As January draws to a close, energy, excitement, and perhaps anxiety surrounding the rapidly approaching 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing is steadily building. In an effort to better manage her time and energy heading into these Games, Jessie Diggins offered a media conference facilitated by U.S. Ski & Snowboard cross country communications manager Tom Horrocks to answer questions about her preparation, outlook, and plans for the remainder of the time before the team heads to...
The Planica World Cup cancellations this month brought the skiing world to the perilous edge of what it feared most, but hoped wouldn’t happen – the central focus of this ski season, and the sport’s biggest moment, the Olympics – affected by the Omicron COVID-19 variant. Over the last week in the Italian Alps, the sport went over that edge. This Olympics, as with everything in the world right now, will have to deal with...
The following opinion article was originally published on FasterSkier on June 20, 2015. It was written by Chelsea Little, who contributed sterling ski reporting to this site for nearly a decade before ultimately retiring from nordic ski journalism, though not from nordic skiing. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Simon Fraser University outside of Vancouver, B.C., where her research interests focus on community and meta-ecosystem ecology. The article was published roughly...
CANMORE (January 21, 2022) – Team Canada will now have five women and four men on the cross-country skiing start line as Olivia Bouffard Nesbitt and Rémi Drolet are heading to Beijing for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games. Bouffard Nesbitt (Morin Heights, Que.) and Drolet (Rossland, B.C.) were the final two athletes nominated by Nordiq Canada to the Canadian Olympic Committee after an additional two quota spots were handed down to Canada by International Ski Federation...
This article originally appeared on Wednesday January 19th, 2022 in the Anchorage Daily News. Reposted with permission. The organizers of next month’s Winter Olympics in Beijing have imposed a rigorous regime of testing, quarantines and isolation for incoming athletes and staff. Among the casualties is Steve Patterson’s pickleball game. Patterson has two adult children, Scott and Caitlin, who grew up in Alaska and are both Olympic hopefuls in cross-country skiing. They’re planning to prepare for...
PARK CITY, UTAH (January 20, 2022) — U.S. Ski & Snowboard announced today its nominations for the U.S. Olympic Cross Country Team to represent Team USA at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 from February 4-19, 2022. Nominations are to be confirmed by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee when it formally announces the U.S. Olympic Team. Fourteen athletes were nominated to Team USA, including the 2018 Olympic gold medalist and defending World Cup overall and...
PARK CITY, UTAH (January 19, 2022) — USA Nordic Sport announced today its nominations for the U.S. Olympic Nordic Combined Team that will represent Team USA at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. Nominations are to be confirmed by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee when it formally announces the U.S. Olympic Team. Athletes to Watch The team will be headlined by three-time Olympian Taylor Fletcher, who looks for his first Olympic podium. Fletcher’s top finishes at the Olympics include...
The season’s biggest races start in less than a month at a venue that is by all accounts well-designed, but also has yet to host an official FIS race. Here’s some of what is currently known about the National Cross-Country Skiing Centre in Zhangjiakou, 100-plus miles northwest of Beijing in the Hebei province of China. The Courses The races will be held at altitude. The stadium is located at an elevation of roughly 1,650 meters...
It’s always tough to make the Olympic team. It got tougher this year, due to smaller quotas for all nations interacting with some math that is disadvantageous to the American men. If you just want the executive summary of this article, here it is: The maximum team size, for any nation’s nordic team for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, is eight athletes per gender. If the Games started tomorrow, the Americans would be able to...
As Period I wanes and the Tour de Ski approaches, curiosity is naturally piqued as to how various athletes are analyzing their first four weekends of World Cup racing. In particular, our focus is drawn to Olympic medal hopefuls, like last year’s World Cup Overall Champion Jessie Diggins. How is she feeling as she heads into the holiday break, with two individual and one team sprint podium already under her belt and another six weeks...
The rapidly approaching year of 2022, and the upcoming Beijing Olympics, will mark 50 years since women cross-country skiers first began competing in the Winter Games. With multiple World Cup podiums already achieved this season and strong chances for medals in February, the origins of the U.S. women’s program might not be at the forefront of one’s mind. We’ve become accustomed to seeing our women at the top of the results lists; with almost an...
In the fall of 2018, on the heels of a season that included representing Australia at the PyeongChang Olympics, Jessica Yeaton applied to physical therapy programs. What she did not expect as she focused her lens on a new goal is that the 2018-2019 season would include some of the top results of her career, which reinforced the vision that she was not quite ready to fully hang up her skis. During that season, Yeaton...
In this episode, we connect with US Ski Team Head Coach Matt Whitcomb following the US Ski Team and National Training Group camp in Park City. Whitcomb answers a variety of questions to provide insight into the upcoming season leading up to the 2022 Beijing Olympics. A couple of notes: Firstly, you’ll notice some crackling in the audio on our end. We’re working out the kinks. Thanks for your patience. Also, if your interest...
The Journal of Science in Sport and Exercise recently published a paper titled ‘Preparing for the Nordic Skiing Events at the Beijing Olympics in 2022: Evidence-Based Recommendations and Unanswered Questions’, written by Øyvind Sandbakk, Guro Strøm Solli, Rune Kjøsen Talsnes, and Hans-Christer Holmberg. This is essential reading for anyone who is hoping to represent their country next year, covering the basics of elevation, time zone changes, cold weather, and the possibility of race format changes...
The Biathlon Integrity Unit Comes Online: Earlier this month, the website biathlonintegrity.com came online. The site is the digital interface of the Biathlon Integrity Unit, an independent arm of the International Biathlon Union. Part of the Biathlon Integrity Unit’s mandate, according to the website, is to provide a mechanism to “investigate and prosecute violations” as they relate to “integrity related matters in Biathlon, including anti-doping, ethical breaches, betting-related issues and any kind of result...