The metaphors are rife when describing the rough and tumble nature of the urban environment. Most often we think of pine forest, alps, and Hansel and Gretel valleys as the backdrop for the World Cup. To foster interest and in-fill a dense schedule of racing, city-sprints are nothing new when it comes to populating the World Cup calendar. Places like Dresden provide a contextual backdrop to a Europe steeped in history. The city is often...
With the Tour de Ski in the rearview mirror, athletes donned bibs for a city sprint weekend in Dresden, Germany. Like the other bookend in Planica the weekend before it began, athletes who focused on the Tour de Ski — mostly distance skiers and all-arounders — were not in attendance to focus on rest and recovery. This narrowed the field in Dresden to a sprint-focused lineup. Under grey skies, skiers drag-raced on an icy ribbon...
From under the umbrella to inside the snow globe. Fat flakes were falling in Planica, Slovenia at the start of the freestyle team sprint. A painful mix of speed and endurance, each team member skied three 1.2-kilometer laps for a total of 7.2 k. Comprising the victorious Norway I team, Sindre Bjørnestad Skar and Erik Valnes stopped the clock at 16:54.52. Fellow countrymen Håvard Solås Taugbøl and Gjøren Tefre took the Norway II team to...
With the tight racing and jostling for position the team sprint presents, another factor was in the mix during Sunday’s Planica, Slovenia women’s 7.2-kilometer freestyle team sprint: big, fat, and plentiful snowflakes. Saturdays’ rainy, and lightning ridden sprint racing on an artificial snow loop, had a 180-degree backdrop flip-flop with a white winter arriving in Planica in time for the holidays and a World Cup TV broadcast. A several inch veneer of fresh snow covered...
With a snaking artificial loop of snow in a drizzly, and sometimes thundering Planica, Slovenia, the men’s World Cup field competed in a 1.25-kilometer skate sprint on Saturday. What Planica lacked in wintery vistas, it provided with fast technical racing during a day of topsy turvy weather. Racing was suspended after the quarterfinals when a robust lightning and hail storm moved in. With loud thunder booms reverberating during the weather delay, the competition organizers aptly...
Temperatures over 40 degrees Fahrenheit, steady rain that peppered camera lenses, sparse broods of fans huddled under umbrellas, and a ribbon of white farmed snow. After a wintery start to the season in snowy Ruka, Lillehammer, and Davos, athlete’s found their spring-like gear racing the 1.2-kilometer freestyle sprint in Planica, Slovenia. With many “all-arounders” choosing to sit out the sprint focused weekend to rest for the upcoming Tour de Ski, the intimate subset of athletes...
In contrast to yesterday’s open valley sprints, Sunday’s 15-kilometer interval start freestyle was tucked and nestled on the shady side of the valley. Firm snow and less than optimal oxygen concentrations greeted athletes. Davos sits at just over five thousand feet in altitude. As far as the race narrative, so much for fairy tales in lovely Davos. Dario Cologna, the Swiss ski star sat for a time in the fur-lined leader’s chair. Davos, according to...
Day two in Davos, Switzerland looked much like the first; blue skies, fast tracks, and spectacular alpen backdrop. Following an interval start, athletes time-trialed through two 5-kilometer loops loops of a course that predominantly climbs the first 3k, ripping back toward the stadium the last two. Gone are the days of the stopwatch and furious arithmetic, coaches with tablets peppered the woods near checkpoints to relay information to their athletes as they skated by, hunting...
(An earlier version of the story mistakenly stated Caldwell had placed second. FIS live timing had Caldwell in second place. Apologies for the error.) When Davos is good, it is good on a global scale. With the Swiss valley blanketed in snow, and a gauze of high clouds keeping the race proceedings just a notch away from perfectly sun-shiny, the World Cup’s 1.5-kilometer freestyle sprint was won by twenty-year-old Swede Linn Svahn. According to the...
Davos, Switzerland: gifted athletes, throngs of spectators lining the course, plenty of Vitamin-D and a spectacular day for the 1.5-kilometer freestyle sprint. Racers chased down and skied away from their long afternoon shadows as the sun moved across the cloudless bluebird sky. The crowds were in for a treat. In sprint racing, heats often have significant variance. Some will be fast, some will be slow with a final upsurge in intensity at the end. In...
The Swedish news outlet SVT announced this morning that Frida Karlsson, Sweden’s rising junior phenom, has been pulled from competition after not meeting team health criteria during a routine check last week. Karlsson raced the World Cup opening series of races in Ruka, placing 40th in the classic sprint, 11th in the 10 k classic, finishing 8th overall after the final 10 k skate stage. Last season the 20-year-old won the 5-kilometer classic and 10...
Call it what you want: national pride, national bias, flag-waving: the team relays elicit nationalistic tendencies. In Lillehammer, Norway, you might think and maybe expect it’s your birthright to see the hometeam crush. That’s been the recent norm almost without exception. Here’s the quick stats to either dispel or reinforce those tendencies: Norway has won nine of the last 11 relay races on the World Cup. Russia won the other two. In fact, Russia took...
Athletes warmed up amidst fat falling snowflakes as a storm blanketed Lillehammer, Norway. The gun fired, and a flurry of this snow clouded the boots, poles, and relay socks as a wave of skiers strode their way up and out of the Birkebeiner Stadium for the first leg of the women’s 4 x 5-kilometer relay. With outstanding performances in the first two World Cup race weekends, it is clear that the U.S. women are hot....
Norwegian countryside just as you imagine: farms, pine trees, a deep snow-blanket, and fast skiing. All this was on display under a bluebird sky in Lillehammer, Norway for the men’s World Cup 30-kilometer skiathlon. Amidst this legacy-backdrop, the beauty of a dual technique race with enough grinding Ks to string out and decimate an impressive field played out. Fifteen kilometers in, at the ski exchange from classic to skate, nine skiers were separated by 6.5 seconds...
This week’s episode of the Therese Johaug show featured a clinic in her signature event, the 15-kilometer mass start skiathlon in Lillehammer, Norway. Before today, the two-time World Championship gold medalist had made the podium in 13 of her 14 World Cup skiathlon starts (six of those were wins), failing only in Oberstdorf, Germany during the 2011 Tour de Ski. Her strategy was familiar. Johaug set the pace from the gun, attacking the first climb...
In Östersund, Sweden on Wednesday, the IBU World Cup picked up again with the men racing the 20-kilometer individual. The depth of the French team was evident as they swept the top-for spots. Martin Fourcade won in a time of 53:11.9 minutes — and shooting clean until his final bout, when he missed a single target. Simon Desthieux was second (+12.7; 0+1+0+0), and Quentin Fillon Maillet third (+1:50.8; 2+0+0+1). Scott Gow of Canada was the...
Ruka, Finland looked quintessentially Nordic at the start of the 10-kilometer freestyle pursuit. December at 66 degrees north: temperatures in the low teens (F), flat Northern light, frosted pines looking as though they were spray-coated with foam. Athletes warmed up in puffy jackets with mittens, neck warmers, and taped faces while crowds huddled with cups of soup. First out of the start and racing in a balaclava and mittens, Norway’s Theresa Johaug attacked the course...
North of the Arctic Circle three weeks from the equinox and it was buff weather in Ruka, Finland for the final race of the World Cup’s opening weekend. Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo sealed it with a win in the men’s 15 k freestyle pursuit. He won in a time of 35:29.7 minutes and a slim 1.8 seconds over teammate Emil Iversen. Yesterday’s 15 k classic winner, Iivo Niskanen of Finland was third (+11.1). It was...
The difficulty in covering generational star athletes is avoiding cliché. There’s the “high tempo” or “high-turnover” description for Therese Johaug. And for the men, Northug’s panache and wily wait-for-the-final-meters sprint fury. Although some would argue that it is a bit too early for the stamp of generational star, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo is such a regular podium crasher that avoiding cliché is troublesome there too. So today, we’re off the hook a bit. Finland’s ski hero...
It was an elemental form of racing to open the distance events on the World Cup: the 10-kilometer interval start classic. No spoiler alert needed here. Norway’s Therese Johaug won in 26:47.5 minutes. Johaug comes into the season having won the distance overall last year and steamrolled to two distance race victories Beitostølen, Norway last weekend. Those races were the opening Norwegian national races, but were stacked fields. During another day with flurries, high humidity,...