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,...
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...
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...
As the only senior American woman at Under-26 Open European Championships in Ridnaun, Italy, Susan Dunklee didn’t get the chance to start a relay on Thursday. “I’m disappointed, but I don’t want to make a big deal out of it,” she told FasterSkier. But while sitting on the sidelines might not have seemed as fun as racing, a couple of her teammates had even more frustrating days. The American men’s relay team, after a promising...
Last year, the Birkie Elite Sprints, held on Main Street in Hayward, Wisconsin, two days before the Birkie, were a mostly American affair. Morten Pedersen of Norway won the men’s race, but most of the other top finishers were natives – including Audrey Weber, then skiing for CXC, who won the women’s heats. This year, things changed. The men’s final on Tuesday came down to a battle between Norwegian teammates Vetle Thyli and Martin Andersen....
The American and Canadian teams have been off to a good start in Ridnaun, Italy, collecting three top-20 finishes in the opening individual-format races at IBU Under-26/Open European Championships. On Monday, the men kicked things off in the 20 k individual race, a format where each missed shot represents a one-minute time penalty. Tyson Smith of Canada missed only two of his twenty shots and finished 19th, just under four minutes behind Artem Pryma of...
The group of junior and U23 skiers who stayed in Europe to race a series of Scandinavian Cup races in Latvia and Estonia wrapped up their Baltic stay with strong results. Reese Hanneman (APU), the lone US man to start, finished 36th in the 15km classic. “It was a very positive experience, even beyond the good (relatively, for me) result, because I got to ski with some very fast guys that were lapping through with me,”...
VTXC team member and former University of Vermont (UVM) standout Juergen Uhl, a 2009 NCAA champion in the men’s 10 k classic, recently competed at the World University Games in Erzurum, Turkey. Unfortunately, Uhl came down with the stomach flu upon arriving in Turkey, which stymied his efforts on the trails. Nevertheless he finished 25th in the 10 k classic and 42nd in the 15 k continuous pursuit while representing his home country, Germany. Uhl...
The Rybinsk World Cups may lack the usual robust field, but if nothing else, it is a great opportunity for the Russians to showcase the sport to a passionate fan base. The men’s team did just that, overcoming a tough third leg by Petr Sedov to eke out the win over a strong Italian team. Evgeniy Belov and Maxim Vylegzhanin skied from the front on the classic legs, setting the pace, and opening up a...
Going into Saturday’s relays, Grace Boutot hadn’t had the best World Juniors of her career. In Canmore in 2009, the American was second in the youth women’s individual race and contributed to a fifth-place relay team. But this year, in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, her top finish was 39th in the individual. “I haven’t had the results that I hoped for in the past two days,” she said after the pursuit. And after the individual,...
Ida Sargent (CGRP) has been struggling to find her top form following a December car accident. But things may be looking up for the World Championship-bound 23-year-old. Sargent skied to a strong fifth place finish in the 1.2km classic Scandinavian Cup sprint in Jõulumäe, Estonia on Saturday morning. “Today was really good,” Sargent wrote in an email to FasterSkier. “It was the best I’ve felt during a race since November so I think Im on...
It took four tries, but Russian sprint specialist Alexei Petukhov finally got a World Cup victory on home soil, breaking away from the pack to win the men’s freestyle sprint in Rybinsk, Russia. In the women’s event, a Petra Majdic-less Slovenia claimed the top two spots with Vesna Fabjan and Katja Visnar beating out Justyna Kowalczyk (POL). As in Friday’s pursuit, many of the top skiers were missing – including the entire Swedish team and...
After a World Junior Championships where it has already proven dominant in the medal counts, Russia sealed the deal by winning both the youth men’s and women’s relays in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic on Friday. And it wasn’t even close: both teams won by more than a minute, the men over Italy and the women over Ukraine. Elena Badanina, the leadoff skier for the Russian women’s team, doesn’t see herself as becoming a star, despite...
In an individual race in biathlon, every missed shot adds a minute to an athlete’s ski time, so it’s even more important to hit all the targets than it might be in other formats. Canadian Scott Gow had missed two shots over the first three stages of the junior men’s 15 k individual race at World Junior Championships in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic on Wednesday, which normally wouldn’t bode well. But today, it did –...
How poor was the shooting on the third day of biathlon World Junior Championships in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic? In two races on Tuesday – the youth men’s and women’s individual – only a single athlete, Pavel Hancharou of Belarus, shot clean for the four stages of the race. He was rewarded with a 48-second victory in the 12.5 k race and his first World Juniors gold medal. Second-place Steffen Bartscher of Germany was so...
When American biathlete Kelly Kjorlien arrived in the Czech Republic for IBU Youth/Junior World Championships, she was confident – but she also came down with a cough. Has that slowed her down so far? No, not at all. After finishing 27th in Saturday’s youth women’s 6 k sprint, Kjorlien told FasterSkier that she was excited going into the pursuit, because shooting was her “strong point” and there were four shooting stages in which to best...
While all of the medalists from Saturday’s youth and junior men’s sprints repeated on the podium in Sunday’s pursuits, there was still plenty of excitement on the second day of World Youth and Junior Biathlon Championships in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. In the junior men’s 12.5 k pursuit, Germany’s Tom Barth, who started with bib one and a 16-second advantage over teammate Johannes Kuhn, had to fight just to stay on the podium after missing...
The single most dominating performance on the first day of Biathlon World Youth and Junior Championships came in the second race on Saturday, the junior women’s 7.5 k sprint. Dorothea Wierer of Italy shot clean to win the race by over a minute. It wasn’t an entirely surprising result: Wierer has contested every Junior Worlds series since 2007, and won a gold medal in Ruhpolding in 2008 and one in Canmore in 2009. And of...
After a tough first day of competition at the World Youth and Junior Biathlon Championships in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic on Saturday, the American and Canadian men will be on the offensive in Sunday’s pursuit. With the top 60 finishers from today’s sprint races qualifying to move on, the North American teams – which notched just two top-30 performances – will have plenty of pursuing to do. “Overall the Canadian team didn’t have a stellar...
Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association racing continued last weekend with the Utah Invitational at Soldier Hollow. The UNiversity of Colorado narrowly edged host UNiversity of Utah in the team competition. Day one: 5/10k freestyle After the first batch of races, the hosting school University of Utah (UU) finished one point behind the University of Colorado Buffaloes (CU). The battle between the two schools continued as it has all season: On the ladies’ side, the Utes...