It’s not as if the U.S. men’s biathlon team hasn’t shown its potential this year: Lowell Bailey led the beginning of the last relay before missing too many shots to maintain his position, and Bailey has had a number of top-20 finishes in individual races, while Tim Burke has two top-20’s and Leif Nordgren shot clean to finish 35th in the very first World Cup race of the season. But still, the biathlon world was...
While the once-dominant Norwegian men are in a slump right now, their teammate Tora Berger is just getting started. With an exhilarating mass start win in Antholz, Italy on Sunday – which came down to the final hundred meters but at the same time was a foregone conclusion at least a kilometer earlier – Berger collected her fourth victory in as many individual races, after winning Friday’s sprint by almost 30 seconds as well as...
CHAUX-NEUVE, France (Jan. 23) – Olympic silver medalist Todd Lodwick (Steamboat Springs, CO) jumped third and hung on in a hotly contested battle to finish eighth in a nordic combined World Cup in Chaux-Neuve in the Jura mountains near Geneva. All four U.S. skiers finished in the top-30 points as France’s Jason Lamy-Chappuis wrapped up the World Cup title with a dominating win. While the podium still eluded the USA, it was another steppingstone event...
Different day, different distance and different technique, but the results were the same. CXC Elite teammates Caitlin Compton and Garrott Kuzzy won the 10/15km classic mass start events on the second day of the SuperTour Mayor’s Cup. The duo also took top honors in Saturday’s 5/10km freestyle race. Compton skied to a solid 20 second victory over UAF’s Raphaela Sieber in the women’s race. The weekend was also a CCSA collegiate event and midwest junior...
Just seven months after knee surgery, Norway’s Eirik Brandsdal had no business gunning for the podium in a classic sprint in late January. But knees were all but unnecessary in Sunday’s race in Estonia, which saw every single one of the six men in the finals forgoing kick wax on a tame course. Brandsdal rode his skate gear to third place in qualifying, two seconds behind his teammate Ola Vigen Hattestad, then just pipped Hattestad...
In the final shooting stage of Saturday’s mass start World Cup in Antholz, Italy, Martin Fourcade of France and Bjorn Ferry of Sweden went shot-for-shot for four bullets, each dropping all the targets. But while Fourcade quickly hit the fifth target, Ferry hesitated, waiting for the perfect shot. He kept waiting and waiting… and missed. While Ferry headed to the penalty loop, Daniel Mesotitsch of Austria and Anton Shipulin of Russia shot clean and embarked...
In the classic sprint qualifier in Otepaa, Estonia on Sunday morning, it was all about big guns. Norway and Sweden each qualified six men for the heats, and Estonia five. But by big guns, we don’t mean the strong ski nations—we’re talking about biceps. At least three Norwegians double poled the full qualifier, one of whom, Ola Vigen Hattestad, was the winner. Eirik Brandsdal and Eldar Roenning also completed the qualifier on skate gear. According...
Whether or not home-course advantage has much impact in cross-country skiing, the CXC Elite Team had no problem defending their local snow. SuperTour racing moved to the Midwest for the Mayor’s Challenge – two days of racing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last week combined an EISA collegiate carnival with the Lake Placid SuperTour, and this week was similar, swapping out the Central Collegiate Ski Association (CCSA) for the EISA. The races are also Junior Olympic Qualifiers...
CHAUX-NEUVE, France – Bryan Fletcher (Steamboat Springs, CO) turned in yet another strong performance, moving up from 25th in the jump to finish 21st in a nordic combined World Cup in France. Austrian David Kreiner spoiled the day for fans of French World Cup leader Jason Lamy-Chappuis as he took the win. Lamy-Chappuis was fourth. The race also marked the return of Billy Demong (Vermontville, NY) to action following the birth of his baby boy Liam a week...
While there’s a full schedule of World Cup racing scheduled in Antholz, Italy this weekend, Friday’s sprint might very well have been the last individual race the U.S. women had a chance to contest in Europe before World Championships. With a relay on Saturday and a mass start, capped at thirty athletes, on Sunday, and then the entire World Cup circuit picking up and heading to the U.S. for a few weeks in February, the...
In Antholz, Italy on Thursday, Lowell Bailey of the United States was one shot out of the top five and just two seconds away from his first World Cup top-10. As it was, he had the tenth-fastest ski time of the day, the second-fastest shooting time, two penalties, and finished 12th overall. It was the top American result of the season so far. “It was a great race for me,” Bailey told FasterSkier in an...
Laura Spector led he U.S. women with a 41st-place finish, while Rosanna Crawford of Canada finished the first World Cup pursuit of her career.
Ruhpolding, Germany, has been both kind and cruel to Olympic gold medalist Bjorn Ferry of Sweden. On one hand, the summer before his Olympic victory, he crashed while rollerskiing at the venue. The impact broke his collarbone and he had to have surgery and give up a period of training. But on the other, Ruhpolding is his second home. “I have trained here three times every year for the past ten years, so I have...
The World Cup sprint weekend in Liberec, Czech Republic concluded with a classic team competition. The Norwegian men’s team of Johan Kjoelstad and Ola Vigen Hattestad were unable to match the margin of victory of their female counterparts, but claimed the top spot nonetheless. Less than an hour after Marit Bjoergen led the Norwegian women to a crushing 30-second victory, Hattestad used a powerful move on the last climb to pull away from Mats Larsson,...
When U.S. biathletes left Altenberg, Germany after the pursuit race on Saturday, they were saying goodbye not only to the venue, but to the entire IBU Cup circuit. While the U.S. Biathlon Association is supporting the World Cup team for the rest of the year, no more Continental Cup races will be funded. Luckily, the team had plenty of satisfying results while in Europe, so the trip ended on a positive note. “I’m proud of...
Noah Hoffman hadn’t won a major domestic race in…well even he wasn’t sure…maybe the Owl Creek Chase two or three years ago, Junior Nationals…? But the youngest member of the US Ski Team, who has had considerable success racing in Europe, left no doubt about who would stand on the top of the podium on a cold snowy day in Lake Placid. This was in fact his first significant US victory since the Owl Creek...
Saturday morning wasn’t a bad one for APU Head Coach Erik Flora. Just before 9:30 a.m., his athlete Kikkan Randall won a World Cup sprint race in the Czech Republic. And by 10:30, his team had already racked up win number two, as Holly Brooks skied to a dominating victory in the 10 k freestyle SuperTour in Lake Placid. Brooks said she learned of Randall’s victory moments before starting her own race, and harnessed that...
So far this season, three Norwegian men have dominated the World Cup biathlon circuit, taking wins when it suits them and not always playing nicely together. 22-year-old Tarjei Boe currently sits atop the overall World Cup rankings, followed closely by teammate Emil Hegle Svendsen. Veteran Ole Einar Bjorndalen, who has won 92 World Cups in his career but only one this year, is third, giving the Norwegians a clean sweep of the standings halfway through...
After last week’s success at the IBU Cup races in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, U.S. biathlete and 2010 Olympian Haley Johnson was promoted to the World Cup. You might think that sending the top finisher off to Rupholding would slow down the American women racing on biathlon’s second-most prestigious circuit. But you’d be wrong. Susan Dunklee, Tracy Barnes, and Annelies Cook – who all missed qualifying for the Olympics last year – didn’t need Johnson...
APU’s Holly Brooks began her 2011 domestic campaign 50 days ago, with a pair of sprint qualifier wins in West Yellowstone, MT. One day before that campaign concludes, not much has changed. In Friday’s SuperTour in Lake Placid, a 6 k classic, Brooks led an APU sweep, with an eight-second victory over her teammate Kate Fitzgerald. Morgan Smyth was third, another five seconds behind. It was Brooks’s sixth win of the season, and with another...