At age 31, Bryan Fletcher estimates he’s dedicated 25 years to the sport of nordic combined. He has been a U.S. national team member for the past 11 years and maintains that first time he flew off a jump on skis occurred at the ripe age of 4. Before that, and before his first steps, Fletcher’s exposure to skiing came from the viewpoint of a child carrier on his father’s back. For the first time since...
Editor’s Note: The following thoroughly cited opinion piece, prompted by the 2017 ‘Icarus’ documentary, was written by Maks Zechel, a 20-year-old Canadian cross-country skier who spent the 2017/2018 race season training abroad with Team Asker in Norway. Zechel is a regular contributor at FasterSkier, with his ongoing series: “Closing the Gap”. *** February 23, 2014 Sochi: a home Olympics and the opportunity of a lifetime. Russia, despite being one of the strongest skiing nations in the...
FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, women’s Olympic 4 x 5 k relay on Saturday when Norwegian Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen fell adrift of the front skiers. Both were haunting Sochi déjà-vu moments. Passing his 6.6 k checkpoint Sundby looked spent. He uncharacteristically let France and Italy take over the pacing. By then, Bolshunov had gapped the chasing trio by a full 41 seconds. In the post-race press conference, Bolshunov explained he had been hospitalized in the...
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has handed down three more lifetime Olympic bans to two Russian cross-country skiers and a biathlete, all of which are women, based on the Oswald Commission hearings concerning Russia’s systematic doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Cross-country skiers Yulia Tchekaleva and Anastasia Dotsenko and biathlete Olga Zaitseva have been sanctioned, according to an IOC press release on Friday. “More hearings concerning other athletes will be held over the next few...
On Nov. 9, news broke that
For the past 13 years, Eric de Nys has been ingrained in the sport of cross-country skiing and its offshoots, including biathlon. He spent 10 years as a coach on Cross Country Canada’s national team, leading the women’s World Cup team in his final two years there. Based in the same town and out of the same training facilities in Canmore, Alberta, de Nys parted ways with the national team after the 2014 Olympics and October 2015, de Nys...
LAHTI, Finland—The Norwegian lineup for the women’s 4 x 5-kilometer team at the 2017 Nordic World Championships on Thursday was daunting: Maiken Caspersen Falla, Heidi Weng, Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen, Marit Bjørgen. On paper and on snow, a rundown of names and accomplishments. Here during these Lahti championships the Norse foursome have hauled; Falla and Weng with a classic team sprint gold, Bjørgen a 15 k skiathlon gold, and Jacobsen’s hardware was a bronze in the 10 k classic. On Thursday...
“There needs to be an investigation by WADA,” International Ski Federation (FIS) Secretary General Sarah Lewis told FasterSkier in a phone interview on Monday. “FIS totally supports it and we have already expressed that anything we can provide, we will do. And it needs to be done [quickly], but carefully.”
When news broke last week that 14 Russian cross-country skiers may have doped at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, stakeholders in the sport reacted around the globe. Some, like Canada's then head coach Justin Wadsworth, essentially predicted that two years ago at the Games. Others, like French skier Robin Duvillard, tried not to get too caught up in it, but he might by default.
After feeling like health issues stunted her career two seasons ago, two-time Olympian Perianne Jones decided to give it one more year and go out on a high note. She did so, staying healthy and logging some career-best distance results in her final season with the Canadian national team.
Norwegian biathlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen, who became the most decorated Winter Olympian of all time this past winter in Sochi, Russia, was awarded Best Male Athlete of the 2014 Olympics on Friday in Bangkok.
Russia's organizing committee reported a $261 million dollar surplus on Thursday, more than any other Olympic Games. While the numbers are higher than expected, and initially projected, they're indicative of a $2 billion operations budget, rather than the total cost of the Sochi Games, which topped out around $51 billion.
More than a month after the Olympics ended, we share a different perspective on Team Dominica's legitimacy from their coach J.D. Downing. "[That their Olympic experience was an] un-mitigated disaster is completely true," he says. "I take issue with how this Olympic experience was presented."
Already forget what happened in Sunday's 50 k freestyle mass start? The photos tell a lot of the story from start to finish, including Alexander Legkov leading the way for a Russian sweep.
German biathlete Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle was caught using a banned stimulant at the Sochi Olympic Games, as American cross-country skier Kikkan Randall called her “the last person, really, that you would suspect.”
While U.S. Nordic Combined undoubtedly has its work cut out for its four-man team, Thursday marks the day they've been looking forward to at this Olympics: the 4 x 5 k team event.
The Norwegian women were back to their usual selves with skis to match as Ingvild Flugstad Østberg and Marit Bjørgen won the classic team sprint for Østberg's first gold, Bjørgen's fifth, and the team's first-ever team sprint win at the Olympics.
After qualifying in third out of a stacked semifinal, the U.S. women's team-sprint duo of Sophie Caldwell and Kikkan Randall went on to place eighth in the final of Wednesday's Olympic classic team sprint, two places back from their previous best of sixth at the 2010 Olympics.
Emil Hegle Svendsen knew exactly how Tuesday’s 15-kilometer mass start was going to play out — or so he said. The Norwegian timed his sprint showdown with France's Martin Fourcade to a T, nearly losing gold at the finish. But if you ask him, he had it in the bag.
Megan Imrie sensed there was a chance she could race Monday's Olympic biathlon mass start, but she didn't think it was a very good chance. Settled in at the athletes' village that evening, she received a call informing her that she could, 1 1/2 hours before the start. Imrie became the first Canadian woman to race an Olympic mass start, and raced the format for the first time in her career.