demonstrated her toughness, her strategic acumen, and her mastery of...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. The men’s 20-kilometer Skiathlon at Granåsen never felt like an ordinary World Cup. From the moment the athletes stepped into the start pen, there was a tension in the air that didn’t match...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. Johannes Høsflot Klaebo’s 100th World Cup win did not arrive with the roar he’d grown used to on this course. Granåsen last March had been a cauldron—tens of thousands of fans in plastic...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. The news all week has been “The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!” Well, no Russians, today. Even after all the headlines, even after certain Russian athletes had sent entries to the...